This weekend’s climb was the “Experience Outing.” The goal was a day climb, to allow the students use all of the skills they’ve learned up until this point.

Devin chose Duke of Kent as our objective, and we met at the standard time of 6:30 at the McCellan Butte trailhead off of I-90. We had a smaller team this week, as three students and one instructor were absent. The first 4.5-mi of this climb was mostly moving on forest roads, nicely groomed trails, and some climber’s trails… About an hour into this, the rain arrived, and we donned our Gore-Tex… We continued the slog up, and when we got out of the trees, we were greeted with some cloudy views…

Just around the corner from the previous photo was our objective! We took a short break here, and Devin was wondering why we weren’t so eager to bag this peak…

The team slowly made its way up what is typically a scree field… For us, it was a mostly snowy, but occasionally post-holey scree slope.

^Clare was clearly on picket duty for this climb…

As we slowly moved up, the clouds lifted a bit, giving us a peek at the gully we’d need to climb up (the one to the right). The Duke of Kent is also to the right!

…as we got to the gully, it started raining/snowing a whole lot more!

We found some shelter by the rocks, roped up, and began the slog up the gully!

 

We had three rope teams, and set pickets for a running belay. I was on the last rope team with Clare, Arthur, and David. When we got to the top, Devin and Luke had already left to set a fixed line to the summit. Here’s what happened next:

• David, Pae, Ian, and I stood around our anchor (BFT) with the rest of the students
• After a while, Devin radio’d to start sending students up (moving up with prusiks), but also to start figuring out how we were going to descend this gully
• David set a double rope rapell
• Pae, Ian, and I enjoyed some fried chicken
• After all the students were on their way up towards the summit, we received a radio call from Devin… the summit was a sloppy slog, and we were at our turn around time…
• Thus, he sent all the students back.
• I rappelled down the gully to a small, but solid tree, and set an anchor there
• Luke rappelled down to me with another rope, and David down climbed to the tree, and we set a single rope rappel
• The instructors all down climbed. In parallel, the students rappelled down to me, got on the single rope rappel, and rapelled to Luke (who was now at the end of the single rope rappel)
• Devin cleaned up the anchors at the top of the gully, and the last student and I pulled the ropes down (thanks, Alex!)
• Devin then met us at the second rappel station, we cleaned that, and we got outta there…

 

Luke leaving the other instructors in the dust snow!!!

Did I mention it was snowy and windy as hell? It got pretty damn cold a that station… Here’s David setting the second rappel

It took over an hour to get the team down, and the weather had cleared a bit by the end of it

Views on the way out.. My camera screen stopped working after this (typical of when it gets wet), so I packed that into the pack, and continued on the descent

Stats! (courtesy of Ian)…

• Distance: 11.1-mi
• Elevation gained: 3,593-ft
• Moving Time: 4:39:22 (we started at 7am, and got back to the cars at 6pm)
  • Lesson learned for the students? rope work takes time… and it takes even longer in shitty weather
• Calories burned: 1,596 (how the heck does Strava calculate this?)

Group shot!

^photo courtesy of Devin!