(Joe Kelsey. Climbing and Hiking in the Wind River Mountains, 3rd Edition)<\/p>\n
I didn’t get a decent picture of the entire climb, so here’s a photo of the climb taken from space (via Google Earth.) \u00a0The red arrow shows the start of the actual climbing on the route. \u00a0This photo was taken early season. \u00a0Our conditions were quite a bit less snowy.<\/p>\n Mount Helen is located in the Titcomb Basin part of the Wind River Range. \u00a0It’s about a 17 mile hike from the Elkhart Park trailhead just outside of the town of Pinedale. \u00a0 We decided to break up the approach hike into two days. \u00a0I picked up my partner, Dallen, at 4:00 a.m. Thursday morning, and drove from Salt Lake to the trailhead, stopping in Pinedale for breakfast along the way. \u00a0With our early start, we were hiking before 10:00 a.m.<\/p>\n The trail to Titcomb Basin is pretty pleasant, with relatively\u00a0gentle gradients and beautiful scenery. \u00a0We stopped along the way to fish a bit, but we didn’t catch anything. We ended up camping Thursday evening between Seneca Lake and Little Seneca Lake, about 10 miles from the trailhead. \u00a0We fished a bit that evening, again without any success. \u00a0Weather was beautiful, with clear skies and mild temperatures.<\/p>\n Friday, we continued our approach hike in to Titcomb basin. \u00a0We hiked about five and a half miles, and set up our camp between the upper and middle Titcomb lakes. \u00a0It was a beautiful spot, with a great view of the towers, including Mount Helen’s Tower 1, our objective for the following day. (Although our particular route was on the other side of the mountain.)<\/p>\n We spent the rest of the evening reconnoitering the approach to the route, fishing, and relaxing. \u00a0 Dallen caught a big, beautiful golden trout, I caught a small rainbow, and we packed up for the next day’s climb. \u00a0 The most exciting thing, however, is that we saw a wolverine walking along not far from our camp. \u00a0I’ve never seen a wolverine in the wild before. \u00a0It was really cool to see it there, moving along with its odd, bounding gait. \u00a0It kept its distance from us, and I wasn’t able to get a decent photo because of how far away it was.<\/p>\n The next morning, we woke up at 5:00 ate some food, and hit the trail to the climb. \u00a0The approach hike was steep and unpleasant, with lots of boulder hopping and shuffling up scree slopes. \u00a0I was really happy when we reached the tongue of the big snow slope that leads to the Tower 1 Gully, and I could use my crampons. \u00a0Moving up the steep neve snow was much better than groveling up the scree, and putting on my crampons made me feel like I was climbing at last.<\/p>\n We cruised up the snow slope unroped, and roped up when we reached the base of Tower 1 Gully. \u00a0From the base of the route, we couldn’t really tell how long the climb was going to be. \u00a0The guidebook says it’s ten pitches. \u00a0From the bottom, with foreshortening, and no real way to judge scale, it didn’t look nearly that long. \u00a0We wondered if it was really only going to be 2 or 3 pitches in length.<\/p>\n We began climbing, and it soon became apparent that the route was much longer than it appeared from below. \u00a0That was a good thing, as the climbing was a lot of fun. \u00a0The conditions were excellent. \u00a0The route was mostly solid neve that took axe and crampon placements very securely. \u00a0The neve alternated with consolidated snow and patches of water ice. \u00a0The lower pitches were at a relatively low angle, and climbing went quickly. \u00a0Although ice screw placements were not very common due to the fact that there wasn’t consistent sections of hard ice on the route, it was generally easy to get protection in the rock walls on the margins of the climb, where there were cracks for nuts, cams, and pitons.<\/p>\n The climbing got steeper as the route progressed, and by the 4th pitch, it felt like real climbing, although it wasn’t particularly difficult due to the “thunker” ice conditions that provided for really secure tool and crampon placements. \u00a0It was really enjoyable climbing, and we were both having a grand time of it.<\/p>\n About the 3rd or 4th pitch, the weather began to change, and we started to get pelted with precipitation, first in the form of graupel, and then changing to snow. \u00a0It wasn’t bad, however, and just gave the climb a bit more of an alpine flavor.