Pre-trip planning:
The planning started several months before the trip - extensive research was done on the approach, route, variations, gear, and logistics.
After carefully weighing everything I considered bringing on the climb, it was clear that having a pack weighing anywhere under 40 lbs would be extremely difficult. When weighing the final pack, I decided to take into consideration only what will actually be in the pack at the time of climbing the steepest parts - anything else on me I wouldn't count - such as rope, ice tools, crampons, ice screws, carabiners, etc. The total pack came out to be about 44 lbs (minus whatever food would be gone by that time). The total weight I would be carrying (including backpack and everything on me) would be around 55 lbs.
On Saturday I picked up my backpack and decided that it was too heavy. I began throwing things out of it, starting with the shovel (Natan had the other shovel, so we ended up going with 1 shovel). I removed about a total of 2-3 lbs of extra/backup items.
Sunday, June 8: White River trailhead to Lower Curtis Ridge, 6.4 miles, 3000' elevation gain, 11 hours
We got to the White River campground parking lot around 8:30am. First couple of miles were almost completely snow-free. At some point we came up to a place where we initially thought a large stream crossing was inevitable, but it turned out that we had to make a sharp uphill-right instead. The path was now wanded with red NPS wands, and we followed it for another couple of miles.
After a while we hit the snow field, put on our glacial goggles, to avoid going blind, and followed it up towards the pass.
On the way up we saw a few skiers going down from Camp Sherman area on (what at the time seemed to be) very steep snow. The way up towards the pass was steep, and once we got to the top, it was windy, but there were spots that protected from the wind - and that is where we dropped our packs and had lunch.
Going down the pass started very rocky, and then got us to the snow again, after 30-40 feet of rock down-scrambling. As we got down to Winthrop Glacier, we roped up and started the traverse over to Curtis Ridge.
At some point Natan, who was 2nd in our party of 3, had one of his feet punch through a crevasse, and sunk up to thigh level. It was getting late in the day and the snow was getting slushy. We had amazing views of Liberty Ridge, as the whole day was very clear, with only some patches of clouds going by.
We've set up camp on a flat spot near 7500', cooked water and dinners and went to sleep.
Monday, June 9: Lower Curtis Ridge to Thumb Rock, 3200' elevation gain, 10 hours
We started to move around 9 am, and had to go down a couple of hundred feet, since otherwise we would have to do a sketchy rappel. In hind sight, I really wish we rappelled instead, as it would have saved us several hours of climbing down then going back up. We got down to the rocks and then over to the Carbon glacier, where we roped up again and started heading towards Liberty Ridge.
At one point I fell through waste-deep into the hole on the edge of a 20-foot-wide crevasse. My backpack stopped me, and I climbed out. Right there and then pulled out my avalanche probe and used it extensively. We had to zigzag a bit to avoid the crevasses on the way - we passed quite a few of them, jumping or walking across some of the smaller ones.
We gained the ridge on the west side, and kept going up until we got to a point where it seemed that the way ahead wasn't passable, and the only way to go was up was through a really sketchy rock scramble that started off with a 10-foot easy class 5 rock climb. I got up and went over about 100 ft, screaming "ROCK" every couple of minutes to the team, to notify them of me dropping large rocks. I found a place for a more or less decent sitting belay, and brought them up one at a time.
We kept moving up and saw a couple of rock formations that we mistook for Thumb Rock. We were climbing on the left side of the ridge, on the snow slope, and then got over to the right side.
Finally we found the place, which was very obvious, especially due to the fact that there was a tent platform dug out there. We extended the platform to fit our tent, boiled water for dinner and for next day, and went to sleep.
Tuesday, June 10: Up from Thumb Rock to 13,300 ft
We roped up and started the climb on the left side of Thumb Rock, which was steep snow, and partially exposed rock. At times we were moving on steep snow, and other times it would turn into solid ice.
At one point a grapefruit-sized rock flew by on my left, appearing out of nowhere, and missing my head by about 2 feet. I barely had time to put my head down.
