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Harboring a grimace from our faces we replied kindly that we had. Nice folks you come across on a beautiful day in the San Juans...
The plan this go around was to hit some peaks around Ice Lake. Frankly, I would not have bothered with a TR for this trip, but there is not much info on these peaks with snow on them. Besides, who doesn't want to look at some San Juan porn (as my fellow coworkers label my mountain obsession).
We pulled onto county road 7 20 miles south of Ouray around 11 and found ourselves awake 5 hours later hiking up. What planning we did involved Day 1, but we would soon find out our plan would have to wait another year so we headed for Grant, groggy and unsure of what would lie in store.
As we reached Island Lake this is the view that greeted us. I know its a little brazen to name features, especially with such an obvious line and short approach, but how about the Union Couloir just between you and I.
Massive sun cupping killed the grade, however any disappointment we experienced vanished once we topped out the line. Awaiting us was an outstanding view of the Ophir Valley and a great line to the summit ridge.
From the summit of Grant we traversed the south slopes to the V4-Grant Saddle where we veered north and headed for V3.
Looking up TRs for V3 (ex post facto) all the routes come up from Ophir and there is a damn good reason for this as we would find out.
The west side of the ridge and the summit pitch on the SW aspect seen below in the first pic did not look very inviting so we hopped on the other side of the ridge where we knew a SE facing couloir could lead us to the summit.
One problem....giant cliff bands. Denied.
Defeated, we grabbed "V 4" which did not entail anything really crazy and descended down to our cache way below Ice Lake and hiked back up to the Lake to spend the night there.
The next morning we headed for Vermillion and its million dollar riches.
In all honesty, both Mike and I were not super impressed with the line after researching it, but it was actually quite enjoyable and got to mid 50s in some places. The cornice at the top can be circumnavigated easily going climber's right. Snow was continuous from Ice Lake to the top of the line.
Once we both got the snow climbs out of our systems, we switched gears for peak bagging mode.
After tagging Fuller, we headed over to Beattie and then got our tomato juice on.
The ridge to V8 required lots of class 3 rock hopping, we stayed ridge proper 95% of the time.
Overall, the total ride was about 19 miles with ~6000' of vert and a pretty fun glissade. The snow is lightly freezing over night (just ask Mike whose water bottles froze outside of his bivy) making the snow really nice for climbing (minus the sup cups on Grant).
Tread lightly my friends!
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
made it to the San Juan 13ers... That is a pretty sweet view from camp. Man, I can't believe I almost missed this report. It was buried halfway down the page.
...nice to discover it as I languish in my cubicle on a Thursday afternoon.
Excellent report, sweet photos. Looks like you guys had a great trip. Ice Lakes Basin sure is tough to beat... been there once and now I'd like to try it with some snow!
Frankly wouldn't have bothered? Dude! Glad you did the write up. That's some sweet terrain and a reminder that I need to expand my horizons some this summer.
You and Mike have been on a roll. Enjoyed the Ypsilon write up and video too. Well done guys.
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