Colden Slide Traverse

September 26, 2015

Seven of us left from the Loj early on a Saturday morning under a forecast of a perfect weather weekend. Bill, Hai, Rob, Alex, Chris, Eden, and myself sped along the Van Ho to Marcy Dam. For some reason the trail conversations centered around moldy refrigerator disasters and other disgusting stories, and by the time we got to the dam, Bill was looking a little green. I doubt it was the scary stories, but Bill was really not feeling well, so he decided to turn back. After ensuring that he would be fine on the hiking highway back to the parking lot, we said goodbye and hiked on as a group of six. We met the Marcy Dam caretaker and had a friendly chat with her, prior to making the ascent up to Avalanche Lake. A few photos of this most picturesque spot and then we were traversing the obstacle course of boulders, ladders, and hitch-up matildas along the cliff edge beside the lake, all the while looking up at our objective. We picked our way through the short bushwhack to the bottom of the dike and took a break prior to harnessing up for the climb. And what a different climb it was since I was here last time, pre-Irene. The dike is scoured clean of vegetation and many of the blocks I had climbed before had tumbled off. We did a quick belay for the second waterfall pitch, using a slung boulder and a single tri-cam for an anchor, but the rest of the route was soloed. The footwall at the base of the new slide is impressive, glaring white, and as clean as you could ever ask for. Starting up was steep, but the rock is very grippy and the various flakes and ramps gave good handholds as we worked our way up onto the main slab. This was a steady calf burner at a more sustained angle then the pre-Irene climb on the old slide. The final twenty or so meters got a little steeper and also a bit dirty, so care had to be taken here, but we all safely pulled up into the bushes where a herd path took us the last few meters to the summit of Colden. We all high fived and then moved over to the lookout boulder where we sat down for a long lunch in the sunshine. After fed, we chose to descend via the South-East Slide, even though we did not really know where it was. Using some deductive reasoning though, we looked the south-east, and saw a somewhat vegetated slide that descended all the way to the valley bottom. A difficult scramble down off a short cliff put us into the cripplebrush, where we found a really faint herd path that pushed towards the slide. The next couple hundred meters were a cripple brush swim as the herd path faded out rather quickly, but finally we got onto the slide. It was covered in patchy moss, but with careful footing and route choice we could friction our way downwards. One section got fairly steep from which we had to make a tricky downclimb in a wet, mossy, boot jam crack, and then a delicate traverse over to a good ledge. A short bushwhack brought us to a stream gully which took us down with cleaner rock and some fun down scrambling. At the bottom of the valley, the stream turned south, so we bushwhacked about 100m into the woods to pick up the main hiking trail. Our tired legs screamed as we ascended up to Lake Arnold, and then again during the knee pounding trail down the other side. At Marcy Dam we took another break, and then quickly hiked the Van Ho back to the Loj. A ten hour round trip for my fourth climb of Colden and third time up the Trap Dike.

First view of our objective.