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Neander
Mountain climber
Reno, NV
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Topic Author's Original Post - May 14, 2008 - 07:37pm PT
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Left Hand Mendel Couloir: a.k.a. “Ice Nine”
In July 1967, Roy Bishop and I climbed the Left Hand Mendel Couloir. We climbed this route entirely on ice. We were able to anchor on rock for most of the pitches.
The winter of 1967 was a heavy snow year and the ice in the left hand couloir is formed from melt and re-freezing of the summit snowfield. That July, the couloir was filled entirely with water ice. It was very beautiful and very intimidating to us.
Roy, as it happened, was quite experienced in ice-climbing in the Canadian Rockies. He led the hardest pitches, including one vertical section. I was not so experienced, but had been around in alpine terrain.
Our equipment was primitive by modern standards. My Grivel 12-point crampons, for instance, had leather straps. We had two short axes, a pointed end piton hammer, and only one actual ice hammer. We had some ice screws, but most were of the sort that failed for Dan Doody in 1965. These were referred to as “coat hangers,” as I recall. They are best used for opening bottles of wine. Needless to say, we had to cut steps in places, but not, obviously, on the vertical section, where we did some fairly fancy chimney moves between icicles.
For reasons beyond my understanding, nobody seems to believe that we did the whole route, and it got named by the party of the second ascent, both of whom were fine climbers.
Because I have been a historian, I prefer accuracy of information, even in climbing guides, and narratives. Because I have been a writer, I prefer direct language. Also--perhaps because I share the sort of vanity that seems to develop in most climbers of my age--I believe we deserve credit for this first ascent, and the right to name it.
Michel P. Cohen
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Double D
climber
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May 14, 2008 - 07:58pm PT
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Michael...I've always wanted to do that ever since I first heard about it. Congrats on the 1st ascent! Maybe someone on ST could post some pictures to show how cool it really is.
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Alpine Raven
Mountain climber
Eugene, OR
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May 14, 2008 - 08:19pm PT
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Michael,
What would you name it?
Looks like you're getting credit here:
The left-hand couloir on the north face of Mt. Mendel is perhaps the most difficult alpine ice climb in the Sierra. This route requires a capricious combination of a wet winter snowpack and sustained melt/freeze conditions for ice to form in the gully. In July of 1967, Yosemite climbers Mike Cohen and Roy Bishop completed the first ascent of the gully. Finding that the ice had melted in the steepest section, they were forced to climb the rock wall to the side of the couloir. Cohen later revealed, “Although it has been assumed that we avoided the most difficult ice in the gully, this is not true. We were pretty hard-pressed to climb the upper slot in our floppy leather boots and flexible crampons, but we scratched our way up somehow."
That's from: http://www.trails.com/tcatalog_trail.asp?trailid=SHO075-056
David
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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May 14, 2008 - 08:56pm PT
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Nice post!
Colorful and accurate history is always appreciated around here.
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marky
climber
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May 14, 2008 - 09:16pm PT
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I don't think anyone will again encounter conditions such as what you climbed. Thanks for the write-up.
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Doug Robinson
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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May 14, 2008 - 10:04pm PT
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Hi Michael,
I'm interested in accuracy too (btw your post transposed the FA date -- it should read 1967), keeping history straight (hard enough at the best of times), and giving you credit for your FA.
That's why I asked you directly about your climb of Mendel Left the first time I saw you after Dale Bard and I had climbed on the same wall in 1976. Remember that? We were at a conference Mikel Vause hosted on Mountain Literature in Ogden, both riding in the back of someone's vehicle on our way to lunch downtown.
Now, my memory is a slippery slope, but I wrote this soon after we talked:
"In 1993 I ran into Michael Cohen, and his recollections clinched it: Ice Nine and Mendel Left are the same line. The only difference is that he and Bishop had traversed in from the right, above where we found both crux overhangs. That lower section had been dry for them, and they bypassed it on easy rock. They did the first ascent of the cramped upper chimneys, an extrordinary piece of climbing in floppy boots and hinged crampons, and before the advent of drooped-pick ice axes. We were lucky enough to find ice all the way through, and so we were able to make the first continuous ascent of the most direct line." (A Night on the Ground, A Day in the Open, Mountain N' Air Books, 1996, P. 106)
I hope that I accurately represented what you told me, and that it is sufficiently clear and direct.
I gave you credit for the FA, including your name, in the astonishingly poor gear of the time. I'm still in awe of what you guys did up there.
