Unicorn and The Horn

July 26, 2022

Guide: Phil
Participants: Mike
Time: 11 hours

Today I had a private guide as nobody else signed up for this long trip to climb an impressive peak known as The Horn. After breakfast, we hiked up the morraine with two other groups and at the top where Phil and I split off ahead as we had the furthest objective. A long snow traverse followed which brought us up another 200m of elevation to the base of the fixed lines. This was my first time jumarring up something substantial and found the three pitches of 60m climbing to be a sweaty bit of work as my heart got a pounding. The first two pitches were quite awful as we climbed through a soupy mess of moss and mud. The last pitch was fortunately clean rock, but was fairly steep so gave the arms a good workout hauling up this. Another 100m climb of low angle snow followed, and then we arrived at the col to view the wild terrain known as the Granite Glacier below us.

Our objective as viewed during the approach

Looking back at the Austerity icefall

Climbing the fixed lines

We roped up in glacier travel mode and cramponned down the slope, dropping about 200m of our hard earned elevation to work around some substantial crevasse fields. To mitigate the hazard with only two of us on the rope, Phil added "moose knuckles" into the rope system, which are simply really big knots to help arrest a crevasse fall by cutting into the snow during an unexpected plunge. Fortunately, we did not fall into any crevasses and as we began climbing, Phil untied the knuckles as they were causing a serious amount of friction dragging in the soft snow as we walked. After a few kilometers of traipsing around the Unicorn, we finally stepped off the glacier at the base of our objective.

Giving up on moose knuckles

The weather was perfect so we decided to climb Unicorn Peak as it was right there in front of us. Several 4th class scramble pitches and a final low 5th class climb brought us onto the tiny summit where we took a quick break before down climbing the route. A scramble traverse brought us over to The Horn, and we scouted possible ascent routes. We settled on a direct line, which looked to be difficult, but with clean stone and some nice crack systems. We traded in our boots for rock shoes and climbed this in two pitches; A slabby first pitch with a good undercling and fist jams to help get up this 5.7ish section, followed by a lovely second pitch with some balancy moves among finger cracks. This was at my limit of climbing ability at about 5.8, and I was pleased to get through this section without popping off. From the top of the rock climbing it was only a short walk to the summit and we sat down for a well earned mid-afternoon lunch. The clear views let us see all the way to the Rockies, and Phil pointed out various famous mountains that we could identify.

Climb on

Summit of The Horn

Camp as viewed from The Horn

Phil lowered me down the slabs and followed by rappelling, which was followed by a long walk back. The snow was very soft from baking in the hot sun all day, so we did not bother with the pons and simply plunge stepped across the glacier and snow back to the top of the fixed lines. I was lowered here which was not much fun, but significantly faster than rapelling and passing the many anchor points. At one point my feet blew out on the slippery rock as I lowered over a ledge and I ended up hanging on the rope upside down for a brief exciting moment (did I mention that I hate being lowered?). Once down this section, it was simply just a walk back to camp, where we boot skied quickly across the snow and scampered down the morraine, arriving at the tents just in time for the supper bell.

Rapping off

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