New Life approach

[t-bone]

Wondering if anyone has been up to New Life since the rock fall?

I have always approached via the bottom of AC, but curious if it is now better to go straight up from the Mamquam FSR

[BK]

Take the north north gully trail and look for a cairn and faint trail shooting right. Its a cruise and totally unaffected by the rock fall. Traversing the rockfall is no big deal either and its kinda cool to check out the destruction

[BK]

Incidentally, Alaska highway looks to be completely untouched by the rockfall, including the tree's right at the base of the first pitch. Its a wild guess but just possibly, if you were anywhere on the route durring the event, you might have survived just fine, unless you had a heart attack.

At any rate, it looked good to go

[BK]

Incidentally, Alaska highway looks to be completely untouched by the rockfall, including the tree's right at the base of the first pitch. Its a wild guess but just possibly, if you were anywhere on the route durring the event, you might have survived just fine, unless you had a heart attack.

At any rate, it looked good to go

[t-bone]

Thanks BK.
We climbed New Life on Sunday and approached from the NN Gully trail - the start is signed and it is very easy to follow. We walked out across the new talus field and the amount of destruction is impressive. As you noted, AK highway looks unaffected except for maybe a bit a messing around with the rope pull. AstroLogger appears structurally fine but will need a bit of a cleaning as there is a layer of 'blast' dirt on the bottom half.

Also, we pulled a sizable block out from p3 on New Life. It was completely detached and sitting about 15 feet above the belay. It impacted/exploded exactly where you belay at the top of p2 so there will likely be a few loose chunks in that niche that need removal.

I'd recommend people get out and climb New Life - it's an awesome route (top 100) that is mostly 5.10 . The short section of 5.11 on p2 is tricky but easily aided.