New route?

Hey All

Last weekend my buddy Jason Runge and I climbed the east face of Chinook mountain following an obvious ice line. We left the truck at 6am with bikes and got to the base of the scree slopes on the North East shoulder after the sun came up. From there we climbed up the shoulder to the base of the cliffs and traversed along snow slopes to the base of the face. Approach of about 3 hours.

We soloed the first 2 pitches of snow and ice "snice"... up to WI3 since it wasn't that protect able.

the 3rd pitch was a little over 60 meters of "snice" at about WI4 (we simul climbed the last few moves so Jason could get a better anchor.)

The 4th pitch was short up WI2-3 to a rock belay on the left.

The 5th pitch was 3o meters of beautiful waterfall ice up to WI4+ or 5 to the base of the final pillar. It could probably have been combined with the 4th pitch but we decided the rock anchor was better than what we had.

The final pitch was a 20 to 25 meter vertical pillar with a diameter of 6-8 feet at the base followed by a bit easier slush and then a snow bowl to the top. I finished the last of the technical ice climbing as the sun went down, while Jason climbed it in the dark.

It was 5 or 6 pitches up to WI6.

We descended by rappelling and down climbing the North face and got back to the car by 1 am.

There was less than 3 inches of snow so the bikes got us down from the scree in less than 20 min! Nearly as good as skis.


Have any of you climbed this? Does anyone know if it has been climbed? Jason has interrogated Arron from the climbing shop in the pass and we saw no signs of climbers on the route. We know others have tried it but we have no confirmed reports of anyone making it up. However if another party climbed it and descended the North face as we did, they wouldn't have left anything for rapping.

Oh and if anyone wants to climb the North face of Chinook we left presents! I lost at least one screw in the scree when my racking beaner broke some time in the night (falling on my ass). And we left 2 stubbies and a piton rapping off the face.

I will post pics and clips when I get them.

Willis