"...The best the Rocky Mountans afford" was what B.F. McHenry called the region where the peak named after him lies. This after his failed 20 day expedition attempt to climb the peak in 1898.
Over 110 years later, on this early February day, Moski, Dmandave and I headed up Glacier Gorge enroute to Solitude Basin and McHenry's Notch Couloir.
The day was warm, winds calm, and the sun was blazing in the morning.
We made good time up the trail, passing a few parties, and took the now common "short cut."
Skinned across Mills Lake on patchy snow, and interesting textured ice.
The winter route up the gorge stays in the snow covered stream bed, and has some cool overhanging granite walls in parts.
We turned right and skinned up the steep 800 ft. or so to Shelf Lake, complete with some waterfall ice avoidance. (note, good ice bouldering for later)
Passed a large ice dam coming from the banks of Solitude Lake, and headed towards the imposing canyon. Skimmed on the lake, over the rocky bottom of the basin, and up towards a neck craning cirque. Dave even blurted out something along the lines of "My neck is hurting from looking up all around us."
There are no apparent continuous lines in this entire cirque, more of a trad climbers venue. That is, untill you get all the way back up against the granite slab coming down from the NE face of Powell. "Where is this thing", one thinks as they head deeper and deeper, getting swallowed up. McHenry's Notch Couloir finally reveals itself, along with a branching SW facing slot coming off Pt. 12836.
We stopped at a point where we could go for either option. 1" of new snow in the lot turned to 8" up here, and winds had been from the SW recently. How fast? that was the question (fast enough to build a slab at the top of the couloir?) Dave busted out the binocs and we got a better look at the snow texture, scanning for visual clues. A few loose sluffs had come down, not entraining a whole lot of snow. This was a good sign, it meant the surficial layers weren't cohesive enough to propagate a fracture, at least from as high as they started.
The consensus was to go up and poke around, dig around, and climb the couloir unless we find a reason not to.
We spiked up, stashed the skins into a crack, and started kicking steps. Up and up, the couloir steepens to 45+ right at the bottom, and stays sustained 50 to the top. The upper hundred feet I measured at 52 degrees.
The snow was deep, the new snow fairly well bonded, but we wanted to find out what was beneath. I excavated a spot to sit and hip belay Moski out to the middle and he dug a profile. Compression tests showed hard failure at 30cm or so down, and a rough shear. The probe "penetrometer" revealed an optimal snowpack structure, low density on top, and became more and more dense all the way to the firn below. I checked the shear strength of a few layers with a shovel shear test, and for propagation with an extended column. Results were favorable for continuing.
Up top, we made the hard decision to not try and climb the sick south facing couloir across the way, and instead went for the summit of Powell Peak. It was already 4pm...
The "3rd" class climbing proved too dangerous with snow and ice over the route, and we decided to get back to our couloir.
I offered to ro-cham-bo for the ski cut, but nobody else wanted it! I roped up and took it.
No results, as expected. There was very little, if any wind deposited snow. Optimal conditions in a very steep couloir, mid winter!
The turns were incredible, make a handful, come out of a cloud of face shots, pull over and let the sluff pour down. All went smooth besides a quick scare with Dave's ski binding.
We leap frogged down, and yelped for joy as it echoed in the deep, and darkening cirque.
Made our way out of the basin at sunset. I flew across Mills Lake on propelled on low friction smooth ice. The ice cracked and made weird collapsing noises from far and wide. I kept on cruising...
One scary luge run on the trail through the trees, lit by only moonlight and a dim headlamp, brought us back to the lot, 9hrs and 45 minutes later.
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