RAM
08-11-2011, 11:38 AM
I had done this one with Stevee B. about half a dozen years back. Seemed more than worthy of a repeat, as it was new to Aaron. The "sink in" snow the the previous day was replaced by very hard snow in just one day. Why? The wind kicked in. In fact we waited for 90 minutes, hiding behind hill, as the wind roared through the area. Finally, with crampons on, we braved it when the wind relinquished a tad.
We worked our way to the ridge, through snow of different characters, including iced up little edges that threatened our ankles. Once on the arete, we did about 6 pitches. The camera was away when we inadvertently ended up on a line that was 5.8 or harder. Finally we landed the summit in the afternoon. It was only near camp again that we saw our first person of the day, as others hiked up, ending our 24 hours of being the only folks in the Palisades. We shifted camp to one of the lower lakes and eyed our longest route of the trip for the next day. Pictures?
https://picasaweb.google.com/aramv14/SwissAreteMtSillJuly20th2011
We worked our way to the ridge, through snow of different characters, including iced up little edges that threatened our ankles. Once on the arete, we did about 6 pitches. The camera was away when we inadvertently ended up on a line that was 5.8 or harder. Finally we landed the summit in the afternoon. It was only near camp again that we saw our first person of the day, as others hiked up, ending our 24 hours of being the only folks in the Palisades. We shifted camp to one of the lower lakes and eyed our longest route of the trip for the next day. Pictures?
https://picasaweb.google.com/aramv14/SwissAreteMtSillJuly20th2011