« Environmental Entrepreneurialism | Main | A long haul in the Palisades. »
July 11, 2003
Alpine time again.
Well, I'm off again tomorrow. I'll be gone until Monday. Bruce and I are hiking into the Palisades and climb the V-Notch. Its a 900' ice climb followed by a 400' rock climb. Its a good day's hike (10 miles + 4000' vertical gain) just to get to high camp before the climb. Here is a picture of the U-Notch and V-Notch. Here is a picture I found of a guy climbing it. Here is another picture further away.
This will be another first for me, doing such a large alpine route; an ice climbing alpine route at that. I've read a number of reports online of the route, and it does indeed seem difficult. It seems the most difficult part will be crossing the bergschrund. A bergschrund is crevasse that separates flowing ice from stagnant ice at the head of a glacier. One report describes climbing the 'schrund' is "like climbing a forty foot tall breaking wave." There is another option of rock climbing left of the 'schrund', but I'm not sure how difficult or safe that route is. Also, it requires a long ice traverse back to the center of the gully. The top of the V-Notch steepens as well. Finally, you have 400' of easy rock climbing to the summit. There is also some question of how easy it really is. Especially since we won't be wearing rock shoes. We'll be wearing our hard plastic boots.
Reading some of the epics people have had on this route, it makes me both nervous and excited. I know that I need to get through these rights of passage if I'm going to be comfortable on other more difficult alpine routes. Learning to deal, both physically and mentally, with this type of exposure and technical challenges is a necessity for climbing routes like the West Rib on Denali. Doing these alpine routes is definitely the direction I want to head. Especially if I ever do decide to try and become a guide. I am confident we have ALL the right gear to do this route and we have the experience between us to get through it, though I'm sure there will be a lot of learning as we go. But thats how it is done. At least we are giving ourselves lots of time to do this.
I'm leaving in an hour. Wish me luck. I'll take lots of pictures and write about it when I get back on Monday.
Posted by wonko at July 11, 2003 12:11 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wayfargone.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/73
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)