Slipstream

In late April of this spring, I had the pleasure of climbing Slipstream with Rory O'Donnell. Overall, the route was excellent, certainly one of the best ice routes I’ve ever done. The climbing is never challenging but it just keeps on coming. This route had been of interest to me for many years, but the ideal conditions never quite lined up until this outing.

Yours truly starting up the first curtain of ice

Always averse to very early starts unless required, we left the parking at about 8:00 AM. With cool overnight temps (-20ish), allowing the sun to get on the route would theoretically soften the ice a touch. This would both speed up the climbing and reduce the amount of ice that could be displaced with each swing of the axe, which would be a non-trivial factor in our chosen style to simulclimb the route. Additionally, the upper portion of the route receives sunlight first thing in the morning, so if one wanted to avoid being on the route with the sun on it, they best climb the entire thing at night.

Rory launching off into the upper pitches of ice

A relatively straightforward ski had us to the base of the route in a few hours as we traveled mostly on a nice melt/freeze crust. I led off on the first block, enjoying a perfect curtain of steep, smooth ice to kick things off. I made about 2/3 up the route before I finally used up all the screws. The majority of the lower route is not that steep except for the first ~60 meters of ice. Rory then launched off from here up some steeper pitches of ice and together we climbed up to just below the final exit slopes. The final stretch of climbing presented two options; climb directly up finishing up through the serac or skirt right and follow a snow rib. The direct option appeared to be straightforward from below so naturally I took this option. It however turned out to be much more involved than I anticipated, involving some tricky vertical snow climbing. Eventually, I pulled over the final lip onto the glorious sunny summit plateau of Snow Dome. There was not a breath of wind. It was quite a contrast from the now cold sunless upper pitches of Slipstream. Rory followed up and we then enjoyed lounging in the perfect weather for some time.

Myself heading up into the final stretch of the route

We opted to rappel the route as it seemed like it would be a straightforward descent with plenty of ice exposed on the route making for easy threads. The overhead hazard did not seem unreasonable to me as the serac looming over the route is not overhanging and seems reasonably well supported (yes it is still possible it could fail) and we had no concerns about avalanches coming down on the route. That being said, there were large cornices that loomed overhead, though it appeared highly unlikely they would fail in the conditions we had.

The obligatory selfie

We did about fifteen sixty-meter rappels, all on no-threads in a few hours. Arriving back at the base we switched back over to our ski boots and enjoyed the quick ski out back to the car with plenty of daylight to spare.

Looking down into the route at the start of the raps