New Route Mt Dione

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Put up a new (user friendly) route on Dione. Check it out at:

http://sendage.com/topos/dehydrated-on-dalwhinnie

[BK]

how would you rate the quality overall?

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It is a sport climb. We did the ascent push using only draws. The first pitch off the glacier and the four pitches on the headwall are almost straight up (unlike it appears in the topo) and spectacular +-vertical climbing on rock similar "Fern Hill" Within these pitches we all had different favorites.

Pitches 2-5 have short sections of good rock mixed with a bit of walking on 3rd and 4th class terrain. The cruxes are well protected. When you are on these pitches you you feel like you are in one of the walking sections in the middle of the Butress or Angel's crest....just getting to the rest of the climbing.

We wandered around a lot on the route avoiding cracks and searching out good rock for bolts. At times you will feel this while climbing the route, but all the cruxes and possible ledge falls are protected. Runouts are longer the easier the grades are.

A small handfull of 1/2" - 3" cams would fill in a lot of these runouts if you are worried about yourself or your second on the terrain under 5.6. It would also give you options to avoid cruxes on the 11b pitch.

Pitch 10 is on the ridge crest. We put in one bolt to protect a tricky and exposed move, and added a hanger to a random bolt that was already up there. (?)

The route opens up a lot of potential on the upper head wall. There are some spectacular looking cracks up there. It also offers a bypass around the bergschrund if you want to get to the real climbing on Dione...the West Face.

The days we were up there it was warm enough that we left our crampons and ice axes at the bottom of the climb without worries of a freeze. Things could have gotten ugly if the clouds had come over as the descent from the top to the base of the route is just steep enough to require them in hard conditions.

[BK]

thanks for the detail. I still can't quite get over the idea of a total clip up in the alpine but maybe thats because i'm a dinosaur. If the stone is as good as it looks maybe i'll get over it. I always figured the stone up on those high west faces was so good due to the hurricanes blasting the hell out of it all the time. Anyway, i think it looks pretty cool and i'd like to get on it.

Is it true that the west face routes are accessable from your new route?

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This climb is on the south face, facing the Red Tit col. At the top of pitch 2 on Dalwhinnie you are above the south (right) fork of the Dione west face couloir. All (minimum 5 independant with multiple variations)the climbs on the west face of Dione can be accessed by descending this gully. I havn't been down it so I'm unsure of how difficult it is.

Although the first two pitches of Dalwhinnie have been freed with mountain boots and a 30lbs pack, us mortals would definitely want rock shoes.

It is easier to access this gully if you can get to about 70m above bergschrund just up from the base of Dalwhinnie and follow a ramp system up behind a pillar mentioned on our topo then descend the 4th pitch of Dalwhinnie. The bergschrund starts to form mid June typically and is nearly impassable by early July.

The clip up was a very Euro concept except we put in a good effort to stay away from cracks. With a little rotary assistantace it would make an excellent day trip from Squamish.

[BK]

Two parties repeated D on D on dione last saturday. Overall the climbing was good and recommended and certainly unique for alpine rock around here. In general, it felt a little contrived here and there as gear and / or crack climbing was often within a meter or two of the face climbing that comprises the majority of the route. This feeling pretty much falls off the radar for the upper half as the steepness and quality of the face climbing really ramps up into three star quality.

The topo is accurate and as noted rapping the route would be possible but odds of snagging ropes and causing rockfall seems likely. Too bad as its otherwise necessary to carry boots, poons and / or axes up the route for the usual mountaineering descents. Perhaps a more direct rap route on the lower half would be possible?

We took a lite crack rack and felt that a fair number of the bolts could be chopped without compromising the safety and perhaps even improve the quality. I'm not trying to be too critical in this observation as I think you guys created a really good route, just that in order to loose that occasional "contrived" or over bolted feeling the light rack could fill the gaps easily and actually make it more interesting and aesthetic. I totally understand the desire to avoid the crack systems as the climbing there is typically sub standard compared to the excellent face climbing out on the walls and slabs.

Good effort on a mega sport project on a very scenic high wall a short stroll from the fantastic Haberl Hut.

Note to Dave Jones et al: Perhaps this and other alpine related stuff deserves its own page?
There is a fair amount of alpine (chehalis / slesse / Habrich etc) info that really gets lost in the ocean of low elevation Squamish centric stuff. It would be way easier to track and archive with it own page - no?

[Brendan]

Bruce, post some pics up please.

[Chris155]

I have images but no patience to figure out how to attach them, so here is a moat capture !

To post an image use the image tag located above the text box in the edit/post mode. Paste in the hyperlink from Flickr, Picasa or whatever photo server you use.

[natsdad]

Nice video, Chris155.

PM David Jones and he'll help you with the photos. We'd love to see 'em.

Steve

[squamish climber]

Note to Dave Jones et al: Perhaps this and other alpine related stuff deserves its own page?
There is a fair amount of alpine (chehalis / slesse / Habrich etc) info that really gets lost in the ocean of low elevation Squamish centric stuff.

