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Sunday, December 7, 2014

Hyalite Ice: Potentially unclimbed ice on the SE face of Palace Butte reconnaissance mission

Its a dream of mine to find a first ascent ice flow in Hyalite canyon. So many strong, creative and adventurous climbers have passed through the area that its extremely difficult to have an original idea up there. The day prior, Kyler and I spied some ice on the SE face of Palace Butte from ~8500ft on Mummy mountain that we knew wasnt in Jojo's book and for all we knew, was unclimbed. I didnt have a partner for to climb, or to ski for that matter, so I went on a solo scouting mission with just my backcountry splitboard gear and a camera. I skinned up the looker's right or North creek bottom coming down from the saddle between Maid of the Mist and Palace Butte. The standard route to the saddle is up Maid of the Mist creek which is the the looker's left or Southern bottom. After some super fun, steep bushwhacking I started to get into ice. The first flow I encountered was at about 8500ft and they continued all the way up to about 9200ft! Climb after climb I came upon, granted most were short. The last climb I found before I got into Alex Lowes WI5 route (Reparation?) was a ~45m climb, the money climb of the day. Actually found about 1000ft of great turns down into the bottom. Cant wait to get back up there with my spiky stuff!







The longest continuous flow at ~45m
Reparation(?) WI5 you can see from main fork trail.
NxNW face of Maid of the Mist with a couple flows that are also not in the book.
My skin track through a text book avalanche start zone but the snowpack was just fine. Wouldnt recommend going up there when its bad.

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