What a fun peak! She makes you pay for every ounce in mileage, but once on the actual approach, it’s a bit long but super fun mixture of all the mountaineering stuffs. The trail description is largely correct, so I’ll just note specific conditions. The snow was melted up until the Blue glacier. Once dropped down that terrible moraine there was a decent top layer of slushy snow. The snow remained wet and slushy all the way up to the summit block. It was slightly firmer on the way up. We started hiking at 4am and were on the peak at 10:30am.
We got buzzed by a small prop plane that did 2 laps around our summit. We waved and took pictures. It did seem pretty special to have that kind of coincidental timing. I thought it would be extra cool if the plane took pics of climbers and shared them somehow. Probably just a pleasure ride for someone, but it would be cool to see that perspective.
Back to snow conditions. We were able to go directly to the summit block from Snow Dome as the early summer conditions had snow bridges intact with no bergschrunds or crevasses to contend with. No promises on how long that will last, but shorter not having to cross crystal pass. The summit block was super awesome. A spicy 5.4 climb up an inverse corner and then hoisting yourself on the tip of the block was the crux of the climb. After that the climb is super easy to the rappel station. There are 3 pieces of tat on the rock anchor. All in great shape with a single aluminum ring. With the snow still as high as it is, we were able to rap down with just a 50m rope. Probably a good idea to bring a 60m as the snow recedes more. Either that or there is a sling over a big rock right above the crux rock, so you could do 2 raps on a 30m rope. The rappel was a lot of fun.
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