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steve shea
climber
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Condolences to the families. Ya, 50lbs sounds huge for that route. This is why I always preferred steep alpine routes and mixed routes. At 70+ they clean off. But no matter, if you are weaving in and out of seracs on lower angle snow with weak layers and then add heating and 50lb packs on a guided route with six...
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Port
Trad climber
San Diego
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50 lb. packs....seems awfully heavy for a climb of that duration. I have a much lighter pack for longer, more difficult climbs.
Mine was 39lb on LR. Not sure why the extra weight but perhaps AAI requires something extra for their climbers.
I'm very confused about taking an extra night high on LR. From my memory, I can't recall anywhere even remotely resonable to setup. Better to push on and finish the damn thing.
Damn tragic for these folks.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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I know the LR but am trying to picture the scene. Does anyone have a photo with diagram of best guess on where they were, where they ended up? Chugach
If they fell or were avalanched from high on LR, seems like they most likely would have ended up below the Willis Wall. Which is a bad place indeed, and would explain the reluctance of the Park Service to attempt a recovery.
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Scott Patterson
Mountain climber
Craig
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50 lb. packs....seems awfully heavy for a climb of that duration.
Not sure why the extra weight but perhaps AAI requires something extra for their climbers.
I admit that I haven't gone on that many guided climbs (though I used to guide backpacking trips) and the vast majority of my climbing trips have been unguided, but it seems to me that much of the time when a guide service says you will be required to carry 50 lbs or whatever, your actual pack weight is actually lower.
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phylp
Trad climber
Millbrae, CA
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This is just awful.
I'm a little surprised that Seamstress hasn't weighed in with information. She usually has a lot of information about things going on in that region.
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Slabby D
Trad climber
B'ham WA
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The following website has some nice photos of how icy and technical the upper section of the ridge can be.
Liberty Ridge photos
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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12,800' on LR is almost right at the right edge of this pic. Not a lot of good tent sites there but
more to the point your major difficulties are virtually over so why would you stop there?
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ms55401
Trad climber
minneapolis, mn
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seems like an odd place to camp. I always figured that if you launch from Thumb Rock, you better commit fully to the summit plateau or head back to Thumb Rock. Any place in between is, as we sadly have seen, truly no-man's land.
Has a consensus emerged as to what happened? Supposing they were in-camp, and were anchored in some fashion, I guess it's no big deal for an avi to take the entire camp for a ride. What I'm having a hard time envisioning is a catastrophic climber fall on one rope taking out the other.
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Guck
Trad climber
Santa Barbara, CA
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We dug a platform in good weather. It was just big enough for the tent and took about one hour (we were a party of two).
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Groveler
climber
NorCal
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Jun 13, 2014 - 07:11pm PT
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In case anyone is still wondering about this...
We were a couple days behind that party on the route. We arrived at Thumb Rock about 11am on Saturday and watched the helicopters search for several hours, not knowing exactly what had happened. We could see debris (gear) on the glacier below the Willis Wall.
The next day, climbing the route, we found a lot of unconsolidated snow on the ridge. The final section on climber's left side of the ridge, along and above the Black Pyramid up to about 13,000 feet, consisted of unconsolidated sugary snow in varying depth up to about a foot or more, over ice. Zero bonding between the snow and the ice, especially toward the top. The ice was bare in some pretty large patches, which I climbed through for fun, but it looked like the normal result of wind and sun exposure. We didn't notice any obvious avalanche paths on or near the route itself (but plenty elsewhere). I can't see anyone camping on this section of slope as they would have had to carve out platforms from solid ice.
Once above that final section of the ridge, there's a relatively flat area below the final bergschrund, around 13,000 feet, but a lot of that area seems like the fall line would be down the Liberty Wall (climber's right) side of the ridge. So it's unclear to me where they would have camped. With that said, NPS probably knows where they were, as they reportedly found some pickets that I assume were used to anchor tents.
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