joffre group conditions
for those heading up the duffy this weekend; attempted twisting sunday July 7.
Departed Keith Hut 3am, good travel on soft surface w/ no overnight freeze and warm winds. glacier was holding together well with minimal crevasses and easy crossings, but the upper icefall was regularly shedding chair sized blocks and rocks down a pretty clear path. approached the route up 5ft deep avi paths. significant steep snow/bergschrundy sillyness saw us start up the rock right to access the coulouir. decent waterfall raging underneath steep soft snow. rocks started falling as the intense sun hit the upper slopes. a tool jumped into the schrund ending our dreams. rapping by 730 and descending the glacier. by 9 steps were postholing and the surface was a snowcone. one viper in the glacier...
get it early and take your finest pickets
grand central looked like excellent snow climbing
snow level above hut, creeks high, water pipe is nice clean water right now
- The best time to climb Twisted Couloir seems to be (end April?) May. I got stuck at the bergschrund TWICE once in July and again a year later in June. There is also a video somewhere in cyberspace showing an ascent in September - with the bergschrund filled in/collapsed and possible to cross on the filled-in debris.
- I climbed Central Couloir many years ago in early July - perfect ice and snow conditions - 60% snow, 30% Ice, 10% rock 5.7 / below the summit. Increasing rockfall after 10-11am - really frightening - nowhere to run:-)
Here is a photo of the north face routes on Joffre from the past weekend (July 13th & 14th) - not much time left for those couloirs...:
April is indeed the time to climb the north face of Joffre. We climbed the Twisting Couloir last year. Here's a little video from that climb:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=875XS8Q1fMI
You can still do Twisting later in the year with the right conditions (likely more fun too, when it is in "mixed" condition) - here's a link to the video that Werner mentioned:
thanks for all the advice! and no question, she will go down this year.... ive been voted off the island twice now, and its not even that hard.
will likely wait till early sept.