[MCR] Coast: Blackcomb Buttress

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Coast: Blackcomb Buttress

Posted on Tue, 05/31/2016 - 00:00 by Conny Amelunxen

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Climbed the DOA Buttress yesterday. 

Approach:

The Blackcomb lifts are closed for a few weeks so we took the Peak to Peak across to the Rendezvous and walked from there.  It was about an hour to bottom of the slope and we were climbing within 2 hours. There was still enough snow in the lower half of the DOA ski line to produce large avalaches so rather than follow the line in the Alpine Select book we went further east and ascended mostly on screen and talus directly below the DOA Buttress. The snow in the top half of the couloir had mostly melted out and it would be reasonable to traverse from the bottom of the DOA Buttress to the regular Blackcomb Buttress lines. The high traverse suggested in the Alpine Select had significant avalanche risk. 

Snow and Avalanche:
There was mid boot snow penetration the except near rocks and trees where it could easily be waist deep. We did not take transceivers because we are able to avoid nearly all avalanche terrain by route choice. I would have certainly brought them if I didn't know the area or had planned to play in the snow. Blackcomb and Whistler got about 40cm of new snow last weekend above 1900 m. This has mostly settled out and a very light crust had formed the previous night. Several avalanches had occurred during or just after the storm and we saw a significant sz 2 come out of the steep west side of the Decker Glacier in the mid afternoon. 

Climbing
The DOA buttress ascends a ridge between a SE face and NW face to the climbers right of the DOA Couloir ski line. Although the ledges on the right side of the still had snow, the rock was dry and very fun to climb. The left side of the Buttress had wet, slick, snowy rock that was quite difficult. Other than a few very short sections we were able to stay on the dry side. The 100 feet we climbed on the snowy side probably took us as long as the other 500 feet of the climb. We climbed the crux pitch on the right side of the buttress as the prow and left wall were wet and slick. 

Descent
>From the summit it took us 35 minutes to descent the snowy bowl to the east of the base of the climb (Body Bag Bowl). We had missed the last Gondola (open 10am-5pm) so we walked to the village avoiding bears and were at Merlyns at in just over two hours from the summit. The Body Bag Bowl descent will probably melt out in the next week or two.

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