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Intermediate Alpine Climb - Dragontail Peak/Serpentine Ridge

My trip to Mt Triumph got rained out so Alex and Jay invited me to find a partner and join them for a single day climb of Serpentine Arete. Rob joined us to make two teams of two.

Placeholder Contact Profile Michael Young
August 08, 2016
  • Road rough but passable

  • Very minimal, low-angle hard snow getting to the base of the route. Approach shoes without additional traction was fine for this section.

    Boulders were sitting on a steep section of the  colchuck glacier above the slide zone of the recent avalanche. I wouldn't want to be at the base of the route when the sun hits the glacier due to potential rockfall.

    Snow coming down from dragontail was harder than I had hoped. Not soft enough to plunge step. brought ice axe and microspikes on approach shoes, which were fine. I kicked steps through the steeper section. Others chose to glissade.

Left parking lot at 3:00am. Arrived at colchuck lake around 4:45am. Stopped to ditch some gear at colchuck lake. Stopped again to fill up water on the moraine. Arrived at base of the route at around 6:30 am. 

Summited at 2:30pm. Simuled everything but pitch right of the black tower (pitch 4? 5.8) and the right facing dihedral (pitch 5? 5.8). 

The descent down aasgard was painful. Arrived at cars around 9:00pm. 18h car to car.

Gear: 60m rope, kiwi coiled during simulpitches. Double rack from .2 to #2, single #3, single #.1. Pink and red tricams and a single set of nuts. Probably about 15 single runners and 4 double runners. We appreciated this much gear because it allowed very long simulpitches. We used a single microtraction to protect occasional hard moves for the follower during simulclimbing. Ice axe (everyone had the camp corsa nanotech). Microspikes.

Rob and I chose to have separate summit packs. I just climbed with a 45L pack, which was fine. I ditched the frame at colchuck.