St. Nicholas Peak

July 18, 2024

With the guided group in the hut, we managed to get daily weather forecasts. Today was supposed to be nice in the morning, but storms moving in during the afternoon. Stinking hot was a given. Shorter objectives were in order so Mike, John, and I decided to tackle St. Nicholas, the prominant shark fin shaped mountain that sticks right out of the toe of the glacier. Both Mike and John were relatively new to this monuntaineering thing, so that made me the defacto rope leader. I was a little nervous, given how terrifying I found St. Nick the last time I climbed it, twelve years ago. With another dozen years of experience under my belt, I was hoping I would find it substantially easier than the last time.

We struck out early as usual, hoping to beat the heat, but with climate change, frosty mountain mornings seem to be a thing of the past. We teamed up with Damien, Bill, and Andy who were headed to Olive as we climbed the glacier over to a rocky area, some scrambling through the rock, and then some steeper snow slopes to bring us up to the Olive-St. Nick col. The other rope continued on the snow to Olive and we climbed up to the bare rock of the ridge where we took our first break to study our objective... a ridiculously narrow fin of leaning choss. How a mountain made out of loose blocks, sand, and pebbles can be formed to such a shape I will never know.

Our objective as seen on the approach from the toe of the Bow

Stashing our gear before the scramble. Olive overlooks us in the background.

Yes, this ridiculous looking fin is the mountain

With the intimidation of our objective in front of us, we decided to short rope the climb. I am trained to short rope with one person, but have been on the "client" end of being short roped in pairs with a guide enough that I hoped I could pull this off safely with me in the guide position. I tied Mike and John a couple meters apart, gave myself about fifteen meters of coil and we struck out onto the ridge. Most could be walked, a couple sections were trickier where quick terrain anchors were used to cross. When we got to the slab of doom I had John belay me across and then I built a real anchor to belay them across. Right smack in the middle of the traverse John got a call on the radio, and rather than finishing up he decided to stop with one hand holding on to the edge of the mountain and the other operating the radio to check in. The last chimney section was loose steep crap, and I took another belay to climb up this, finding a rappel anchor at the top, which had been set by Dave yesterday. This made for a good station to bring up the other two. And with that we were on the summit of St. Nick. Piece of cake this time around!

Summit attained

After a lunch on top enjoying the views we made our return. We rapelled the chimney and then I asked the others if they would be comfortable soloing the route on the way back. Everyone was, so we put the rope away and scrambled our way back. This went about twice as fast than the way there, which was good as there was some omnious looking clouds beginning to build on the horizon. Just as we returned to the col, we met the Olive team, who were starting up St. Nick, hoping to do a quick out and back before the weather turned.

Setting up the rappel

Descending the choss

The slab of doom

Thoughts were made of climbing Olive, but with the weather it seemed prudent to just go down, so we descended the rock until reaching the snow, roped up, and I had Mike lead the rope back the way we came. At the lower rock band we encountered a snow bridge which we had crossed without a thought in the morning. With the afternoon heat, there was now a torrent of a river running underneath the snow. With caution and careful meat anchor placement, Mike probed his way successfully across, finding the snow bridge still strong enough. A short walk down the toe of the glacier and we were back into hiking terrain for the rest of the journey to the hut.

Snowy descent

The rain held off for a while, but after supper it came down in buckets. Probably a good thing to wet the parched valleys below.

Total time: 8 hours

[Home] [Main] [Prev] [Next]