I've wanted to climb Blanshards Needle for quite a while and
especially this year. I've wanted to do the Golden Ears traverse but I'm not
confident enough to just full send it (especially alone) and haven't been able
to convince anyone to go with me. I had heard going up and down Blanshards is
one of if not the biggest crux so going up Blanshards by itself would be
invaluable beta for one day doing the traverse. Additionally from reading
online there is a short fifth class section that a lot of people bring gear and
rope up for so I thought it would be good practice for my burgeoning alpine
skills without being too difficult.
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| Blanshards from Alouette |
I had been speaking to Logan for a while about this and he
was keen to get on it. Julia (a partner from when I climbed the Markhor Needle
Traverse last September) messaged me on Facebook and was looking for something
to do and finally Sam decided she would like to come and with that our group
was set.
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| Scrambling up |
We met just outside Golden Ears at 6:45 on Sunday AM and got
in my truck and headed to the West Canyon parking lot. We brought my 30m
scramble rope, which I had read would be enough, and some cams and a set of
nuts along with hiking gear to go up. We discussed going up Fly's Gully but for
a variety of reasons we decided to take Evans to Alouette trail and decide on
the way down whether or not we wanted to take the gully.
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| Keep going! |
Starting strong we slowed down a bit after the Evans /
Alouette split so it took us probably close to 3 hours to get to the top of
Alouette which isn't very fast. Sam and I hadn't been to Alouette before so it
was a bag for us but Logan and Julia had. We had some lunch at the top of
Alouette and scoped out the route on Blanshards with binoculars. I had read the
routefinding was obvious but I still picked a line visually from a far by
reading the terrain and it turned out to be exactly correct (yay!).
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| Near the top |
We found the trail from Alouette to the start of Blanshards
and descended down thick, steep bushy terrain. This part was very unpleasant
and the flies were horrendous. We went off route a couple times which slowed us
down a bunch but eventually we made it to the Alouette/Blanshard col and after
that the trail was pretty established and easy to follow. We passed by where
Fly's Gully joined the route and took a look, it seemed a lot more snow free
than expected and we weren't sure if we would go down or not. On the way there
were some snow patches and we saw some recent boot prints. I thought maybe they
had been from the day before but it turned out someone was ahead of us (that
will come later).
Finally we had made it to the start of the Blanshard climb
proper and it was probably close to if not 4 hours from when we started. The
crux was at the bottom and it was pretty obvious looking at it where it was. We
donned harnesses and gear and the more I looked the easier it seemed and I
decided to just solo it which I did. I'm glad I had my rock shoes though
because it would've been a bit sketchier in my trail runners. After I got up I
set up a TR belay and belayed Sam and Julia up. Logan soloed at the end (with a
heavy bag on!) and we had all passed the crux.
The rest of the scramble only took ~45 minutes. It was
pretty obvious and while it was steep it was never exposed. We took our time
though as some of the rock was loose. It wasn't the loosest scramble I've been
on though so nothing too bad. Near the top we had to cross over a gully and at
that point we ran in to the owner of those footprints we had passed. His name
was Braeden and he was on his way down, he explained that he had taken Fly's
Gully up and that it was in bad shape and he couldn't reccomend it. After that
we made it to the top, wooho! Total time was ~6 hours.
We had a nice long break at the top, the weather was
beautiful and it had a great unique view of Edge Peak, Golden Ears, Robie Reid
and Judge Howay. Before the trip we had tossed around the idea of continuing to
Edge Peak and back but with how long we had taken we all knew there was no way
and plus the water situation was getting a bit dire. We headed down and had to
take our time on some of the downclimb just because of loose rocks but nothing
too sketchy happened. At the crux we all rapelled and it was Julias first
rappel and a bit nervewracking because the anchor didn't seem secure but we
made it nonetheless.
Not much to say about the descent, it was grueling,
especially for Sam who's knees really pain her on the steep descents but we
made it to the car with a RT time of 11h30m. Not setting any records but I was
ecstatic we had climbed it and with no issues.
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| Looking down at Evans from the summit |
We all celebrated with a meal at the local pub and went home
for much needed rest. Great success and great day.
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| My favorite picture, Julia at the top |
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