Death Couloir on Mt Morrison, Sierras

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Scott_Nelson

Trad climber
San Diego
Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 20, 2006 - 04:50pm PT
Has anyone done this route? Any beta?
I saw a picture that shows a steep gully to the left of the route...looks pretty sick. Anybody done it?

marky

climber
Dec 20, 2006 - 04:57pm PT
I think it forms only rarely, and unlike most couloirs in the sierra comes into condition in early season (April-June) before melting out.
nature

climber
Flagstaff, AZ
Dec 20, 2006 - 05:00pm PT
Ho-Man! Big Mo is a choss pile. I suggest wearing two helmets and shoulder pads if you try it. Do you have any more picts? I was dumb enough to attempt a solo ascent on Mo many years ago. Glad it became obvious to me that it wasn't the best of ideas early on. I ended up climbing up a gully that lead nowhere - I'm wondering where in relation to your photo is the gully I climbed.

thanks...
Josh Higgins

Trad climber
San Diego
Dec 20, 2006 - 05:07pm PT
Scotty, the above responses don't sound good. Want to climb in Yosemite instead?

Josh
Jerry Dodrill

climber
Bodega, CA
Dec 20, 2006 - 05:14pm PT
Which is the Death Couloir? The right or left gully? I've eyed that left line for a few years and have seen it in shape, except the bottom. Who did the FA of Death Couloir? Seems like there was a write up about that in a book somewhere.
Scott_Nelson

Trad climber
San Diego
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 20, 2006 - 05:23pm PT
The right line is the DC. Looks like a short step of technical at the bottom to cruiser terrain, as long as falling house sized blocks don't take you out.

The gully on the left may or may not have been climbed. Somebody on summitpost said they know a Yosemite guide who soloed the left gully, and wrote in the summit register, "How do you spell SCARED?"
atchafalaya

Trad climber
California
Dec 20, 2006 - 05:33pm PT
Yvon Chouniard & Dennis Hennek? "Never again" was the summit register quote if I remember right.
BCD

Trad climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
Dec 20, 2006 - 06:01pm PT
That pic was taken after a pretty large storm at the height of last years record snowfall. So it pretty much never looks like that.
Apparently it can form ice in the fall, but not very much. The rock on either side of the couloir is worthless. A freind of mine soloed it when it was still neve in the summer and said that a rope wouldn't have done any good anyway.

If you are looking at climbing it soon, there is a good chance you will encounter some of that solid ice left over from last year, as we haven't received much snow yet this year.
Batrock

Trad climber
Burbank
Dec 20, 2006 - 06:38pm PT
I believe the late Pete Schoerner of June Lake had climbed it many years ago. At least I thought I recall him talking about the route before he died.
LuckyPink

climber
the last bivy
Dec 20, 2006 - 07:11pm PT
wasn't this one of those routes from the 30's ? Mendenhall or Mendenhill? Seems like those guys were willing to climb anything. Selters talked about climbing this route in a slide show he did a couple years ago. Seems to have earned its name.
The Dude

climber
Truckee, CA
Dec 20, 2006 - 07:14pm PT
The DC hasn't ben in for a long time. I'm pretty sure it was Mendenhall who first climbed it. We went up thinking it was in about 5 years ago and took a look.... nope. We eneded up climbing a couloir to the right of the DC that can't be seen in that picture. From where we roped up it was about 3 rope lengths to hit the ridge. Mostly snow with some mixed in AI4. The ridge itself is pretty damn scary. That peak has some of the loosest rock I've ever seen in the Sierras, but one of the most asthetic summits.
Cheers
Jaybro

Social climber
The West
Dec 20, 2006 - 07:17pm PT
"The mountain is perhaps the loosest slagheap in the sierra...."
marty(r)

climber
beneath the valley of ultravegans
Dec 20, 2006 - 07:42pm PT
"(Morrison) holds a near-fatal attraction for climbers"
nature

climber
Flagstaff, AZ
Dec 20, 2006 - 07:54pm PT
can it be seen in this photo?


