Morning Recon and Iron Curtain Attempt

I won't lie, I was feeling pretty worked from all the front pointing the day before and was feeling motivated, but not hungry to get after it. Snow was falling softly when Jon and I left the hut with ambitions of looking/climbing on The Nose.

Jon Skiing Past the Miller Mite

 

There was a couple of inches of wind loaded snow that Jon and I got to fail as we made our way up to the wall. I began to feel uncomfortable being out with reactive snow and no beacon as we approached the biggest slope of snow to the base of the route. The risks vs benefits didn't add up so we enjoyed the views then retreated.

 

We ended up skiing back to the snow machine then heading up toward Iron Curtain. There was a nice 150ish foot of mellow grade 2ish ice that lead up to where the real climbing began.

 

It pretty much one pitch of steep ice to the top. The bottom looked great but the top was raining chandeliers and I passed the lead off onto Jon.

Jon Sticking His Head Out the Pitch

 

He bailed out of the potential rain shower to investigate the cave and belayed me up. I caused some mayhem with knocking off icicles while he set a v-thread and we bailed back to town. Great Trip out there!