November 13/2006

so this is my first posting and i have no idea if anyone will read this but i will write because i want to tell people about conditions and what i am up to and good routes and bad routes and whatever else.

So the radio said avalanche warning was high, the weather forcast was for falling tempatures and it was snowing. So Melissa Dube' and i loaded the car with way to much gear and headed west to see what kind of trouble we could find. the front ranges look good. hardly any snow. not more than could cover a small rabbit likely. so we turned down highway 40 and still conditions were prime. got to a mountin that Brian Shorten and i had tried one month earlier and got turned back. i said lets give it a try. so we did. after a much to lengthy bush wack(due to my poor route finding and remembering abilities) we finally got to a clearing and coudl see the peak. we walked another hour or better up the ridge dropped some gear and started up the rock. we got to the cliff band where i had previously got turned back. we continued on to run in to verglas(thin ice on rock) and had to dry tool up it. we continued on another maybe 100 feet and got to the small snowslope i had been eyeing up earlier. it started out alright but the higher we got the harder it got. before i knew it i couldn't get mt feet to kick in and i was slipping untill my axe finally bit. we descided that that was it we would rap doen from there. till we saw the rock face beside was blank. no cracks, none. no pitons no nuts no hexes nothign was going in. jsut down there was a stubby little tree. so we rapped that and trudged out way down the ridge and back to the car. maybe next time.

the snow was starting to get a little bit deep by the end of the day in places but there may be another possible attempt for next weekend, November 18/2006 if you are interested:

e-mail-jasonslyons@gmail.com
phone-(403)990-1865