We shared a once in a lifetime day in the mountains.
We encountered wet rock from overnight cloud cover from Avalanche to Uto. The rock on the ascent up Sir Donald was reasonably dry until the final ~100m where we encountered fresh snow. Great to see lots of parties out including friends heading up Uto.
Discovered on the first rappel that we had borrowed a 40 m rope instead of the 60 m that we thought we were carrying. As with Taylor Sullivan and Mickity Split’s efforts, our rope got stuck pulling the second (waterfall rappel). Tried in vain to get it unstuck before making the call to climb up as high as was reasonable to cut it. We cannot imagine having to deal with this solo, one of many points in the day where we were each incredibly grateful to have a strong, capable partner. Continued the rappels with some downclimbing and intermediate raps with our remaining 25m of rope.
Crossing the glacier was tedious but uneventful with a deeply sun cupped surface. Caught one leg in a crevasse descending the face of Young’s Peak. Almost pulled the plug at Asulkan Pass, but decided to carry on with a reduced focus on setting an FKT and an increased focus on finishing off an already epic day. We both managed to find our second wind and thoroughly enjoyed the Asulkan Traverse, treated to great views, cool temps, and a brief but intense shower on Abbott Ridge.
Aside from the issues mentioned, it was as good a day as we could have ever hoped for.
A few notes on gear and style:
- Carried everything start to finish, except for ~10-15 m of rope that we couldn’t retrieve on the rappel without serious risk to personal safety
- No gear or food caches were used, we found plenty of water on route
- Brought harnesses, 4 biners, ATC, microtraxion, tibloc, knife, 120 cm sling, helmet, ice axe
-40 m 6 mm Mammut glacier rope (50 m would be ideal)
- We chose to forgo crampons and were happy with this decision. Any steep snow we encountered had good shoe penetration