Lee Lau and Louie Dawson
A good night’s sleep brought us fresh legs. Stu skinned in from the Duffey road to join Louie and Lee at Keith’s Hut at 8am and we were off on our way to check out Mt. Duke (2497m). It’s a bit of a long walk to get there but it’s 200m lower than Matier, and the NW ridge looked pretty simple. Famous last words. We failed to summit foiled by a conspiracy of circumstances including Tyler’s flailing ice-climbing skills, facet-wallowing through steep rime just before the summit bulge (1 hour – 50m elevation gained) and town-house sized cornices on the ridgeline. Massive crowds of people on the ridge were also a factor (or at least made a good excuse for not summiting), probably due to our last Cerise Creek post.
[photonav url=’/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/01panotwinone.jpg’].
Above is a panorama of the Twin One Glacier and surrounding area, mouse over to scroll from side to side.
We skinned then bootpacked Duke’s NW ridge.
Failure! We backed off the summit block due to the size of cornices. Here's Stu failing as he skis our retreat off the NW ridge
Turning back about 20 m short of Duke’s summit at about 1:30 we skied back to a windlip that led to Duke’s mainly N – facing bowl and dropped in to pow of acceptable quality. A moraine ridge feature then allowed us to skin to 100m short of Duke’s summit where we dropped into N – facing pow for a 600m run. We then climbed back out of Duke and up to Vantage and skied off the NW face from its peak. Then up to the sub-peak just S of Vantage for one more run of NW facing snow of quality that was adequate for needs (this face was amazingly untouched). We were all feeling a bit fatigued so dawdled back to the hut for another 11 hour day with around 2,000 meters vert.
Below our turnaround a windhole breaks the N facing ridge cornices. Louie gets to go first
Wilkes finds snow quality to be passable
After we go down, we go back up to the N face bowl on what looked liked a moraine feature
The moraine feature gets us close to the summit. You can then drop down Duke NW bowl or down this steeper NNW facing bowl. Wilkes rails a turn.
The purpose of our trip was to self-promote, get blamed for the massive crowds that will show up tomorrow in this previously mysterious area, and to showcase fine products from Dynafit, K2 and Scarpa (Maestrale boots not pictured but worn).
Skinning up to Vantage Peak. Our failure on Duke’s N face in the background
We finished off today and the next day with laps off Vantage Peak and then laps off the 'Motel Six' area of Joffre Peak (it's in the backdrop) as deteriorating alpine weather deterred further glacier excursions.
2190m elevation covered but not much distance today.
Our biggest epic was faced that night as a late evening arrival of steak and couscous dinner preparers threatened to asphyxiate us with cooking smoke as we were sleeping (no doubt they were inspired to crowd in by a WildSnow trip report). Fortunately we made it through to the next day alive. Unfortunately the high alpine weather broke for the worse on April 9th and we contented ourselves with lower elevation powder skiing laps finishing up with a restful 1500m of elevation gain and then skiing out back to the road.
Beyond our regular guest bloggers who have their own profiles, some of our one-timers end up being categorized under this generic profile. Once they do a few posts, we build a category. In any case, we sure appreciate ALL the WildSnow guest bloggers!
