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Date |
Ascent Time |
Descent Time |
| 1st Time |
03 Apr 04 |
6:50 |
5:00 |
Blair and I slept the previous night in the parking lot where Parks closes the Akamina Pkwy. This allowed
us to get a bright and early start. In fact, it was so early, it wasn't bright yet. :-) After getting around
the troublesome Cameron Lake, we made our way up to Summit Col, where we saw the sun reflecting off of Chapman,
shown in the background. It was going to be a nice day.
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Trailbreaking was nothing compared to our Lake Nooney scouting trip.
In fact, if you look at Blair's boot penetration, you'll notice the melt-freeze cycle created a very firm (icy)
surface for us to travel on. We estimated this trip to be 18 hours, but because of the travelling conditions,
it turned out to be around 12.
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Blair and I didn't spot the quick and easy way down from the second shoulder to Lake Nooney. Rather than waist
a lot of time looking for our gully, we quickly turned around and went around the shoulder on the north side,
traversing the slopes (coasting most of the way) until we reached Nooney Creek. As seen here, there were some avalanche
debris we had to get across. It kind of messed up our coasting.
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Here we see a better view of Chapman and our ascent line. Prior to this trip, we planned to go up the glacier
which leads to the Chapman/Custer col on the right, but as we got closer, we decided to follow this dotted line
that we found. The yellow dot shows where we ditched our skis. The slope was just too icy for our skins. By the way,
look at all of the ice climbing to the left of our ascent route.
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Once we got out of that bowl, we looked took a break. This location offered great views of Kintla Lake (looking WSW).
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After a lot of slogging up this wind-exposed slope, Blair and I made it to the summit ridge. With the wind-packed snow,
the summit ridge looked quite different than the rest of the mountain. Here we see Blair approaching the summit.
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And, here we see Blair standing on the summit. We weren't sure how big the cornice was, and I couldn't talk Blair
into finding out, so this was our stopping point.
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Now it's my turn. This is me at the summit.
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The summit view was nice. I guess it had been a while since Blair and I had visibility like this. This picture is facing east toward Chief Mtn.
We could also see Assiniboine in the very distant horizon. Like I said, the views were amazing.
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Because of daytime warming, we were a bit worried about coming back down the bowl above our skis. So, we followed
the ridge down a bit further, having to downclimb through three cliff bands. Then we had to traverse across a slope
shown by the red line to get to our skis. By the time we got back to our skis, the snow had softened up a bit,
allowing for some nice turns between the yellow lines. Blair's are on the left. Mine are on the right.
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This is from Summit col looking back at Chapman. This picture does a better job at showing the steepness of the bowl
we ascended.
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