Spring Time Ice Adventures

It was a casual Tuesday morning. Barely awake, I carried myself through my lectures pumped up on cheap drip coffee, when my friend Drew Thayer texted me. 

“What are your plans for this Weekend?”. 

“None Drew. What do you have in mind? 

“Wanna go and do Hallet Peak? It’s in and will be epic!”

Without any hesitation, I agreed and 4 days later found myself in the passenger seat of Drew’s Toaster  on the way to Estes Park, CO. Our plan for the first day, was to check out a sport climbing area called the Wizzards Gate, somewhere close to the Twin Sisters. Disregarding the fact, that the 1 hour approach was through a thick Forrest on a north facing hill slope, which was covered in knee deep snow, we started our ascent. Two hours later, after endless amounts of post-holing through talus and rotten woods, we made it to the base of the Wizzard’s Gate fully soaked, wet and cold. After cursing on the idea of coming here, psyche came back amazingly fast and 5 min later I was tied in and made my way up an amazing face filled with chicken heads. For the rest of the day, Drew and I continued cragging around, sampling routes here and there between 5.10 and 12a. As dusk set in, we decided it would be a good idea to pack our things up and start our descent and with the last amount of light, we made it back to the car. An hour later, we were filled up with some pasta, and all gear was packed up for the next day.

Drew infant of Hallet Peak

The familiar sound of a phone alarm was ringing in my ears. It was 5 am, and cold outside. Before I 

knew what was going on, Drew jumped out of the tent.

“Dude get psyched it’s time for some adventures”.

Growling I leave the refuge of my warm and cozy down filled sleeping back, pull over my long johns, pants, fleece and puffy jacket. Another day of being cold and miserable was on the agenda also known as ice climbing.  Soon the smell of coffee was filling the air, and we were back on the road driving through the gates of RMNP and with the first shines of light, we were at the Glacier Gorge parking lot heading towards the face of Hallet Peak. The route we had in mind, was the Hallet Chimney Route. A mixed line, rated at Al5, M5. Having never mixed climbed in my life before, I was nervous, doubting my abilities of being able of scaling this intimidating face., which was patched with ice, loose rock, frozen moss and a large amount of suspect fixed gear. Yet as we got closer, fear disappeared and excitement set in.  We racked up and started our ascent. After soloing the first stretch of the chimney, which consisted mostly off  low angle snow fields and some short stretches of exposed rock, which needed to be scrambled over, we made it to the first chock stone pitch. Before I knew what was going on, Drew unpacked the ropes and handed me the sharp end.

Drew on the first couple of pitches

“Time to dig deep German, you have the honor of the first lead!”, said Drew to me, with a bright smile on his face. I tied in, racked up, eye balled the pitch, shook out my arms one last time, took a deep breath and started my ascent up.  Soon I was in the flow. Placed a Camelot for protection, jammed my ice tools into a thin crack, pasted my crampons onto some crimps and made my progress upward. A little while later,  I got to the anchor and Drew quickly made his way up to me.  Then it was his turn, to take over the sharp end.  Carefully maneuvering his way through a lot of frozen moss, in which Drew buried his ice tools, Drew scaled his way up.  I just followed the line in awe and amazement about Drew’s performance. The next pitch consisted again of 2 chock stones, which formed snow mushrooms that blocked the way.  While looking up, I was highly skeptical about my abilities of leading these pitches. Drew noticed my hesitation, and encouraged me to give it a shot. So  I racked up again, and charged up towards the mushrooms. When I arrived at the first chock stone, a mysterious piece of webbing greeted me. Despite it’s questionable quality, I clipped in quickdraw, since it was the only available piece of protection. 

Johnny Sauerkraut battling with some SMOW

Then I carefully started my way up the mushroom. Unfortunately, did it not consists of good hard frozen snow. Instead it was a loose ball of powder pressed together. Leaving for only one option of ascending up.  Squeezing my way up between the gigantic snow cone and the rock wall of the chimney to it’s side. After applying several techniques, such as chicken wings, stemming and worming my way up, I found myself on top of snow mushroom, while a soft breeze blew spindrift into my face and down my back into my jacket. A new type of climbing was born. SMOW climbing. Also known as Snow Mushroom Offwidthing. 

Drew following on the SMOW pitch

Soon later, I made my way up to the next anchor.  Then it was Drew’s turn again. However, this time the battle consisted of  climbing over several overhanging chock stones, which normally form an icicle. However on the day of our ascent, no ice was found on this pitch. This required Drew to pack out all tricks we had in our tool box and through the use of aiding and pulling on some fixed gear, even this obstacle seemed to be no problem for our ascent. This proved to be wrong unfortunately. On the next pitch, an even more gigantic snow cone blocked the way of any farther ascent. The walls on both side of it, where blank. The snow became increasingly soft and given the quality of the snow, and farther ascent seemed like a bad idea.  Yet our hopes kept our ambitions up and I started crawling my way up through the hip deep powder. But soon after, we had to accept that the further ascent was impossible. Heavy hearted, we had to start our descent. Five rappels later, we were back at the base packed up and started our way back towards Laramie. Questioning ourselves if bailing was the right decision or not. Given that the ice season was basically over, we both agreed that we would come back next year, with the hope for better conditions.