Last Tuesday, Ed and I decided to go out and try to climb Prospector Falls in Grand Teton NP. We hit the trail about 8:00 in the morning, which we actually consider a somewhat early start. After a 3 hour approach that consisted of bushwhacking and hiking over half-snow covered talus, we reached the base of the climb. At the base of the climb, we burned a lot of time gearing up, as well as trying to warm ourselves up. What we should have also been doing was eating and drinking more after the long approach. However, trying to down our freezing water left us both with ice cream headaches. As it goes, not drinking much leads to not eating too much either. One 100 calorie GU after 3 hours of heinous hiking should be enough, right. Yeah, not too bright.
So we finally started up the climb with Ed leading all the pitches. My justification for this was that we were going to be out on the climb long enough, and me leading would just slow us down even more. However, this was just me trying to justify not taking some of the leads. Basically, I was just scared as I have not lead much ice. Maybe next time I will grow a pair and lead more.
The climb ended up being 5 good pitches. The only problem was that none of the stances I was belaying at, were all that protected. When ice climbing, the belayer generally faces a barrage of ice chunks falling down from the leader, unless the belayer is in a well protected spot. Unfortunately, I was not protected very much. I was doing a pretty good job of dodging ice chunks all day with my cat-like reflexes until we reached the last pitch. By now, we were in a gully that funneled all the falling debris right toward me. This is when my cat-like reflexes started to betray me (this could have happened because I was already dead tired). The first small chunk I took off my eye, ouch, that's going to leave a mark. The next big chunk I took off the top of my helmet (wearing a helmet was the one smart thing I'd done all day). The ice chunk off the helmet definitely woke me up.
As Ed was leading the last pitch, we were both hit several times by large amounts of spindrift. It had been snowing most of the day and Prospectors is known for letting loose snow from above onto climbing parties. Of course we chose to climb the route on the only poor weather day in the last week. Maybe we should have read a weather report.
We started the first of 5 rappels as it was getting dark. We had decided to climb without packs and I had forgotten to put my headlamp in my pocket. I should have known, as almost every time we go ice climbing we end up rappelling in the dark. Once again, not too bright. Luckily, Ed had his headlamp and would rap first to find the next anchor. The iced-up, skinny ropes were difficult to pull after each rap, but we finally made it down off the climb.
After we gathered all of our stuff together and I drank some water from the one water bottle that wasn't completely frozen, we set off for the 3 hour hike back to the trailhead in the dark. Luckily by now, I had my headlamp. We finally made it back to the trailhead after a sketchy creek crossing (Ed is 30-40lbs lighter than me, so just because he doesn't fall through the ice, doesn't mean I won't) and the soul-crushing uphill switchbacks near the end of the hike.
We had been on the move for about 13.5 hours, and we both realized that we had eaten about 300 calories and drank maybe a liter of water the whole day. This is the fluid and calorie intake of an idiot. Again, not bright. Hopefully, I will learn from these bumblings the next time I go out.
