Fish Lake, Monday, January 17, 2011 (and some new routes?)
WI3+|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=150|height=200]
Boulder Route
Central Slab
Fortress of Solitude, Fish LakeI was at Fish Lake on Monday with Pietro, Antonio, Stephanie, and Will (and again on Saturday January 22 with the ACC)
Knob in the Gob - in
Crown of Thorns - in, hard brittle ice
Premature Ejaculation - not in.
Strapadictomy - upper column in, couldn't tell about the slab approach ice,
because it was covered in snow
Slabs - first 20m were horrible scratchy, thin, rot ice, upper 20m were nice.
The far right side of the slab next to the rock face in a bit of a groove looked
to have good ice the whole way up.
We poked around further right (south) past the slabs and found a bunch of ice that
was new to me:
1) Continue past the slabs for 150m across a beaver pond to its far end. There
is a humongous house sized boulder there. Opposite the boulder there is a 25m
WI2 (Good solid ice for 12m, then low-angled snow/ice walk for 8m, then a final 3-5m ice bulge). Dave Britnell tells me that this has been climbed before.
2) Will went even further and found even more ice. A little creek spills down next to the boulder. Follow the creek up (a couple of icy steps) around the corner (the cliff face makes a 90 degree turn west here) for another 100m until you come to a wall of fat blue ice, only about 10-12m high, but about 15-20m across with many lines of WI2 and WI3. A good place to bring a group of beginners (but at least one person would need to be able to lead WI2 to set up ropes).
The left side has a semi-interesting feature - you climb an initial 6m vertical pillar, then come to a big boulder with a body sized split in it that you can
just squeeze through to more easy-angled ice above (an ice version of Fat Man's Horror).
Dave Britnell says he's never been to this wall of ice before. Don Collier thinks it's been done, but I can't find the thread where it was mentioned on this Bulletin Board). Anyone know anything about this?
Pietro wants to call it Fortress of Solitude (after Superman's Ice Castle).
3) Further on there is more easy angled slab ice (20m, WI2). Several lines possible,
Will and Stephanie climbed two of these lines (but I don't have any photos of them).
Danylo