Day 2 had us up at the crack of sunrise ~7:15. After starting the fire, boiling some water and warming up our wraps we set out for our goal to get Gavan knackered by breaking his elevation cherry. The goal was 2000m of climbing, he had to settle for a mere 1700m.
Sunrise on Anniversary Glacier and Joffre.
The Wiskey Jacks were out for some mooching.
Lee and Tyler opted for the creek water rather then risking the potentially peed in snow melt water since it seems that people who go to Keith’s Hut don’t understand the concept of the “pee tree” and just pee where ever their willie flips out.
Skinning up Vantage.
The popular lunch spot on Vantage ridge at 2000m or so. Lots of options to ski down from here!
Figuring out where to go next. Twin one glacier in the back.
Vantage Basin.
We ski down the North East face of Vantage Ridge – we’ll call this Vantage basin.
We skin up the North West side to check out the views from the other side and see the options from here.
looks like a Dr Suess hat!
Pretty steep and side hilly. Probably not a good option in higher avi conditions.
Gavan makes his way along the ridge.
This ridge was pretty narrow and it would be difficult to go much beyond this spot.
Our uptrack to get us to this ridge.
The snow here was good!
Lee charging!
Once down we make our way back to Vantage ridge and headed down the nice looking South East facing slope that had good snow but unfortunately ended on a cliff band…
I managed to find a way around, Lee and Gavan took a more challenging route.
Lee went for it, scared the macho out of Gavan who hiked back up to my route down.
The view of this face from Anniversary Glacier.
Since our four laps off Vantage only resulted in 1200m of climbing the boys headed up Matier Ridge to hit a couloir and get their tally up.
Couloir off Matier
Keiths Hut at Night
Elevation profile, they got 1700m today.
Cerise again – December 27, 2009 from Lee Lau on Vimeo.