Bruce cool idea and that's for bringing this route to our attention. It sounds kind of unique, a bolted alpine route. Anybody know of any others?

[Chris155]

Here is a quick trip report link from colin hayley- mixed with another route but some images of Dione.
CC,

http://www.colinhaley.blogspot.ca

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Nice to hear you got up there Bruce and Co. If only the whole route was like the first or top 4 pitches. I just got back from a few weeks of travel and came across the discussion here and on SuperTopo.

http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/threa ... 01&tn=3740

It looks like there were a few questions in that discussion that I could possibly clear up. First though, I would like to say thanks to those who support the idea of this route and the others who have abstained from chopping it so far. Ten years ago Jamie and I did a route that was similar in grade to this ground up following dirty crack systems on the west face of the mountain. I’m pretty sure it has not and probably won’t be repeated any time soon.

Extra Bolts

Most of the times I have been up in the Tantalus I have only brought a few pieces of gear, with the goal of climbing moderate routes. The extra bolts on D on D are so that you can still go into the range with the small alpine rack…just bringing an extra half dozen draws, shoes and chalk.
I agree that a lot of the bolts are not needed. In fact due to a tactical error while we were up there we actually did the first ascent of the first 5 pitches ground up with a rack that consisted of two shoulder slings, two cordelettes and a #4 camalot. I also think it would have been pretty easy to pull our ropes and climb the upper face following natural features and protecting it with the gear we brought.

Instead, we bolted the climb so that others could enjoy it. We were looking for a “multipitch 5.10 sport climb”. In true Euro style it ended up at 11b, 10c obl. I too think it might be more aesthetic with less bolts…but I think less people would get on it. We skipped many of the bolts on the FA. Some bolts are there solely as “trail markers”, because we forgot to bring reflective orange diamonds. I agree that I would feel a little vulnerable being up there without any rack other than draws but I guess if things went really sideways and you chopped a rope you could still get off by going down bolt to bolt.

The one thing I do feel bad about is putting an anchor in the middle of the SW buttress route. We spent a few hours at this point hiding from the sun and talked about this anchor at large. We bolted it considering the following:

1. It provides a rap station for all the routes on the face as well as the couloir. If someone comes down the couloir and finds the bergschrund impassable you can now walk out the ledge behind the towers to this anchor and do 3 rappels (60m rope) down around the schrund.
2. Natural rappel anchors are available at this point but two bolts are less unsightly than a mess of tat. IMO!
3. The route up to this point also provides an alternate start to the SW Buttress as well as a bunch of the west face routes when the schrund is impassable.
4. The bolt anchor is in a more user friendly position than the original anchor on the SW Buttress which is at feet level over an edge in boulders or it can be avoided if climbing through.

Please feel free to chop this anchor if you feel it preserves the SW Buttress route…which is a great climb!

Parks
We were conscious of the park and I had looked through the publicly available management strategy before we went up there. The route was, as we could see, outside the park and nowhere was their mention of a power drill ban.
If you wanted you could actually land at the big windscoop just south of the base of the couloir about 15 minutes from the base of the route. This would be no worse than landing at the base of the west face of Dione or the SW flank of Mt Currie as many do every winter. I strongly advise against this as you will likely land on top of someone and ruin their day. The Heli companies are very reluctant to land here anyway because of an old agreement with Parks.

Climbing with boots and crampons
It is a bummer having to bring the boots up the route. We did look around for a rappel option, the best of which looked like the buttress to the south of the couloir. In the end we felt the current rappel route down the Y gully further south on the ridge was the safest option. On the weekend we did it, it was warm enough that two days in a row we did not have to bring up crampons, 5.tennies were fine.

As we had a drill up there we also thought about replacing all the sling and tat rappel station on both the upper part of regular SE Ridge route and the gully descent. After a lot of debate we only added one rap anchor in the middle of the normal rappel line. Contrary to the park mandate we left the ugly tat anchors because we felt that they were a lot easier to see than a pair of bolts and chain…thus a safety issue. Imagine coming down at night as I know many have and missing a set of bolts!

Opinions and comments
Mighty Hiker, one day I will call you when a seat becomes available and invite you on one my of my heli hiking adventures. You really gotta try it! You’ll love it. I’m sure we can get you to pose for the odd photo too. I’m also all for via ferratas and gondolas….it is all about location, location, location. Standing in Squamish or at the Haberl hut you can’t see the bolts on Dione!

I did Infinite Bliss last year and it was brilliant. I only wish there was a walk off. Nobody would ever go to this face if it wasn’t sport bolted (note there are several pitches with no bolts or gear).We spent as much time rappelling the 2500ft face as we did climbing. I have an updated topo of it if anyone is interested.

GF, in 2002(?) on the west face we climbed 6 pitches of rock left of the lower west face couloir, which put us on top of the left (north) fork of the chute. We then followed the buttress straight up. It was about 300m north of your line. On another note , we read in the hut log that Madaloni and company freed the Zwecker/Spagnut variation to your route at 11b a couple of years ago.

Cheers
C