<\/p>\n After 6 full pitches of neve, snow and ice, and one short pitch through the easy rock band at the top, we finished the route and topped out on the saddle between Tower 1 and Tower 2. \u00a0By this time, the snow was falling hard, and the wind was blowing hard. \u00a0When I pulled up over the top of the saddle, I got hit by icy wind driven snow. \u00a0Our climb had been pretty sheltered, but this side of the mountain was getting pounded hard. \u00a0Our plan for the descent had been to either continue to the top of Mount Helen and descend by the snow couloir, or rappel down the back side, or rappel down the climbing route on V-threads. \u00a0The snow made continuing to the summit on rock much more challenging than we were interested in, and the thought of trying to rappel down the other side in the wind driven snow was also not appealing. \u00a0We decided to descend back down the climbing route. \u00a0We couldn’t use V-threads because there wasn’t sufficient water ice, so we used nuts hammered into cracks as our rappel anchors.<\/p>\n When we got the base of the route, we descended down the big snow couloir by a combination of down climbing, rappelling on a bollard, and a couple of rappels on some fixed gear we found in the (climber’s left hand) side of the couloir.<\/p>\n As we descended the route, the snow turned to sleet, then to hard driving rain. \u00a0By the time we got back to our camp by the Titcomb lakes, we were both soaked. \u00a0I was wearing a full waterproof hard shell jacket, but my pants were a water resistant soft shell (Patagonia Knifeblade.) \u00a0These pants would have been fine for fending off a typical thunderstorm that only lasted an hour or so, but their water resistance was finally overwhelmed in the face of several hours of heavy wind-driven rain. \u00a0As a result, my long johns were soaked, my socks were soaked, and my boots filled up with water.<\/p>\n The weather was unrelenting, with constant wind and heavy rain all night long. \u00a0We spent a long, uncomfortable night in wet clothes, and damp down sleeping bags. \u00a0I didn’t freeze, but I was just cold enough that whenever I started to fall asleep, the cold would make me shiver and wake me up again. \u00a0I was just happy that it wasn’t 10 degrees colder. \u00a0Had the temperature dropped a bit, I would have been really really cold, and we would have been facing a hike out in several feet of snow.<\/p>\n Next morning, we hurriedly crammed our soaking wet gear into our backpacks and began the 16 mile death march back to the car. \u00a0It continued to rain all day, and the trails had turned into creeks, and the creeks into raging torrents. \u00a0The only good news is that we started off with soaking socks and boots, so when we had to wade through calf-deep water, we weren’t getting any wetter.<\/p>\n After a really long, wet, exhausting day of hiking, carrying packs made even heavier by all the water weight, we finally reached the trailhead at a little before six in the evening. \u00a0 We changed into dry clothes, drove into Pinedale for a terrific dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and then headed back to Salt Lake.<\/p>\n Overall, the trip was very rewarding. \u00a0The scenery was great, the climbing was fun, and the nasty weather gave us a generous dose of suffering that made us feel like we’d done some real alpine climbing.<\/p>\n Gear Notes:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n 2 ice screws are all that is really needed for this ice\u00a0climb\u00a0because of the plentiful opportunities for rock protection on the sides of the route. \u00a0We didn’t place\u00a0more than two\u00a0screws on any pitch. \u00a0We generally followed the left hand margin of the climb and found adequate cracks for running protection and belay anchors. \u00a0A half set of Camalots (#.75 green to #3 blue) \u00a0and 3 smaller Metolius cams, a set of stoppers, and 3 Tri-cams, along with a piton (#3 Moses Tomahawk) were more than enough for us to protect the climb and establish belays.<\/p>\n We left fixed rappel anchors along the route (varied between left and right hand sides) consisting mostly of stoppers “welded” into place by hammering them into the rock. \u00a0If you use these anchors, make sure they are secure before you trust your life to them, as nuts can loosen over time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" September 25-27, 2014 Tower 1 Gully on Mount Helen is considered the premier alpine ice climb in Wyoming’s Wind River Range. \u00a0It’s a long, moderate alpine ice route that has been on my hit list for a while. \u00a0Opportunities for climbing ice in the fall are not that common in my area of the country, 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