East Couloir 

This is a great snow route. In the late 70's Dick Hohm and Jack harvey were avalanched the entire length of this gully during a late October attempt. The main gully was snow-free but there was a lens of fresh blown snow where the cornice usually forms up. This slid when they were on it and took them on a ride to the bottom. Jack shattered his leg and hobbled out on Dicks shoulder. Somewhere in the talus at the bottom of this gully lies a 55cm Chouinard bamboo shafted Piolet.

Climbed this on 10/18/2003 with Bryan Barnett. Super hard snow but not quite grey AI - only minimal crampon penetration. Screws worked for running belays. Don't let the low angle at the bottom fool you, if you slip there's little or no chance for self-arrest. We saw a climber from Ft. Collins take a 200+ ft. bobsled ride down the lower apron and live to tell about it -scary. Take 2 tools, but you won't swing them overhead much; mostly the last 200' or so. For the last several rope lengths, there's good rock gear on the left side - we used tri-cams (pink-white) to good effect. Very little sun on the route this time of year; the far right side gets about an hour or so around noon. Great route, excellent condition.

Climbed this Sunday 7/25 with Matt Kear. A clear night and a recent cold front gave us hard neve while the shade lasted (stayed far left as long as the shade remained). Once the sun hit everything softened-up pretty quickly. We climbed a rock buttress splitting the upper section just below the top (~M2), then finished by climbing a steep (70 degree) slope leading to the headwall formed by the collapsed cornice. The headwall was vertical to overhanging - a challenge in the softening snow. There was AI2 terrain to the left, but the section above the buttress was more like AI3-AI4. Very fun!

Climbed this 9-3-04. Here's my take on conditions, etc. There is no significant trace of last weeks new snow, conditions are typical late summer hard snow/ice. Bottom 2/3: ice to very hard snow at around 40 degrees. Top 1/3: hard snow at around 50 degrees. Exit: options exist from 50 degrees to 70+. We took the steeper option and belayed the last 100 feet. The final 20-30 feet was very secure hard snow at about 70 degrees. I was able to get a solid picket in below this section with some motivated hammering.

After reading the route conditions and ratings of the previous posts, I'm surprised at how mellow and easy it was when Nancy and I did it this past August. The snow was really soft the whole way and the steepness for the most part was low-angle until the top where I'd considerate it moderate (I'm not very good at estimating the angle, so I'll leave it at that). Perhaps all that snow we got last winter changed the nature of the route. I'm sure it's the reason for the fact that the alpine ice was only now just begining to show through (one small patch near the top), but perhaps it also has something to do with the fact that the top wasn't all that steep. (From the photos I took, it may seem like the conditions would've been more serious because we were roped up, but we were just using the rope because Nancy doesn't have a lot of snow climbing experience and I wanted to increase the safety factor, especially since we just got married :) Also, I didn't know anything about this route and had no idea know how serious it was, even though it looked straightforward.)