I took credit for Dale's and my climbing ice up the lower section that you said you had bypassed on easier rock to the right because it was dry. As ice it contained both crux vertical sections. I estimate that our direct line was 30% to 40% longer than yours, a pretty significant direct variation. At the time we couldn't believe you guys had climbed such steep ice. For the cruxes, we were right. For the upper pitches, I'm still way impressed by what you did with gear you had.
The only information we knew of in 1976 was Roper's freshly published The Climber's Guide to the High Sierra. Here's what it said:
"Route 4. Left Mendel Couloir. Class 5. A short section of ice reputed to be angled at 80 degrees is found low in this couloir. Generally, the route is between 40 and 60 degrees."
That 80 degree section matches the climbing up to and through the chimney section. It starts right where you would have traversed in from the right (because the rock above went from easy to steep or overhanging). So that would be "low in the couloir" for you, and middle of the climb for us.
I feel like I have the climbing history sorted out between our climbs. What do you think?
But the clash of names could be more of a problem.
I stand by naming what we did Ice Nine. There is a significant enough difference between our climb and yours. But together with the lack of information, there has been a lot of confusion since.
It seems my name just appealed to more people. Like instead of the South Buttress of El Cap, everyone calls it The Nose.
I didn't intend to eclipse your name. I didn't even know, then, that our routes coincided for 60 % of their length.
So, now I'm curious how your memory compares with mine?
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Neander
Mountain climber
Reno, NV
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Topic Author's Reply - May 15, 2008 - 02:10am PT
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Doug,
Sorry for the typographical error produced by the inversion of seven and six. I was 23 years old in 1967.
It is possible that the lower sections of the couloir were buried by deep snow when we climbed them, though this seems unlikely: the snow was certainly deep over the cone of glacial ice below the couloir. It is possible that we climbed the steep lower sections you describe without touching the ice, but I remember a good deal of steep ice, though only one truly vertical section. What I do believe with some certainty is this: we put on our crampons at the base of the Mendel Glacier, we never took them off, we did not use them to climb on rock, or traverse in from the right. I don't believe I told you something else in Ogden.
No doubt the route you did was more difficult than ours, perhaps because of the conditions. I am certain that you and Bardini were better climbers than we.
The fact is that we did the route, from bottom to top, and the fact is that we did not name it after a metaphor in a Kurt Vonnegut book (though I must say I am fond of the book).
(Here is my thinking: It is one thing to speak of "The Nose" and another to speak in the manner suggested by names like the "Mozart Wall"--in the sense that the former is a result of common usage, and latter inventiveness, or fancifulness, or as some would say--since the name was a parody of Royal's prose--stylistic self-indulgence. As far as I know, Ice-Nine does not constitute common usage, but the imposition of a name on a place.)
I might say I prefer Mount Mendel's Left Couloir because this denomination does not confuse geography with imagination as much, or you might say that I prefer it because I am, myself left-handed. This sinister aspect of my symmetry might also explain the problem with sevens and sixes.
What I really wonder is this: has anyone been in touch with Roy lately?
Michael
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climblight
Mountain climber
Northern NV
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May 15, 2008 - 04:13am PT
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Cool route
Soloing in the lower couloir (Photo by Jeff Neri)
The upper ice leading to exit pitch.
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marky
climber
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May 23, 2008 - 11:09pm PT
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Mount Mendel
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Raydog
Trad climber
Boulder Colorado
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May 24, 2008 - 12:47am PT
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bitchen'
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dolomite_said
climber
the real
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May 24, 2008 - 02:57am PT
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off the cuff i don't think the second ascenters have anything to name or claim accept just that : the second ascent ... obviously an ice route will be different each time , but it's still "widow's tears" or whatever the route is .
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travelin_light
Trad climber
california
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May 24, 2008 - 01:00pm PT
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Has anyone been on it this year? I never knew that the Left Coulior was an early summer route. Like all Sierra coulior climbs I thought you had to wait until late summer for the alpine ice.
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Zander
Trad climber
Berkeley
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May 27, 2008 - 12:02am PT
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That route does look awesome!
Thanks for the posts all.
Zander
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poop_tube
Big Wall climber
33° 45' N 117° 52' W
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i was there 2 weeks ago. Times have changed. Lower part was late summer conditions. Blue ice with rocks that haven't seen sun in thousands of years beaning us. Hide your body under your helmet. Ice NONE. I wonder if anyone cares? Do all the ice climbing now! Couple years and there won't be any more ice
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Michael and Doug, congrats to you both for the climbs.
Claude Fiddler and I were there in October 1976, got beaten back by a huge storm, barely made it back over Lamarck Col. That couloir is still on my tick list
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crankster
Trad climber
No. Tahoe
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Nice! I've done the right side, that left line looked gnarly.
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