After talking with Miguel Forjan for a while on the phone, we finally decided to go to climb some ice in the Sierras. Luckily there was some left, as the year had been rather dry. So on September the 17th 2004, we headed up to the trail head on the McGee creek, pass the buttermilk’s road. That is by itself a good 4x4 ride, especially at night.
We woke up the next day at 4am and were in our way by 4:40am. The weather report had predicted a cold front entering by the north, and you could feel the winds associated with it. The temperatures were not too cold, and the hiking in the night was ok. We got lost in one occasion and lost 5min. We found ourselves bush waking through some aspen, but Miguel found the trail fast.
There was a camping tent on the shore of the lake, but we didn’t see anyone in the rest of the day. From the lake we could see that the couloir was rather bare, maybe one or two pitches were formed, followed by two bare pitches and the a hair line pitch to the top. But following the rationale that we had sufficient pains driving and hiking here, we decided to continue up the moraine and climb whatever was possible. In fact the schrund was looking primo.
We reached the schrund by 9am, and from there we could appreciate that significant rock fall was going on. Since the gully was bare at places and the wind was high. But we went for it. In fact I had not climbed ice this season, apart from pitch or two in Tahquitz last February, and was looking forward to it. So I took the schrund crossing that involved some mixed terrain and then followed to the end of the rope. Miguel took the next pitch and it became obvious that the angle was gentle enough to simul-climb. The ice was transparent and brittle and covered with fallen rock everywhere. The falling rocks were whispering by continuously. At one instance, a foot size rock came very close to hitting Miguel. We show the rock bouncing left and right while Miguel was moving in the belay, predicting the trajectory and moving accordingly. In the last moment the rock move right and passed by.
From there on there was a bunch of bare rock, maybe class three and higher up a hair line of ice.
While the top section could have been nice, the rock looked uninteresting and the rock fall ridiculous. So we set some lunule and bail. By 4pm we were back in the car and at 6pm in Los amigos!
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