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Of Life and Rocks
Telecom Tower – Double Cone – Single Cone Grand Traverse
Aaron Ferenci and Terra Dumont
November 9th 2010
The Lake Alta Cirque is one of my favorite places for
climbing, especially when I only have a day or don’t feel like an epic trip. Easy
access, nice rock, beautiful views, it has it all. Aaron and I went for a day walk
up to the saddle and both felt inspired to do the ridge, so decided to come
back the next day and do it. I had already done the traverse once, the summer
before, but was keen to do it again.
We packed a light rack (3 cams, 4 wires, 4 quick draws, some
cord to rap off of and one half rope) just incase – last time I had done it
without a rope, but with a bit more snow around things could be different. The
first part of the ridge up until about half way up Double Cone is quite
straightforward – easy though exposed scrambling. Then comes what I find to be
the crux – a ~ 10 m vertical section that would be grade 15 or less, just very
high up! After that there are a few more steep sections before toping out on
Double Cone – with a view of Mt. Cook, Mt. Aspiring, Mt.
Earnslaw, Mt. Tutuko….
We then dropped down then started up Single Cone. This involved crossing some
soft, steep snow slopes, which Aaron found understandably interesting in his
running shoes. We jumped back on rock as soon as possible, and finished
scrambling to our next summit. We enjoyed a lovely lunch, before heading down.
We tried down climbing, but given I’m not a strong down-climber and the slopes we where about to dismount on
looked very avalanche prone, we went back up, found the rap anchors and rapped
off. Once reaching stable snow slopes we pulled out my pack liner and enjoyed
some quality tobogganing.
Terra :)