Tinman

July 28, 2022

Guide: Alex
Participants: Mike
Time: 7.5 hours

Private guide to myself again! Tinman peak is the shortest approach from the camp, so after only about two hours we had climbed the morraine, worked our way up the snow ramp beside the icefall, and travelled across the glacier to the base of the climb. From here it was four long pitches of stellar climbing with a few moves up to 5.9, which despite my fears, I managed to pull them off without falling. A fantastic chimney yielded some interesting moves along with some crack climbing that the only thing that would work in some spots were fist jam lock-offs. The most difficult move was a very airy step across the void with tiny crimps for the fingers, micro-crystals on slab for the feet, all the while trying to manouver around a very awkward overhanging boulder in your face pushing you out into the void. It took me a while to figure out the contortions here and finally work up the courage to execute them, but with a good belay from Alex, managed to pull it off in the end.

Tinman blob. Route goes up the face and at left and descent is around the back right side.

Alex gunning the rope

After the pitched climbing ended, we unroped for another 100m vertical of 3rd class scrambling to the summit. At the top we found an ancient bivy site, complete with cans of fuel, some hot sauce, and a full bottle of HP sauce. Though tempting, we did not use this to season our sandwiches during a long relaxed break.

Approaching the top

Complimentary condiments

Looking down at camp from the summit

The descent off of this mountain was was frankly awful. We went down a rabbly, scrabbly slope of shite which was falling to pieces at every step. Alex short roped me down this. At one point I tried to rearrange a loose block to gain a foothold which seemed solid underneath, but sent that block along with another ten blocks tumbling down the mountain in a big cloud of dust. We continued down, and mercifully gained a steep snow slope where we could quickly plunge step the rest of the way and then traverse around the glacier back to the start of the climb where we stashed our excess gear.

During the walk back to camp, Alex put me on the front of the rope as cannon fodder for the crevasses. I managed to probe and hop over a couple of newly openned slots just fine, but then Alex punched through a third invisible slot, fortunately only losing one leg to the doom. Back down the morraine was a casual slog and we arrive back at camp at 15:00... the first time this entire trip where I have had some relaxation time before the 17:00 appetizers. I took advange of the time here to have a shower, do some writing and drink my daily beer ration.

Hiking back

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