August 20, 2009

Serpentine Arete on Dragontail

Myself and Deverton climbed Serpentine Arete 2,000 ft 5.8 Grade IV, 23 hrs car to car last sunday. I haven't done a ton of long alpine routes and I definitely learned some lessons on this one. I felt the route had 5 great pitches, but the looseness (comparable to cascade volcanoes in the summer) of the upper pitches really detracted from the total quality of the climb. The quality pitches included a gorgeous finger crack, and a perfect hand crack for a full rope length. Shortly after the fun crux pitches things became a slog just to get off the peak. I am hard pressed to recommend this route to others unless you really want a low 5th class adventure. The descent down Aasgard pass also detracted from the overall adventure. We were expecting a little more of a real trail to descend (at night with one headlamp, Aasgard is sketchy to descend). The positive thing to come out of this was that we brought enough food and water for the whole adventure. I think this is the first time that has hapened for me personally. (probably means we brought too much, huh...)
Notes for next time:
dont let the stoner be in charge of the alarm (he went back to sleep and got us up way late,
always bring 2 headlamps,
bring less shit,
anticipate more time for approach,
simul climb on shorter rope lengths (60m = way to much drag on low 5th class),
dont do it car to car; it hurts,
Oh, and make sure your ride waiting back in icicle doesn't have to be somewhere on monday early; they left without me and took all my stuff. I had to take the train back to OR. Fuckers.

Over all, a helluva adventure, but no pictures unfortunately. And I think I had a slightly better time than Dev did. :)

2 comments:

Chuinard said...

Hi, My name is Andy. I live in Corvallis. My friend Molly linked me to your blog regarding indoor walls and I was wondering if I could contact you. I live up near Walnut park. Thanks.

Nate Meehan said...

Ian,

Just stumbled on your blog again looking on google for canyoning photos. Great work buddy! Tons of neat stuff in here!

BTW, great job with serpentine... Have you done Backbone? If not hit that one up next time. It's got a much more satisfying finish. :)