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Climbers: Jeff (SurfNTurf), Brad (Mountain_Ninja)
Mileage: 10.5 miles
Total Time: 10.5 hours
Miles per Hour: ...I'll get back to you when I do the math here...
Elevation Gain: 5420 ft
With the massive amounts of snow this spring, I've been dying to get in a couloir climb! And finally, the conditions were right to go for it.
Jeff and I separately car-camped at the Leavick parking lot Friday night. We woke up at 3:00am, and hit the road at 3:50am towards our main attraction for the day: the Boudoir couloir on Horseshoe Mountain!
With clear skies, we were able to see Horseshoe even in the dark. We were starting to feel excited!
Jeff ditched his snowshoes as we split off from the road (and I hadn't brought mine, because I was lazy and didn't wanna carry 'em), and we marked the spot on our GPS's.
We arrived at the base of the couloir, put on crampons & helmets, and started up at 5:55am:
The snow was totally frozen, so we couldn't kick steps. So, we got lots of practice trying different techniques to ascend. Duck-walking, sideways cross-stepping, and even "Spider-Man style" (taking advantage of the hard snow, we got to hack in with our axes):
Jeff:
Me:
I was definitely feeling it in my ankles about halfway up, and wishing I could kick steps straight in!
At 7:20am, we topped out with exuberance! The snow climb seemed to FLY by, and was tons of fun. Here's a pic from the top - Sherman in the distant center, Sheridan on the left with its racing stripe, and a little closer on the ridge from Sheridan is Peerless:
After removing our crampons & helmets, we naturally passed over the summit of Horseshoe and headed over to Finnback Knob:
Wow, that was a cake walk. Easiest 13er ever! From Finnback Knob, here's Peerless (just a bump on the ridge):
...and Sheridan on the left (with Sherman in the background):
It was 8:30am on top of Finnback. I grabbed a quick snack, and was ready for more! Now for a workout - the climb back up to Horseshoe:
Whew, awesome. 9:30am back on Horseshoe. So much DAY left! And even though we didn't get a ton of sleep in our cars, we had energy.
Now for a stroll down & over to the most FEARSOME 13er ever: PEERLESS! (named after the old Peerless Mine, not because it's so awesome):
Approaching Peerless:
At 10:15am we were atop Peerless. Up to this point, we had PERFECT conditions, with warm weather & practically zero wind.
Without hesitation we attacked Sheridan. At the base of Sheridan, we glanced back at where we came from (Peerless & Horseshoe):
We decided to walk up the thin strip of rock on the left:
This was a good workout too, and possibly harder with the newfound wind that had just introduced itself. Everyone knows that the wind on this ridge of Sheridan & Sherman is treacherous, so we threw on some layers and made our last big push.
At the top of the false summit, it's a victory walk over to the true summit (use the faint mountains in the background to see that this isn't steep):
11:25 - On Sheridan!
From the summit, here are some pics to review our route.
The false summit, and Peerless on the right:
My favorite view of the day - Peerless, Horseshoe, and Finnback Knob:
YES!!!
Jeff:
Me:
Okay, we've had enough of the wind. Heading down, we decided to take advantage of the snow just to the left of the loose talus. MUCH nicer on the knees!
No thanks, rocks:
And in some spots, we caught some mini-glissades that made descending even faster:
We chose to hike back over Peerless, and glissade straight down the Peerless-Horseshoe saddle to where Jeff left his snowshoes. So, one final last push (haha) over Peerless:
Finding a good spot to slide on our butts:
Jeff getting a wedgie:
Great glissading conditions!! WAY too much fun!!
In fact the conditions were so good, we practiced self-arresting just to stay sharp:
We found Jeff's snowshoes, and got a good look of where we climbed up earlier this morning (red dots = approx. route):
Some of the snow on the way back was good and held me up even without snowshoes, but as we got further away from our peaks of the day, the snow softened up enough for BOTH of us to posthole at annoyingly unpredictable times:
We arrived back at the cars at 2:15pm. It felt wonderful to take off the boots!
Thanks for an awesome day, Horsey & Friends!!!
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
Nice TR, Brad. It was like living the day all over again, except for one thing. How could you leave out our daring dry-tooling ascent of Peerless? I'm still shaking from the adrenaline. How we ever made it to the top of that impenetrable spire, I'll never know.
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