Door Jamb Mountain attempt (again!) March 31, 2007

Scrambling and climbing with Mark.

With a nasty weather forecast for the afternoon, this seemed to be a good opportunity to try and finish last week’s business on the east face on Door Jamb Mountain before the bad weather came in. Unfortunately, the afternoon weather decided to make an appearance in the morning and we spent most of the ascent in a steady snowfall. By the time we reached the summit block, the rock was wet and a little snowy in sections.

Armed with a ton of climbing gear, we expected the ascent of the summit block to be relatively straightforward…it was not….not even close! We chose the ascent line Mark had attempted first the previous week, on the right side of the block. The rock here was deceivingly steep and slabby, with downsloping holds. My progress up the face was painfully slow as finding decent places to put protection was extremely difficult. Mark was stuck at the bottom belaying me in fairly cold temperatures.

After almost two hours of nerve-wracking climbing, in which I made about 30 metres of vertical progress, I hit an impasse and was forced to retreat. There was too much snow on the rock, nowhere to place protection and the exposure was nail-biting. Luckily I had arrived at a lone tree and was able to rappel down. The second retreat in as many weeks was a little disappointing, but things could have turned out much worse. We’ll be back.      

Low slabs on the far right side of Kid Goat

 

A tricky little section about halfway up

 

The summit block; our attempted ascent route went straight up the block, a little right of centre 

 

Starting up the summit block

 

More of the same

 

Disappearing 

 

A little rappel action on the way down

 

Retreat; Door Jamb to the left

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