Happy trails
Barry Blanchard
UIAGM/IFMGA Mountain Guide
1 403 609 4615
cell 1 403 609 1321
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Tuesday, February 16, 2010
[MCR] Spray River Falls
Guided Spray River Falls today, Feb 16. Another mild and calm day. The climb is surprisingly dry with lots of chromey smooth ice. We climbed through a large keyhole on the left side that placed us on a comfortable belay behind the crux pillar. A recent abalakov there had been badly chewed on by rock rats or pikas (the varmits must be hungry as they ate the cord down to the core). The crux pillar felt a half grade harder than Carlsberg Column (we climbed that yesterday). One of my guests fell on the crux and dropped both his leashless tools. I rapelled down and lowered him mine, with leases attached. In retrospect, it would have been a good place to be using an umbilical system. We were belayed in yet another keyhole/room on the left side about 10 meters down from the top and descended from there being, 3 climbers with 4 tools, too bad because the climbing out of the cave looked interesting.