My fellow guide, Peter Thurlow, and I guided an ascent of Brewer
Buttress on Castle Mountain yesterday, June 14th.
We approached the Castle Hut on the afternoon of June 13th. An
avalanche from this winter overran the approach trail just after the
fire lookout (on the far side of the drainage that you cross) and has
left a bunch of trees, branches and rock on the trail making it hard
to follow for a couple of hundred meters. There is a bit of snow in
the approach gully and some on the traverse from the gully to the hut.
Traversing from the hut to the route there are a number of snow
runnels to cross and I recommend taking an ice axe. The route is
basically dry with the only snow sitting at the very base, and on the
very top. A cool day yesterday, we carried rock shoes in our packs
and never put them on. A number of pitches climbed with gloves on.
Having said that it was a fine day and my guest proclaimed it "the
best climb of my life!".
Lots of snow on the traverse across the top to the descent gully but
it carried well yesterday. We started several surface wet snow
avalanches while plunge stepping down. The biggest ran the whole
length of the gully cleaning off the top 10 centimetres of wet snow.
There is continuous snow all the way from the top of the gully to the
massive chockstone at the bottom and it would be possible to descend
it, although we exited the gully for the fixed rappel anchors towards
the bottom.
Happy trails,
Barry Blanchard
Mountain Guide
www.barryblanchard.ca
www.yamnuska.com
snow runnels and patches on Goat Plateau
_______________________________________________
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Please check out http://acmg.ca/mcr for more information.
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