Snow climbing is one of my favorite things to do, and I was at St. Mary's Glacier four days earlier with a friend of mine, where I saw the loveliest, hard-packed, snow in a small couloir.
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| Lefthand chute. |
The one of the lefthand side of this photo, it required crossing the lake, climbing the chute, then up and over the summit of Point 11,716, then glissaded down the glacier back to the lake. I decided this was a trip that I really wanted to do, so I invited one of my friends who is interested in mountaineering to come with me. I figured it was a good training climb for someone who had never used crampons/axe for climbing snow!
We arrived at the trailhead at 7:00 am, gathered gear, and began the hike up to St. Mary's Lake. The lake was frozen solid, and we were able to cross easily after we strapped on our crampons. There was a brief lesson on crampon/axe technique, and we began the climb.
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| Looking down the chute! |
The weather was gorgeous, and the snow was hard in most spot, however there were some wind blown areas with a hard crust, and tons of powder below. Once above the chute, the view was amazing, you could see clear over the glacier, and all the small people walking down below.
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| Sitting above the mouth! |
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| The trek above the chute. |
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| Looking across to the glacier. |
Once we made it up over the summit, we had to cross a large snow drift area, I made it and settled on an exposed rock only to turn around and see my friend up to his waist in snow. I didn't help him out.
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| Stepped on a tree and fell into a drift. Haha. |
The glissade down was amazingly fast, and super lumpy... I had a few lovely bruises from that...but climbed up again to do it a second time. It was fun!
All in all the trip was a success, and I go to complete my snow climb that I wanted to! :)
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