after hearing of 6-10" of new snow the previous two days before the climb, i was a little skeptical that our climb up through a narrow avalanche gully would go.

i carpooled down with bert wailles and tom nimms, two 40-somethings from north of town. we had a quiet drive down to longmire as bert slept, and i dozed off from time to time (hopefully tom, our driver, didn't follow suit).  we arrived 20 minutes early at 7:10a, so spent the time arranging our gear.

the rest of the team started showing up through the 8 o'clock hour (chris nowak, chuck ???, and our leader mark boettcher). mark had had the unfortunate experience of killing a deer on the drive to longmire. he had hit it full speed (40-50) as it folder over onto the hood of his honda prelude and then flew back over the top of his car. he described it as THUMP, SCREE-EE-EE-EE-EE-EE-EE-EE-EE-EE-EE-EE-EECH as he hit it, then came to a 100-foot long skidding stop. he said it was the third deer he had killed, so we berated him with comments warning him not to actually AIM for the deer.

the road was still closed at longmire with a sign indicating it would open at 10a, but chris had heard 9a on the longmire info radio channel. we decided to go to the lodge and warm up with coffee, tea and short stacks.  as soon as we put our order in for food, mark came in proclaiming that the gate was open. our food came quickly so we gobbled it down (the pancakes and tea luckily producing a pre-climb trout release... YES!). a seventh climber, john connally, arrived just as we were about to leave longmire.

from longmire we drove up to narada falls. mark, being the efficient leader, made sure we had divy-ed up our gear (ropes, pickets, ice screws, ice tools, shovels.... chris and i were the only ones with avalanche beacons), assigned roles, and described the climb. we were looking at 7 hours in and out. weather was overcast and 20's at longmire, with the sun poking through a few short times throughout the day. we donned our snow shoes and hit the trail at 9:45a, hiking up over a small ridge and down into tatoosh creek valley to the base of lane peak. from the base, three gullies lead up towards the summit... lover's lane to the right; the zipper which starts out toward lover's lane then cuts left up through the middle of lane's north face; and a dead-end gully to the left. we saw two mounties who also planned to climb the zipper and then ski down, but as we reached the mouth of the zipper, we noticed they were heading up the dead-end gully.

the zipper starts out about 40' wide at about a 40 degree angle and was full of about 2' of new dry powder. we didn't dig any pits, but pole tests indicated very firmly consolidated snow all the way down with no apparent ice layers underneath. we traversed back and forth making slow progress up through the fluff as the slope slowly increased to about 50 degrees.  about halfway up, the gully narrowed to 20' wide and traversing was getting monotonous and the snow steps were getting sloppy. i swapped out my poles for my ice axe. when i had packed the previous evening, i realized that i couldn't find my OR overmits, so i had to make do with my glove liners.  my hands got damp from plunging my ice axe deep in the powder, but i managed to stay quite warm. mark, who had fallen to the rear of the line, stripped his snowshoes off and started kicking steps straight up the slope. in no time he had passed us all. somewhat like sir robin at the bridge of eternal peril, after sir lancelot had answered the three questions, i exclaimed "that's EASY!!!", so we all did the same. some of our steps were sloppy at points, but we made far better time as we approached the top of the gully... which has narrowed to 10' wide and 60 degrees. in the last 50 feet, i looked up to notice an 8-10' cornice overhanging the zipper... can you say "pucker"?

at the top of the gully, we regrouped, had a quick snack, adjusted our layers (i added fleece gloves over damp liners which also got damp, but still keeping me warm), left our snowshoes, and continued up the south face of lane, kicking steps in the same deep powdery snow. stopping within 30' of the summit. the summit was corniced, so mark set up an anchor on a tree and climbed to the summit as we dug out a ledge to stow our gear and don our harnesses. mark set up a deadman at the summit, at which point we, one by one, simply prusikked up. mark snapped pictures of us all as we gained the summit and handed us rock-hard frozen snickers bars and patted us on the back. bert proclaimed that this was his "graduation" summit--this being his third year in intermediate class. i suggested that he celebrate by getting naked at the top, but he didn't go for it. the time was 1:00p.

after chiseling through my snickers bar and hanging out at the summit for about 15 minutes, we prusikked back down to the ledge. mark had me set up for a double rope rap, i clipped in and rapped down to the end of the rope (being careful, of course, not to rap off the end of the rope), then plunge stepped down to our waiting snowshoes as the other made their way down.  we regrouped at the top of the gully again, waiting for mark. as we got our stuff together, someone mentioned that mark wanted to glissade back down through the zipper. we all took a look down the gully, scratched our heads and said.... nuh-uh! i wouldn't have even skied down that sucker! as we were waiting there, the two mounties we had seen earlier in the morning were just arriving at the top of the zipper. they had climbed up the dead end gully to a notch, and then had to rap down from there into the zipper and climb the zipper. it had started to snow rather heavily for about 1/2 an hour.

we saw mark glissading down past us (as best as he could in two feet of powder). so we all took off after him, heading towards a saddle on the south side (the scrambling route). plunge stepping was awkward with snowshoes on, but i soon got the hang of it. sitting there, i noticed a slight bulge in my gortex pants....!!! i reached inside the front cargo pocket on my right leg and found.... my OR OVERMITS!!! (moral of the story.... always empty your pockets after a climb!). from the saddle we continued plunge stepping down a wide valley that eventually led to another short, narrow gully. for this one, we spread out as we were triggering small surface sloughs of the dry powder. at times, i was riding down on top of the sloughs which, while not having the consistency of wet cement, flowed and acted like it. we regrouped a last time at tatoosh creek, waiting for tom who was having some problems descending in snowshoes, then we each set off back to the cars at our own paces.

all in all, a pretty straightforward climb... not quite as steep and less exposed than the west buttress of silverstar. my gear performed admirably!, especially the mango MTS top with mango marmot dri-clime jacket.