North Wash Conditions Report

[Scott P]

For those who are heading to North Wash soon, here

[CarpeyBiggs]

did you find the feature you were looking for?

[Scott P]

did you find the feature you were looking for?

No. We tried to go up Stair Canyon and down Marinus, but the snow and ice slowed us down so much that it took us a long time to just get to the ridge between the two canyons. By the time we were on the ridge above Marinus we only had two hours of daylight left so we felt it would be safer to descend the SE fork of Stair instead.

Even if we did get through the technical section of Marinus in two hours and walked the rest in the dark, my dad and seven year old son were waiting for us at the mouth of Stair (they hiked all the way up Stair to the blocking falls with us) and it wouldn't be nice to make them wait in the dark for us, especially since we knew they would worry.

Anyway, I didn't get any photos of the exposed sections (because we were trying to hurry), but the rocks were coated with ice under the snow. We decided the canyon will still be there another day. Here is one photo (my brother is lower left). There is ice under the snow on the boulders.

http://www.summitpost.org/images/medium/590396.JPG

Even in the shorter canyon we descended, the going was still slow due to lots of icy down climbs and potholes slowing us down:

http://www.summitpost.org/images/medium/590398.JPG

If you look closely at the above photo, the rock that is slightly darker and looks "wet" in the chimney is actually icy and frozen.

Even though the last drop in the canyon was only seven feet, but we still had to set up a rap because it was too icy to downclimb (no photo of that one).

As much as I wanted to do Marinus, we made the right choice by bailing out and we got back just before it got dark which we felt quite good about.

The canyons farther up North Wash had excellent conditions.

I'll post photos and a brief TR later.

[Scott P]

A few teasers can be found in the link below, but as promised, a full trip report will come in a few days:

http://www.summitpost.org/custom-object/590857/2010-trip-log.html