Gray Falls, Ingles Creek, Eastern Washington
Well the cold cold cold was great for the ice and bad for the snow. Mikey, Jens Holsten and Max Hasson took advantage of the great (for Washington) ice conditions to practice swinging our appendages around with pointy things attached to them. Gray Falls had just recently been discovered by 2 Cascade hardmen, Craig and Mark, who I don’t know. It was a super fun day, long walk (6 miles each way) and about 900 feet of ice. We roped up at the bottom, and did 4+ pitches, the first 2 falls are WI3 and then the last one is WI4. It was fairly wet. Lots of water raging under the ice. But our hands stayed dry, and it was fun as a 4 pack, all be it extra standing around. I followed the WI4 pitch just as it got dark (we didn’t leave the car till 10am) and then we scrambled the last few hundred feet, following the faint trail which was quickly filling with fresh snow. After brewing some coffee at the base, we headed out on the long dark slog back to the car. Walking sure is not very interesting when you can’t see much…… the beautiful snowy boulder strewn creek was hidden in the dark, and all we saw was the cone of light sparkling with falling snow and foggy with breath.
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