chossclimbers

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Up not too early the following morning. We’d normally wait until the sun hit our tent at some 8am before crawling out. No need to shiver as we had ample daylight. I think the sun dipped below the horizon for some 3 hours during that time of the year (23-2?) but we’d be well asleep during that time so we never really saw what the brief night looked like. Up the familiar valley and its endless boulder field and down the other side. We had scoped out a gully descent into an adjacent cirque during the previous day’s recon. Another sketchy third class gully (the rope came out) to get us into the right cirque and we were shivering at the iced over start of Epaulette route on the shoulder of The Commander. A slab of ice was covering the approach gully and part of the first pitch and so we roped up earlier and climbed some slabs right of the gully. The rest of the route was fairly easy (up to about 5.8) with some bits of route finding and lots of lichen (second ascent of the line I guess). The conditions were cold – north facing cliff and quite windy at times. There’s a long and mostly easy chimney near the top of the route. That section provided some excitement as one of the pitches had two what seemed like 500 pound blocks wedged against each other. Not only needed to climb around them on a thin face but also had to make sure the rope below me would not dislodge these “belayer slayers”. A couple pitches higher we topped out into sunnier but just as windy conditions and our packs.

Back in camp in the early evening. The following day we woke up to on/off drizzle and worse looking conditions off in the distance above the cirque. We hung out in camp enjoying multiple cups of coffee (good stuff from home) and polished off our bottle of Scotch (decent stuff from a Bilibino store); should’ve brought two bottles. Did some firewood collecting – not a trivial task in the high tundra (construction material from whoever put in the “road”) to enjoy a bit of warmth in the evening.

Photos

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