“So why did you think you failed this weekend?”
That was the first question asked at the team dinner after our climb. To understand why this question was asked, one has to understand the hilarity that was this past week (actually, maybe hilarity isn’t the right word…)
If one backtracked to our weekly Wednesday class, you’d see that only 1 out of the 6 students remembered to make a trip plan… In the BCC, students are responsible for trip plans, as we want them to have the ability to plan and execute their own climbs after they’ve successfully completed the course. We also rely on them to navigate as a team to reach each week’s objectives. Other contributing factors? The weather! but one should be able to negotiate around that to some degree.
So, meet Sean. He was our substitute lead instructor this week (as Devin was out of town). He was also the one who bluntly asked the question to the students at our dinner table #toughlove
The team’s objective this week was to bag Wahpenayo Peak out in the Tatoosh Range. In class, they did some rapid planning, and using some previous trip reports, they created a route with 3x checkpoints/markers. So on Sunday, we followed the trail up to Marker #2, and as expected, this is where the trail split…
- One could either turn left and head up the trail to Eagle Peak, and then traverse past Chutla to Wahpenayo.
- OR, they could find the climbers trail, and continue hiking up the side of the bowl. Then, find and head up a notch that was SE of Chutla, and take that ridge to Wahpenayo.
The students stuck to their primary plan of using the climbers trail and continued up the side of the bowl. From here they found another group of climber’s footsteps, and followed their path up a gully, which they thought was the notch (at Marker #3)… So here they are! leading us up a really steep gully!
^we seem to have a thing with hiking up cloudy gullies…
Further up the gully, the path split again! This was something not on the map…
Soo, we let them choose their adventure! They decided to go to the left (to the left)
…and then we hit that patch of rocks. Here, we had a lil team discussion. We gave them the option to head back to the bowl and try to re-orient themselves (this would require some down climbing and some time lost). The alternative was to continue traversing NW, as there was no way to head the opposite direction. They decided to traverse some more to see if we could find a place to gain the ridge…
Clare happily down climbing some rocks
The team continued traversing across the snowfields…
After a while, the students found a gully up to a ridge, thinking this was the notch, we headed up and wound up on a snowy hill
Youssef making his way up
From here, we found a ridge, and wound up at a summit. We took a short story time break with Sean to discuss where they thought we were. The consensus? They weren’t sure…
Some students decided this wasn’t the right peak, so we left to look for Wahpenayo… but shortly after, we got cliffed out, so we returned to the first summit we encountered.
We decided this was good enough, and took our summit shot.
Sean found the summit register, and sure enough we were at the wrong peak!
^but hey! look at the first three names! (they’re the super senior BoeAlps instructors)
Sean giving the students sh*t for baggin’ the wrong peak!
So what could’ve been done better?
- From Marker #2, we should’ve had a gradual hike up to the notch and ridge (at Marker #3). Then we’d be able to continue on the ridge to Wahpenayo
- The map that the students printed was the same as the one shown above, with the slope gradiens shown…
- Coming across such a steep gully, so soon after Marker #2, should’ve been a red flag… and we should’ve turned around
- This is also something to depend on when weather is poor, and it’s hard to use landmarks to take bearings off of
- There was a lot of guessing on next steps, and no one committed to what we should’ve done next
- Lessons learned??? Navigation skills are crucial! and knowing what you’re looking for next is a must!
How was this from an instructor standpoint? Well… I got some solid summit snacks at the summit! 😛