Trip Report
Mount Constance/South Chute
Unreal rock fall.
Patrick McLaughlin
- Fri, Jul 4, 2025 — Sat, Jul 5, 2025
- Mount Constance/South Chute
- Climbing
- Turned Around
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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The old road is pretty flat with a gradual incline along the river. There is a nice bypass around the washout or take the rough washout trail near the river. The washout is rough for heavy ebikes, so recommend walking them up around the bypass trail. Bike or no bike? Bring a bike for sure. Stuff it under the Constance creek bridge. The way down you'll be happy to coast 90% of the 4.5 miles back to the car.
Heading up the trail to the lake requires keen awareness to a GPS route, flagging tape and boot path debris. There appears to be a common mistake folks are making about 350ft from the start. You should go over the big log with flagging tape hanging above it. Many turn left going up hill which leads to some unnecessary exposed climbing in bushes with thorns. From there it's the usual over and under downed trees and stair stepping up the hillside. The flat "meadow" section was nice with plenty of places to rest and get water from the creek. It's quite a reprieve before the rooty/rock scramble up the cliff to the lake.
From camp, avalanche canyon had just a little bit of snow reaching halfway up the scree slopes to the east but it's melting fast. Snow was firm on top in the morning but soft underneath and easy to kick the top layer off and gain good footing in the snow beneath. No crampons used. No snow in the chutes (except the North chute (Route 1A) we saw on the way out).
Most folks seem to use the traversing trail that slowly works its way up to the south chute area rather than go up the canyon and make a hard right up the scree slope. This might be easier when there's more snow but the traverse was much easier on scree/talus. The North Chute clearly had snow in it as described in the guide book and may have been the route to take with the snow being a bit more forgiving and to avoid the rock fall (more on that below).
Rock fall was the worst I've ever seen. Did not stop hearing rock fall once in Chute's Notch couloir and it wasn't coming from us climbing. The east aspect cliffs between Point Schellin and Point Smith cut loose at about 11-11:30am releasing car-sized rocks that shattered into refrigerator and microwave sized chunks and a dust cloud blanketed the whole basin. This was our cue to turn around.
Scree skied down and the snow was soft to easily plunge step and not require crampons.
Day 1 - Arrived at the parking lot around 10:30am. Used electric bikes to zoom from the parking lot to the trailhead. Reached the Lake Constance trailhead at 12:45pm to stash the bikes. Got going up the trail at 1:15pm. Reached the "meadow" section at about 3:30pm. The last steep scramble push started at about 4:45pm and we reached the lake at 6:15pm and camp on the north end at 6:45pm. One of the bear wires was working and it was nice to have a composting toilet in the alpine.
Day 2 - Left camp at about 6:30am. Reached the turning point and made way up to the Cat's Ears couloir (Chute's Notch) around 8:30am. The scree and snow slope up to the beginning of the couloir was rough. Used snow as much as we could and then stayed along the wall to avoid worst of the scree. Couloir was climber's choice of scree up he middle or some low-class rock climbing along the right wall. There were even a few boulder problems when reaching chockstones and ledges. Ascending the couloir took patience as one person would climb up at a time while others hid from the rocks and scree coming down the chute. Once they were safe, the next person could climb up. We reached the top of the couloir at 10:15am. At about 11-11:30am, the cliffs cut loose the largest rock fall that would have certain killed us were we 15-20 minutes ahead of where we were. At this point, we turned around. Descending the couloir took the same if not more level of care to go down one at a time in sections and hide from falling debris from the above climber.
Once out of the couloir, it was scree skiing down the snow on the canyon floor, but even then we had microwave-sized rocks come flying just left of us and thankfully stopped in the snow. Got back to camp at about 2pm for a chill afternoon at the lake.
Day 3 - Had a lazy morning. Woke at 7am but packed up and left camp at 10:30am. Trail down was downclimbing the scramble and then doing best not to fall down the steep mountain. The hike out went by rather quickly but the quad muscles were screaming. We reached the trailhead at 2:15pm. Back on the ebikes and back to the parking lot by 4pm.