Cathedral last weekend?

Colorado peak questions, condition requests and other info.
Forum rules
  • This is a mountaineering forum, so please keep your posts on-topic. Posts do not all have to be related to the 14ers but should at least be mountaineering-related.
  • Personal attacks and confrontational behavior will result in removal from the forum at the discretion of the administrators.
  • Do not use this forum to advertise, sell photos or other products or promote a commercial website.
  • Posts will be removed at the discretion of the site administrator or moderator(s), including: Troll posts, posts pushing political views or religious beliefs, and posts with the purpose of instigating conflict within the forum.
    For more details, please see the Terms of Use you agreed to when joining the forum.
Post Reply
User avatar
sgladbach
Posts: 1027
Joined: 10/17/2006
14ers: 58  58 
13ers: 710 37
Trip Reports (29)
 

Cathedral last weekend?

Post by sgladbach »

Did anyone climb Cathedral last weekend? I'm looking for current conditions on the hike to Cathedral Lake,on to the base of the couloir , and condtions in (and over the top of?!) the couloir.
"We knocked the bastard off." Hillary, 1953
"It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves." Hillary, 2003
Couldn't we all use 50 years of humble growth?
User avatar
kaiman
Posts: 1367
Joined: 5/3/2006
Trip Reports (10)
 

Re: Cathedral last weekend?

Post by kaiman »

sgladbach wrote:Did anyone climb Cathedral last weekend? I'm looking for current conditions on the hike to Cathedral Lake,on to the base of the couloir , and condtions in (and over the top of?!) the couloir.
sgladbach,

I can't comment on the Cathedral climbing conditions, but I hiked to Cathedral Lake this afternoon (Tuesday 6/1). The trail only has patches of snow for most of the way, but it is solid snow pretty much from the top of the big switchbacks to the lake and beyond (about 11,600 feet by my altimeter). As I was there late in the day, I spent a good deal of time postholing around the lake (up to my thighs in spots). The lake is still pretty well frozen over and snow covered in spots. There is lots of avalanche debris and evidence of recent slides and I heard several rounds of rockfall occur as I was hiking out. I didn't notice whether the Cathedral couloir has a cornice on it, but there is plenty of snow in it and it doesn't appear to have slid out (yet).

My advise is to bring all your safety tools, and start really early as things are definitely turning to mush quickly after dawn and the risk of triggering a wet avalanche seems pretty high...

kaiman
"I want to keep the mountains clean of racism, religion and politics. In the mountains this should play no role."

- Joe Stettner

"I haven't climbed Everest, skied to the poles, or sailed single-handed around the world. The goals I set out to accomplish aren't easily measured or quantified by world records or "firsts." The reasons I climb, and the climbs I do, are about more than distance or altitude, they are about breaking barriers within myself."

- Andy Kirkpatrick
Post Reply