Odell Gully Alpine Ice

Dec 2, 2012

Halfway up the climb

Elliott Fray, Keith Reherman, Eric Gilbertson

We knew we had to get an early start with the sunday higher summits forecast of “in the clouds under cloudy skies with chance of mixed precipitation in the morning, and rain likely in the afternoon.” We left the WS leaders retreat saturday night, slept a few hours at the intervale yurt, and woke up at 3:45am to begin our trip. The plan was to get to the base of Odell’s Gully in Huntington Ravine just at sunrise, and finish before the rain started. We signed in at Pinkham and made it up to the ravine by 6:30am, in thick clouds. Visibility was only 30ft perhaps, but we managed to trudge through the snow and find Odell’s.

I led the first pitch and the ice was thick enough to take any length screw – except the one I dropped accidentally and lost in a snow pile. As I belayed up Elliott and Keith three other groups showed up behind us. Good thing we got up early and had no line to wait in.

I continued up another pitch of WI2 ice, then the third pitch had a fun WI3 bulge. We topped out of the climb around 11am, just as the clouds parted and we could finally see more than a few feet. The rest of the gully up to treeline was a difficult mix of snow-wallowing and bush thrashing, but we topped out in the alpine garden by 1pm and could see far enough to hike back to lion’s head and descend back to Pinkham.

Within 5 minutes of reaching pinkham it started raining, but we luckily managed to dodge all precipitation the rest of the day.