(almost) Pounded Into Dust

I just returned home from a climbing trip in Alaska with Pay Murphy from Toronto. We were (almost) pounded into dust while climbing the Nettle/Quirk route on the West Face of Mount Huntington. About half way up the ice couloir, a large snow mushroom fell from somewhere high above. It was a strange event as it was extremely cold that day. Fortunately, it broke into blocks small enough so as not to do too much damage by the time it hit us. Also, fortunately, I was at a belay station. Pat was seconding the pitch and was knocked off, but did not get hurt.
We abandoned the climb and then pulled out and were shuttled over to the Kahiltna Glacier to rest an relax some. Here, we found warmer weather and were able to climb the North Couloir of the Mini Moonflower Buttress of Mount Hunter. This involves 2,000 feet of moderate and steep alpine ice, with one very thin pitch. It was much more user friendly than the hard, boiler plate type stuff we encountered Mount Huntington.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 19th, 2011 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Alpinism, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.