Trip report:
Tom Hartger and I climbed the U-notch this past Saturday,
August 21, 2004. We hiked in on Friday, August 20th, and
set up camp by the Palisade glacier lake/tarn at approx
12,200 ft. We woke up at 3:00am Saturday and started walking
by 4:00am. Because we took the tedious lateral moraine
on the right, we had a lot of talus to walk through and
it took forever to cross this in the dark (sunrise was
about 6:10am). We eventually reached the bergshrund below
the U-notch at 6:45am. I had read a report earlier during the
week that the conditions on the U-notch were more like
October, where the ice is hard and brittle requiring
protection and anchored-belayed each pitch. Our rack
consisted of: 9.8mm x 60m rope, 6 ice screws, odd-numbered
nuts, 2 cams, 2 aliens, 2 double-length runners, 1 cordolette,
5 single-length quickdraws, a screamer, extra carabiners, and
200-feet of 5mm accessory cord to retrieve our 60m rope (Tom
has done this in canyoneering; this allowed us to rap almost
60m as opposed to 30m) along with 4 rappel oval rings. We set
up an anchor at the bergshrund. This year the angle by
the bergshrund had steepned. It wasn't 42 degrees. I led
the 1st and 2nd pitch. The 1st pitch felt more like 50 degrees.
Anyway, because of the ice conditions, we made slow progress.
Tom led the 3rd pitch and got really tired. So, I led the
4th pitch. Tom said he could now lead the 5th pitch and
he did but again slowly. Tom ended up creating a belay
anchor at the top of the 5th pitch on the left side of
the couloir on the rock. I then had to do a traverse on
the short 6th pitch back to the right side of the couloir.
At this point, we exited the ice and were on class 3 rock,
which was quite loose by the way. Took crampons off, stored
away our ice tools and headed up to the top of the U-notch
proper next to the start of the chimney rock climb. It
was now like 2:30pm.....taking us like 7 hours to reach the
top of the U-notch since I started to lead the 1st pitch
at 7:30am. There was a 2nd party consiting of 2 guys. They
were almost a half rope length below us during the ice climb.
All 4 of us rested and debated whether or not to keep going
towards North Pal. The 2nd party planned to do North Pal like
us, but decided to rap down the U-notch sometime after 3:00pm.
We decided to forego North Pal too but attempted and summited
Polemonium instead (which turned to be the mistake). We had
class 4 climbing to do to reach Polemonium's summit from the
U-notch. We got to the summit at 4:01pm and the nasty thunderstorm
(which we underestimated as to its moving speed) was just
around the corner. It began to snow and sleet and hail just
a few minutes after we made the summit. The rock got
wet as a result. We had to rap down and actually belayed
ourselves down on class 4 & 3 rock. I made the mistake of putting
my rock shoes on and didn't take any warm clothing. I left
my boots and down parka at the top of the U-notch because
I thought we'd be able to climb Polemonium and return back
to the top of the U-notch in less than 45 minutes. It was
only 180 vertical feet from the top of the U-notch (13,900 ft)
to the summit of Polemonium (14,080 ft). I was wrong. When
the rock is wet and you have lightning literally under your head,
it just took us forever to get down to the top of the U-notch.
During that time (approx 2 hrs), my feet got cold....my rock
shoes were wet. All this time the thunderstorm was raging all
around us. I kept seeing flashes here and there (not too far
away) what seemed every other minute. At one point, I heard
this huge buzzer sound (like on a power plant) not too far
above us. It scared the shit out of me! As I said, it was
snowing and hailing all at the same time during our descent
from Polemonium. We were very lucky lightning did not get us
because we were absolutely vulnerable. I got very scared
and feared for my life. The thunderstorm finally died down
after 7:00pm. We ended up rappeling the U-notch in the dark
(9 or 10 raps....too dehydrated and too tired to care how many
raps exactly.....too many though). It was 2:30am Sunday morning
when we both set foot about 100 feet below the bergshrund from
our last rap. Then, extremely exhausted we searched for water
on the glacier, which we found. And again, we walked back in
the dark across the lateral moraine (with the endless large
talus....the kind of talus you have to use your hands to climb
up & down with). We finally reached our camp at 6:00am, Sunday
morning, August 22nd.....26 HOURS LATER AFTER LEAVING CAMP....
.....AN EPIC!!!
Additional info about climbing Polemonium Peak can be found here.