I had a total of 6 screws with me: 1x22, 2x19, and 3x16 - but I eventually dropped one of the 16cm screws. On steep ice, we started belayed climbing, where I would climb up and set up a belay station consisting of 2 screws, then bring up the team one at a time, go up putting in 1 screw in the middle, wherever necessary, then set up the next belay station.
We did some zigzagging, trying to find more of snow-climbing areas rather than pure ice, since we were taking too much time on the ice parts. After looking at the map again, it became obvious to me that we should have kept more to the right, by the Black Pyramid, instead of keeping to the center and traversing left. This would have saved us a lot of time, and we most probably would have avoided the sketchy bivvy that we had to resort to at the end of the day.
I believe we've ended up taking this route up past Thumb Rock, with red route being the route from Thumb Rock to the bivvy at 13,300, then orange route to the summit.
By around 7pm we decided that we need to find a place to bivvy, since we were taking too long, and had little chance of getting to the crater before dark. We ended up on the top left part of the snow/ice climb that was on the left side, past Black Pyramid, and got to a place that ended with something that looked like a W-shaped hole few hundred feet up at the top. I went up about 200 ft to see if this was the right way, but realized that I didn't want to bring up the team since we weren't sure it was the right way, and I didn't feel comfortable climbing on steep ice w/o belay, at 13,500 feet elevation.
We looked for a flat (or as flat as it gets over there) spot to spend the night. There were a couple of potential candidates, including a small ledge, which seemed to be too small for us. There was another spot that looked promising but steep and small, so we'd have to dig out a platform, and we weren't sure it'd be big enough. We kept going for another few feet on the tiny ledge that was hugging the rock wall, and behind the corner we found a steep slope which we decided to use to dig a platform. The slope consisted of many layers of snow of different density. Some were very hard, and some soft. I was worried about avalanche danger, but saw several large rocks protruding in the middle of the snow slope under us, that made me think that we were more or less safe in that regard. The rock wall we were next to looked fragile, but there was no evidence of any recent rockfall.
Initially we were thinking of digging out a platform big enough to hold the tent, but after over 5 hours of digging decided to settle for a small bivvy that was just big enough for 3 of us, covered with the tent tarp, anchored at the top with dead man anchors. On the bottom we've set up a rope between two snow anchors, to prevent us from inadvertently sliding down in our sleep. We were all worried about that part, especially me, with my sleep-walking history.
At some point in the evening we saw a 20-story-building-sized serac collapse and trigger a huge avalanche.
Wednesday, June 11: 13,300 bivvy to summit, 1000 ft elevation gain
The strong sun woke us up - we went to sleep wearing every piece of clothing we had on us, and by the morning we became incredibly hot. Snow was becoming slushy outside, and we started packing up.
We packed one at a time, due to the limited space on the platform we dug out the night before.
After having breakfast, boiling water, and finishing packing, we roped up and started to carefully move back to the spot where I went up the night before.
Initially we started climbing towards the "W" shape on the top, but then mid-way saw a set of foot prints leading right, towards the snow field. The traverse was going straight under an ice fall, and we moved quickly to the safety of the snow field to the right.
On the top of the snow field the wind picked up considerably, and we eventually topped out past the Bergschrund via steep snow going up right, leading towards Liberty Cap.
The time was close to sunset, and we had beautiful view all around us. We passed Liberty Cap and kept going downhill, towards the fork that leads down Winthrop Glacier. Past the fork, the climb continued towards the crater and the summit. By the time we got to the summit the sun was already set, but it was very light out, due to full moon.
After summitting and hanging around on the summit for a minute or two, we continued on down into the bowl and found a nice flat spot in the North-East part of the crater. We've set up the tent there, boiled water for the night, and went to sleep.
