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TR: Mt Thompson
This is a no pictures go see it yourself TR. We had a camera, but it was film.
Three of us headed out to South Lake near Bishop on Saturday.
My brother had actually skied Hurd previously. We looked at hitting couloirs off of both Thompson and Gilbert. The gate was closed about a half mile from the lake even though the road was cleared the entire way to the lake. Booting up a clear road seemed silly. The approach was a pretty easy skin. With the exception of a short scramble across some rocks at lake level, we were in skins the entire way to the couloir. Think easy route finding and everything pretty mellow until the couloir aprons. Then we gained altitude quickly and steeply before starting to boot.
The cornices across the ridges of Thompson and Gilbert were HUGE. That meant many of the couloirs were blocked at the top. Hiking the couloirs put you at risk of a cornice collapsing. Another bad option was a sun-baked southern face that looked fun but not a good idea. My safe options were gone. One couloir looked like it connected to the top.
We wound up heading up was was probably the nastiest but most accessible couloir on Thompson. It wasn't a long shot facing north, but nothing really was too sustained vertical there. Just sustained steeps for about 1,000 feet vertical. The couloir that he hit was probably 45+ degrees sustained. An ice axe was a necessity. Crampons helped though only two of us chose to wear them.
I sketched out a bit at the throat of the couloir and decided not to climb any further. My brother and Ced' kept climbing. Climbers left of the top of the couloir wasn't overhung with the cornice that was creaking and getting baked by the sun. It was just a 65+ degree section for about 15 vertical feet to climb before making it to the summit ridge. While those guys were going up, I was working on getting out of the way of any debris from my bro and Ced above and putting in a platform to get set up to ski.
I was in a safe zone and watched the other two ski the couloir. The feedback that I got was corn at the top and good snow all the way through. The choke wasn't too narrow. Maybe 1 1/2 ski lengths of skiable snow. My brother called in the funnest descent of the season thus far for him. He's done Checkered Demon, Mendenhall, Parachute, among others this season. That being said, the couloir was a good, steep one. The apron was about 45 degrees. The couloir was a steep pitch.
We didn't make it over to Gilbert. The ski back was wide open and mellow. The snow by the lake will continue to melt and may require getting out of the skis a few times going in and out. Oh, on the way out, we saw the aftermath of some wet point activity on a mainly east exposure that was in the general vicinity of what we skinned. For that matter, the exposure was the same as that big fun face that I opted to pass on skiing.
I think I figured out if you can downclimb a short section cautiously but comfortably, you can probably ski it. Next time, I'll have to send it myself on skis. But seeing is believing, watching my bro and Ced gave me confidence for similar future couloirs.
