27 Dec 00 - These pictures are all John's (digital camera). The plan was to go straight up Gobry Falls,
then traverse left along a bench to the base of Bow Falls. It ended up being two full pitches
of grade 3 ice to get to the base of the headwall. Given the length of the approach climb (90m), we belayed
the entire thing. The climbing itself wasn't that tough, but falling would have been bad without a rope.
Here we see myself (left) with Ross (right) cleaning the route up. On descent, we found a snow gully to
the left of where we are now. That would have delivered us to the base of Bow Falls much quicker
(and without any climbing).
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27 Dec 00 - This is the second belay station getting up to the headwall. I've got Rob on belay while
Ross has Jim on Belay. Warren is just kind of standing around enjoying his day off work.
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27 Dec 00 - In the background, you can see that 90 meters later, we have reached the headwall. Then
we had to traverse over to the falls. Unfortunately, the traversing ledge was very exposed with very few
places for protection. This ended up being about a 45-50 meter traverse with the first piece of protection
about 30 meters into it. Can you say "major pendulum"? John is the daring one of the group, so it led that
part.
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27 Dec 00 - Here we see John happy to be below Bow Falls. Unfortunately, it has taken us nearly six hours to
get to this point. It was around 15:30 at this point, and it was starting to look like we were going to finish
in the dark. You can see the shoulder of Crowfoot Mtn in the background. By the time we all caught up with John
after the traverse, John had already taken off up Bow Falls. The rest of us were wanting to turn back due
to nightfall. John got about 50 meters up it when we radio'd him and told him to turn back.
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27 Dec 00 - While John was trying to set up a rappel anchor to get back to base of the falls, Rob set up
a cool three v-thread anchor with perfect distribution when loaded. Rob and I were the first two down it.
Here we see Ross about to try it.
Click to here to enlarge.
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27 Dec 00 - Sure enough, by the time we got back to our packs located at the base of Gorby Falls,
darkness had arrived. After a quick bite to eat, we were out of there. From left to right, we have
Warren, Jim, me, Rob and Ross.
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