Thursday, June 12: Summit Crater to Camp Sherman, 5000 ft elevation loss
We didn't get much sleep as it was windy, even though the tent was somewhat sheltered by the walls of the crater. Winds outside of the crater must have been insanely strong. It also seemed that it snowed a little at night, although it could have been just snow moved around by the strong winds.
We left some gear outside, such as crampons, ice tools, snow pickets, and the rope. I were worried in the morning that everything will be covered by snow and we'd have trouble finding everything. It turned out to be fine, and most of the gear was visible in the morning.
I got of the tent first, and started looking for the way down. I saw a wanded trail, that I believe was Disappointment Cleaver. I went up to the side of the crater and decided to come down, since the wind was knocking me off my feet, and I wasn't wearing crampons.
We cooked in the vestibule of the tent, packed up, and started going down into the craters east side. We didn't see any good way down, so we went up the north side of the crater and headed down towards east. We eventually found a set of foot prints, confirmed with GPS, and headed towards Camp Sherman.
At some point we were able to see it on and off between the clouds on the bottom. Several bright tents were clearly visible. My right crampon didn't seem to be working very well for me, and it popped off 3 times. There were a few nearly flat spots on the way down where we rested. We saw the ranger cabin, which was a really cool looking stone cabin on the side of the cliff.
The way down was becoming less and less steep. We were going down unroped, and roped up only for the last thousand vertical feet or so, as we started seeing crevasses. At some point the snow field turned into deep slushy snow, which caused a lot of suffering, falling, and cursing due to post holing.
We got to the camp where we were greeted to a couple of climbers and their guide. They offered us some sports drink from their nalgene, some chocolate treats and hard candy, which we graciously accepted. They also told us that the climbing Ranger was in, and we went to see him, to tell him that we were delayed for a day. Jeremy (the ranger) got on the radio with the base and got our permit extended by a day. He also said it won't be a problem for us to stay overnight, since we didn't want to post hole any further.
We looked around for an open site and chose the largest one. We still had to extend it a couple of feet, since our tent was bigger than the platform. The platform was about 4 ft deep in snow, to shelter from the wind.
We set up the tent and cooked water, then went to sleep very early, around 8:30pm.
Friday, June 13: Camp Sherman to White River Trailhead, 5000 ft elevation loss
We slept very well, and woke up around 7am. During the night it snowed, and the tent was covered with about 2 ft of blown snow on each side. It was windy, and a lot of snow blown in under the vestibule, covering all our stuff there.
We cooked in the vestibule, cleared snow around the tent, packed everything up, roped up by the ranger cabin, and started heading down.
The way down included a few hundred feet climb up on a steep slope, followed by the climb down on the other side of the slope that we took going up St Elmos Pass.
We butt-slided down part of the way, a good 1000 ft of somewhat gentle slope, then walked the rest of the snow field, when the angle of slope became too gentle to glissade. On the way down we met a couple of parties going up, that looked very jealous of our butt glissading. Another party of snowshoers passed us on the way down, and was kind enough to take a picture of all 3 of us:
At some point the trail changed into snow-less hike, we layered down, and finally found ourselves back at the car.
Lessons Learned:
- Make it a point to go light, then go lighter. I would have trouble shaving off weight, but at least we could have taken a lighter tent, instead of 11.5 lb Trango 3. I also had 2 lbs of extra clothing I ended up not using, and 2 lbs is a LOT of dead weight to be carried up Liberty Ridge.
- Take smaller tent. Smaller tent would also permit smaller tent platforms, in case those are needed to be dug. You won't be able to sleep much anyway, so comfort is not that important.
- Take more photos. Although at some point we entered into survival mode and photos became secondary. My camera phone also died mid-way (I sat on it)
- Learn route better. I believe we could have made it much easier on ourselves by following the snow patches to the right side past Black Pyramid, rather than zigzagging closer to the center and then going left.
- Put a lot of sunblock, then put some more, and keep putting it on until your face is all white in it. Keep reapplying every hour. Use a lot of chop stick on your lips with high SPF.
Route Map:
