About two-thirds of the way up, the snow ran out and loose rock started. I tried not to kick any down on Nate and threw in a cam plus a nut or two for good measure. Then, right as I got to the ice, Nate called five feet. Well, five feet wouldn?t cut it (my screws all bottomed out in the modest beginnings of the ice) so it was back to simul-climbing for another 15 feet. Once there, I set up a belay and brought Nate up.

Nate coming up:



Me in hanging belay:



By the time he got to me, I was cold and my legs were cramped from hanging. I transferred the belay as fast as possible and headed up. Unfortunately, beyond the ice (which was a nice change and solid, solid, hard) was more consolidated snow. While pickets would have been nice, screws sucked. Here?s what starting out looked like (note the vertical headwall looming far overhead, more about that later):



To get on the 60 degree snow ramp above the ice, I would have to climb the side of the flute descending down into the couloir, which was about 15 feet high (although it looks smaller in the photo). I found a wobbly cam placement before starting out and then worked on not crapping myself. As I stepped up to the snow flute, my foot went almost in to my thigh. The snow between the rock and the flute was a wispy confetti with no bottom. So I had to wedge my ass into the rock, swing high with both tools, do a pull-up scrunched into the rock, and back step my left crampon up to wedge it against the rock. By the time I had done this to the top, my pro was about 25 + feet below and my hands were cramped to the point that I couldn?t zip my jacket (I didn't bother to check my pants for other "effects" of the pitch).

Just in case I got a big head, however, the wind started in earnest. The lull of the storm was over. I finished the pitch by finding a nice rock alcove, where I dug a bench that I could sit in. By now, I was cold. So I grabbed my belay jacket and some mittens to belay, but I couldn?t see in the alcove. No matter, I had my headlamp. I put it on, pressed the button, and swore when nothing happened. No matter, I had my backup Petzl LED lamp. I swore again as I realized my daughter had misappropriated it for late night reading in bed. By now the wind was howling and the sun had officially set. Note also that this is where the pictures from that day end.

Somehow I got my spare batteries into my headlamp in the dark, but when I clicked it on, it was clear it wouldn?t last much more than a couple of hours. But at least I had light to build a belay. Finding a miracle crack in my alcove that took two nuts and my last cam, I quickly set the belay and screamed at the top of my lungs for Nate to come on up. Shortly, the rope went limp as I started taking in the slack.

Nate made it up slowly. I was frozen and wanted to get out of there. I didn?t like the idea of climbing back on the ramp and up the headwall, especially since there was a nice rock gully right above the Alcove Belay. So I headed out as quickly as I could muster without showering rock down on Nate. Mostly it was a steep scramble with a few low 5th class moves, but the wind, cold, and dark helped me pass up on throwing any pro in.

I strung out the entire pitch up to the headwall without any pro (about 110 feet). About that time, my fear of large bone-jarring falls caught up with me. I quickly concluded that pro was a prudent idea so I found a nice ribbon of ice in the headwall, equalized two screws, and started up the headwall. It was actually nice climbing and only about 30 feet tall or so, but it was almost vertical, which made me worry about Nate and his ice ax making it up. To this day, I?m still not sure how he did both the snow flute chimney and that headwall. But did it he did, arriving to me in the dark (I had turned out my headlamp to suffer in the dark) after I set a belay by anchoring myself to some big boulders. It was about nine.

Frankly, I couldn?t believe we had made it. It was much more challenging a lead than I had ever done before and way more than anything Nate had imagined doing. We had a good hug in the now growing blizzard and packed up for what should have been a 45 minute descent to the tent.

Perhaps you noticed the ?should? in the last sentence. Suffice it to say I missed the right hand trending couloir back to our tent. Somehow---maybe explainable by the dark, blizzard, and descending clouds---I trended left. About two and a half hours later as my headlamp gave up the ghost, I realized my mistake. Too late. We had already descended the opposite side of the mountain. So while we were only .5 miles by GPS from camp, that half-mile was through the entire Dana Plateau.

We had both had it. But Nate was suffering especially bad. He had been logging long hours at work while I was enjoying fishing and working out the last month that I had been in-between jobs. Our water was long since gone, and the snow made everything dangerously slick. So began an unbearable night of trudging down scree fields and side-hilling in an attempt to get back to the ?right? side of the mountain. We even managed to get separated as Nate fell behind and descended when I was side-hilling. After that near-miss, I would go ahead about 100 yards and fall asleep leaning against my poles until he caught me. We continued that rhythm for the next six hours . . .

We ended up having to go back to the lake below the parking lot and trudge up Glacier Canyon, retracing our steps from the morning before. We stumbled back into camp at 4:00 a.m., after walking all night. Nate was borderline delirious, and I wasn?t feeling well myself. I cooked up some oatmeal and we both passed out.

The next day, the sun, burning high in the blue sky, highlighted our error for us.

Route that we ended up taking on the descent, first part:



Route up Glacier Canyon (second part) with Couloir under arrow:




Any guesses on who brought too much gear:




Needless to say, we passed on the Dana Couloir. And, it should be equally obvious where the name of our trip came from. In the end, though, great trip with some great memories and good lessons. Here?s Folly Couloir (self-titled) with the three belays we put in marked as ?X?s?.

_______________________________________
Paging Dr. Lucia Maria Teressa Mariana Rosario Douchbago . . .
Viva el Caballo.

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