The right gully in scott's photo is a mafic intrusion if memory serves me. Mo is a limestone choss pile which is what makes it such a heap. Visions of house size blocks come to mind as I ponder a mafic intrusion in a sheared up limestone unit.

My graduate advisor once requested of one of my first climbing partners (also had same grad advisor) that he never go near that choss pile again. Bud wasn't a climber but knew enough of Big Mo to beg Floatin' Fred to stay away...
J&L

Mountain climber
Eastside
Dec 20, 2006 - 08:58pm PT
OK, here’s what I know. I never pay attention to these forums, but for some unknown reason my wife is a serial lurker. So, today she says, “didn’t you and Andy climb that gully on Morrison, people are asking about it”.

As best as I can tell from just about 30 years of looking at the thing, it needs warm weather in spring to get the snow melting in the upper couloir. Then a good cold snap to freeze the melt running over the 70-degree rock band at the bottom. Such was the case in very early June ’96 when Andy, Brad Rassler and I climbed it. At that time the rock band was covered in ice 6 to 12” thick. This was one of two times I’ve seen it in shape (not to say there haven’t been others.) Some rock did whiz by us on the approach cone but that was it.

As I recall the water ice was around a pitch, pitch and a half maybe, ~70 degrees with a short vertical section. The rest was firn and soft spring snow. There was some chockstone up high but it didn’t amount to much. We carefully checked out the left hand gully and pretty much decided it would be chossy aid just to get in it (I’ve never seen ice in the lowest part of this gully, and I would think it unlikely to form as there is no significant fetch for melting snow).

As I understand it, the right hand gully was first climbed by Chouinard and Robinson in the ‘70’s.

I have some pics I could scan but have no idea how to post them.
nature

climber
Flagstaff, AZ
Dec 20, 2006 - 09:37pm PT
J&L - if you take the time to scan your picts I'll put them on my server and post them for ya...
t-bone

climber
CA
Dec 20, 2006 - 09:44pm PT
is it true it was descended (skis)? i either heard that or it was mentioned in the BC guide. i always thought the death couloir was the sick looking left one.
Scott_Nelson

Trad climber
San Diego
Topic Author's Reply - Dec 23, 2006 - 06:10pm PT
Thanks for the info everybody. If anybody has a recent picture I would love to see it.
BLR

Trad climber
Reno
Apr 5, 2007 - 02:23am PT
Just happened on this thread, and I'll add my 2 cents for the record...Andy Selters, John Dittli, and I climbed the route in June 1996. The ascent was Mike Strassman's idea; he wanted to film it, and he did...there's a short clip of the ascent on Mike's Range of Light video, "Rock - The Soul of the Climbing Experience." If I remember the sequence correctly, Mike shows a telephoto of Morrison, zooms in on the Couloir, and most of the clip is of Andy leading the first pitch of water ice.

The sun was already warming the upper third of the route by the time we jumped on the first pitch. A sofball-sized rock dented one of Strassman's beta cams, and another found the leg of Strassman's cameraman, Mark McNally. Andy, John, and I were spared any direct hits.

I spoke with Doug Robinson a few days after the climb and mentioned our ascent of the "Y Couloir" on Morrison. I was surprised when he offered his congratulations on a f.a. of the "Death Couloir." It was the first time I had heard that name, and I was also surprised to learn that our ascent was the first. He explained that he, Chouinard, and Dennis Hennek had eyed the upper pitches from the road one spring, and climbed to the base, only to find the first pitch melted out. They got on the route anyway, but backed off after a harrowing episode on the rotten rock.

It's quite possible that the late, great Pete Schoerner soloed the route years before without telling anyone. That kind of project would have been right up Pete's alley. And I wouldn't be surprised to hear the route had been skied.

Best of luck...
marky

climber
Apr 5, 2007 - 02:31am PT
damn. taking that one off my tick list.
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