Trip Report
Top-Rope Ice - Heliotrope Ridge and Lower Coleman Glacier & Seracs
Fun day on the seracs in great weather.
Paul Brown
- Sun, Sep 20, 2020
- Top-Rope Ice - Heliotrope Ridge and Lower Coleman Glacier & Seracs
- Heliotrope Ridge and Lower Coleman Glacier & Seracs
- Climbing
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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The seracs were generally in good shape with quite a few significant cracks opening up down low on the glacier. The hiking trail and climber's trail were in good shape (except for a few muddy spots), but one the creek crossings required some calf-deep wading in the morning and knee-deep wading in the afternoon. (Participants variously took off shoes, changed socks, crossed in boots and gaiters.)
We left the trailhead just after 7:00AM and were the first party up on the glacier. We had a brief safety discussion about walking on the glacier and walked up toward the seracs.
The leaders walked/scrambled up moderate terrain to set up two roughly 10-15m routes for top roping (one with a small bulge and then a 45-degree slope and one with some short vertical steps), and discussed various skills (building v-threads, traversing, proper climbing form and technique) with the group in between top roping laps.
With some additional scouting, we were able to locate the moulin (approx. (48.7956389,-121.8613498)) that provided good vertical climbing from the September 20th outing and set up a top rope there. The moulin had grown a bit in the three weeks and was not nearly as wet, as the previous water source (blue dot on the upper-mid-right of the image below) had apparently frozen up.
All of the participants had a chance to try out vertical climbing and experience the importance of technique and equipment choices.
We hiked out and were back at the cars at just about 5PM. A fun and educational day was had by all.
