We took Maia on this climb as a warm up for Aspiring SW ridge. An absolute winter delight.
Bit of difficulty route finding at the top lead to a bit of time in stasis for me and Maia. The cold was character building! After the trip, Maia invested in some new gloves – and perhaps new friends…
Touch Down is a section on the S face of Single cone that consistently sees good ice year on year. It’s a great area for those learning/honing their ice climbing skills as there is a double bolt anchor at the top allowing you to top rope/rappel easily. If you’ve climbed here and feel confident, then the S face classic route is a natural progression. The route is 300m long. In reality, the hardest ice climbing is at the beginning and the rest is largely snow. The crux of the climb was definitely the routefinding.
To give you an idea of the route (in reverse), here is Joe skiing it. Note it is much later in the season with an exceptional amount of snow.
- Difficulty: WI3
- Equipment: 2x semi technical tools. Ice screws – enough for a full 60m pitch (depends on your tolerance of running it out; we brought 10). 1x picket each. We climbed on 2x half ropes as a team of 3 but as a 2 a single 60 would be fine.
- Approach time: 2h from Lake Alta, 3h from Remarkables ski base
- Climb time: 8h (we had some route finding difficulty, could be done in 6-7)
- Season: mid-late winter allowing time for the ice to be established
- Party: Joe, Maria, Maia 06/08/21
Approach
We chose to camp the night before to get an early start the next day. From the base building at Remarks, we walked up towards Lake Alta and chose a spot to sleep under the stars. Joe had recently finished exams so to celebrate we had lugged a bottle of bubbly up (courtesy of the Collinson parents!). After the fizz had settled, so did we.
Woke up at 7am – leisurely! Access is via the back of single cone. From Lake Alta walk up and over Wye Saddle then towards the E face of Single cone before heading down an obvious gully. As you go over, you’ll see Wye Creek for miles and the Doolans to the left.
Walk another 150m across to get to the first of the routes on the South Face. A further 100m or so is where Touch Down, and the start of the route is.
The Climb
We started climbing at 10.30am.
P1: WI3, 60m. Straight up touch down, once over the edge the DBA is on the RHS
P2: 60m. Up the snow gully trending left; we made an anchor just before the snow field
P3: 50m. Trend left across the snow field until it narrows up a snow gully
P4: 50m. Head up through the rocks, squeezing through onto another snow ramp. Go up and left onto an obvious ledge.
P5: 50m. We wanted to head straight up (blue line below), but there was just a thin layer of snow on bare rock (yeesh) so we came back down and traversed 50m out to the right before heading up another snow gully towards the ridge
P6: 30m. Up the rock step to the ridge
We reached the ridge just after 6pm. Too tired we forgot to take a group summit pic. Boosted down towards Lake Alta, picked up our camping gear then retraced our steps down to the carpark at remarks. Down in 1h or so. Time for curry.
Such a fun winter trip. Would do it again!
Peak Exposure 