The entire Kwoiek area got me interested since I was in Skihist area with Ben and Marius and since then I always wanted to get back in there and explore that area a little bit more.
We tried few weeks before with Ben but the forecast wasn't as good as predicted that day and there was lots of fresh snow so we decided to post pone the trip.
So finally the weather was looking decent for 3 days and me, Ben and Dean made the decision to go into that area and explore, mainly to try and get onto the glacier and do a big loop connecting the peaks in there.
The road was in pretty good shape, at least Kwoiek Lake from where of course the bushes starts, if you need some fresh racing stripes that's the spot to go.
Last time when we were there with Ben there was a log half way up the road so we had to walk the rest but luckily this time the tree was cut and we could drive all the way to the end but was super bushy,few spots you are almost pushing bushes with you car.
Once we got at the parking we got all ready to cross that cold creek once again, the good thing is that the creek is at the start of the hike.
The plan was to follow the road for a bit and then go straight up into the forest and follow the ridge for a bit where there was a large part of burned forest visible from the road.
Was a bit bushy but not too bad in the forest and even in the burned area there was a lot of deadfalls.
Soon we finally got onto some open terrain and started to move quicker.
Once we got at the first bump before Curd Peak we had our first crux of the trip, but this one wasn't too bad, some navigation and soon we got down by the col.
From the col we followed the NE ridge towards Curd Peak for a bit after what we traversed to get onto the E ridge and we found a pretty easy spot to get on the ridge.
Once we got on the ridge we saw that the summit is still a ways to go and it was getting late so we tried to go faster but there were a lot of bad spots along the ridge.
We had to do lots and lots of navigation, skip some towers and rappel in few spots so all that was taking time but we couldn't move faster.
Right before the summit south ridge there was pretty bad spot, where took us a while to find a way down and in the end we just had to rappel down.
Once we all got down from that spot we decided that it will be better if we just go down at the col between Curd and Haynon and camp there and go up Curd the next morning since it was getting late.
Getting down to the col was pretty easy and we got down in no time.
There was plenty of flat spots so it was easy for us to find our camping spot.
The next day we wet up Curd and came back down to our camp, packed our gear and continued going.
From the col it was obvious that we won't be able to go up the North ridge of Haynon and there was a spot that I could see on Google Earth that I was hoping that it will work.
The spot worked, it was a loose steep gully but that was the only spot to get up on the East ridge of Haynon from where it was easy hiking to the summit of Haynon.
Once we got on Haynon we started talking since we for sure don't have time to follow the plan and we might be able to get just to Kwoiek Peak or not even but we still decided to drop down from Haynon and go to the glacier.
Once we got at the glacier we knew we won't be going anywhere up on it, it was all blue ice and pretty steep and the crampons we had weren't really giving us the grip we needed so we decided to go back and camp somewhere.
We wanted to get at least pass all the cruxes along the East ridge of Curd Peak since there were some big dark clouds moving in.
Once we finally passed all those crux sections and got a relief there was a surprise waiting for us, a very friendly goat that who knows when he saw people last time.
After we chatted a bit with him we went further along the ridge and found a ok spot to camp where we were able to make a small fire going on to get us warm.
The next morning we woke up with another surprise, some fresh snow and the entire area looked so different, felt like we were looking at a new area and we were happy to made the decision to turn back.
From our camping spot it was pretty easy with few ups and downs but not more rappeling or other cruxes along the route.
Soon we finally got back to our cold creek crossing.
We didn't got as far as we planned but we got back all safe and still smiling and that is important.
No comments:
Post a Comment