Some friends of mine from Columbia Falls came to town for the ice fest and they wanted some ice mileage so I took them up to the Winter Dance area. There was 5 of us so we divided and conquered. Cady and I set up a rope over Curtains WI4 while Devin, Chris and Chris(? we picked up a straggler in the parking lot) worked on Over Easy WI3. It was snowing and windy and the spindrift that started pouring down the climbs was unprecedented for me. You couldnt even look up! You just had to blindly swing above your head and hope it was good. It was so bad that we decided to leave before Cady got a chance to climb Over Easy. Lesson learned this day: I had built a V-thread at the top of Curtains for an anchor meanwhile Chris built an equalized anchor out of screws. Both bomber. Both totally safe. But when I climbed Over Easy so I could build the V-thread and rappel, I encountered some trouble. One of the screws being used for the anchor was the 21cm screw, the screw I planned on using to build the V-thread. When I removed the screw, it was clogged with frozen ice. (Ice screws are hollow FYI) I tried to chip out the ice for a long time, getting spin-drifted on the entire time. You cant start a screw if its full of ice. You just cant. So I had to yell down to the crew to tie the next largest screw they had to the rope so that I could pull it up and use it. I guess maybe we should have seen that coming? (No pic of Over Easy)
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| Winter Dance is the ice on the cliff and Curtains is poking out of the top of the trees. |
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| Before I lead it. |
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| After I lead it (Curtains) |
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