Mt. Heyburn

We headed out after work on a Tuesday. We were shooting for the weekend before, but the weather dudes forcasted questionable weather... Turns out the were wrong and the weekend would have been just fine, but it turned out to be in our favor anyway. We had the mountain to ourselves.

We hiked. It got dark. We hiked. Somewhere along the Bench Lakes, just as we began running into larger patches of snow, John declaired we were there. Couldn't have picked a better place either. Large flat spots, a short walk to the lake for water and deeper snow just around the corner. We set out our tents, ate some and blinked out.

Seems I'm usually the one responsible for waking everyone up on time, and I end up waking up every twenty minutes or so to make sure I'm not sleeping through... Not this time. This time John set his alarm and I put my clock out of reach so I wouldn't be tempted to check on it.

Still, at one point I woke up. Not just a dozy wake either, I was wide awake. I sat up and tried to decide if I should dig out my clock and check, or just lay there and wait. Just then I heard John say it was 3:55. He had set his alarm for 4:00. So that was that. I could hear Dave and Darin in the other tent begin to stir and we were all up and ready to go in no time.

Dave hauled his camera gear along and got some great shots. He’s traveled all over the world shooting his travels as he goes. Here’s a link to his web page. It’s well worth a visit.

The upper bench lakes were still iced over, but wet enough you wouldn’t be tempted to try skiing across them.

A warm couple of days preceded us and made it a chore to get to the base of the mountain as we were post-holing in many areas. Here, Dave turns Johns bad stepping luck into a photo op.

Those arms are only in that goofy pose in anticipation of yet another thigh deep plunge through the surface. John is scoping out our route up the Petzoldt Couloir (the snow finger sloping up and to the left in the distance).

We were already running a little behind schedule, having spent so much time pulling ourselves out of post holes. We anticipated windy weather with the possibility of thunder storms in the afternoon, buts so far the weather was pretty awesome (albeit a little on the warm side).

Time to apply the sun screen.

Turns out the slide areas were just about the firmest paths to take, and this time of day, they were probably pretty safe.

The bottom of the couloir is pretty easy going. Not too steep, and the higher we went, the better the Snow conditions.

Again with the slide areas… you know this place gets pretty busy in the afternoon.

Once you’re well into the couloir, you are presented with a choice. John, having done the path on the right before, explained that it’s a pretty straight forward slog to the summit ridge. The left side on the other hand can get a little tricky as there is usually a rock band that increases the pucker factor in most climbers. So we elected for the left.

Things were getting pretty steep and we still had the rock band ahead of us, so we decided to rope up here so we wouldn’t have to goof around with it on the more exposed slopes above.

The rock band turned out to be mostly filled with snow leaving only about 10 feet of rock that needed to be scrambled over, which we took on the left side. I think the only bad part of that section was for some reason the snow underfoot was the softest of the entire couloir for some reason, making it a little tricky to make the transition onto the rock.

At the top of the couloir was a chock stone that we climbed under.

Here, Dave is hauling up an empty rope section. We left this trailing as a symbolic gesture to Steve D. who had planned to go with us, but bailed at the last minute. He’s still kicking himself me thinks.

Once through the chock stone, we scrambled to the saddle in the summit ridge. We un-roped there and had lunch. Then we made a fairly exposed (un-roped) traverse over to the base of the 40' crux move. As Steve had predicted, things screeched to a stop at this point.

John led and was able to reach the first of three pitons from a small ledge near the bottom. This ledge was essentially the last foothold on the pitch. From there on up he stood in slings that he placed on the pitons and an additional nut that he placed in a crack.

Here my camera switched to sepia mode for some reason and hosed up my shots. But you get the idea.

Once over the wall, he went up another 40' or so and set up an anchor on a large rock.

He made several attempts to throw the rope down to us, but the wind had picked up quite a bit and kept blowing the rope to the north, so it came down over the 1500' cliff just to our right. Daren reached out over the cliff and almost had it at one point just before John pulled it back up for another attempt. He ended up rappelling back to the edge of the wall and throwing it down from there. Then John hauled up the packs. This took a while too since he had to rappel to the edge of the cliff, haul them up by rope and climb back up to the anchor for each pack.

Then Darin and John climbed up and I followed cleaning the gear as I went. I had to stop at one point just to savor the moment. Here I was, standing on one foot in a sling that was held up by a 1/4 inch nut stuck in a tiny crack, and there was nothing but air for 1500' below. I thought about how crazy the majority of the human race would find that, but this was one of the best experiences of my climbing career. My grin broke into a laugh and that moment made the whole trip for me. I reached down past my foot to remove the sling from the piton below me and moved on up the wall.

I joined the others at the belay rock and the rest was an easy scramble to the summit.

Dave set up his tripod on one summit bolder and managed to jump the gap and make it back to us before his 10 second timer snapped our group picture.

We spent a while taking in the view, eating some more lunch and enjoying the improving weather before scrambling down to the first belay point on the Stur Chimney side.

It was a short scramble down to the first repel point on the Sur Chimney side.

The second repel point was… er… a bit tight.

Here's a shot looking back at the Stur Chimney. This, according to the guide book, is the most popular route on the mountain.

It would take a couple more rapels before we were back to the snow.