Monday, December 12, 2005

West Coast Ice 2005

In spite of quite warm temps Lillooet had seen some keen faces on Friday and Saturday night. Bob and I climbed at IcyBC on Saturday. First pitch has interesting mushrooms, second is an easy, wet, and hollow tube, top pitch has little climbable ice, main pillar is a big cavity, one can not exit Fender Bender due to open water, but a two feet diameter pillar and two Shredie like free hanging daggers make for a great ambient. Hit & Run was climbed in a harder than usual state. Body shop is dry but looks very anorexic. The sunset light was amazing across the valley reminding us of the gold rush times :)

Sunday we had a great Rockies clean M? experience on the first two thirds of Synchrotron. On the third part of the climb: the ramp pitch is well formed with the top pitch (*) being an absolute score for a grade 4 - as good as it gets - beautiful pillar, was untouched this year, on the short side though, and lots of free hanging daggers of all sizes from a big roof around you, again in the beautiful afternoon light that scared away misty clouds that kept us company all day :)

(*) As it turned out later this was the last pitch of The Mother.