Trip Date: January 1, 2008
Mountain: Round Top
Location: Mokelumne Wilderness
Route: North Face (East Side)
Who: Solo
Trip Report:
After a long night of partying till 3am, I awoke at 6am to get down to business. I drove over to Carson Pass, geared up, and left the car at 10am. I snowshoed approximately 4 miles to the base of Round Top with relative ease and felt good. I headed over to the base of the north face (east side) and cached my snowshoes and trekking poles at the base. Here I switched to crampons and an ice axe.
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I began climbing generally solid snow and neve up the lower portion of the face. Further up I started to hit some rock bands with mixed climbing. About 150 vertical feet from the summit, I hit an impassable cliff band. From this point, I traversed to my left (east). I found and climbed a steep couloir that pointed left up to the ridge top.
Once on the ridge, I encountered some exposed mixed climbing on the face of the false summit. From the top of the false summit, I traversed west across the ridge-top towards the summit. The final 50 vertical feet up the summit block consisted of an exposed traverse across a neve slab just under the rock face with large cliff drops below. A fall from this point would likely end at the bottom of the mountain. From this point, 20 more vertical feet of rock and mixed climbing yielded the summit.
Once on the summit, I felt a large sense of relief and accomplishment after completing a route unlike any other I had previously done. I planned to head down the west ridge, a nontechnical route I had previously come up with my brother.
While traversing across the ridge along the top of the mountain, I spotted a new couloir heading down the north face pointing slightly to the west. I could see quite a way down the couloir, but could not determine whether it had an exit toward the bottom or ended with a cliff. I decided to descend this route hoping that it would reach the bottom or that I would find a way to traverse across the face to viable descent route.
I descended approximately 200 feet of steep but stable neve, where I encountered a rock and ice wall 6 feet high. Under this chute was another steep and narrow neve slope pointing straight down the face. I carefully descended the rock and continued down the neve slope. As I continued lower, I could see that the neve couloir ended with larger rock cliff below followed by a vertical drop of over 300 feet.
Realizing that I was now unable to continue descent, I carefully turned around with a heightened sense of exposure after looking at what remained below. I began climbing back up the neve slope where I soon ran into the rock and ice band I had descended. Now aware that several hundred feet of cliff lay just below me, I attempted very carefully to climb back up the rock band.
The snow slope I was standing on collapsed under my feet, and I was now left with a higher rock-band to scale with ultimate consequences if I were to fall. With no choice to go any other way, I made one attempt and backed off when I felt like I was losing control of the climbing. After gathering composure, I made another attempt and succeeded in clearing the cliff-band and anchoring my axe just above. I felt that I had taken it too far at this point, because the climbing was difficult enough that a fall felt like a real possibility, the consequences of which would certainly have been fatal.
After re-climbing the rest of the couloir, I descended the west ridge, traversed over to my cache, and snowshoed the four miles back in pitch black by headlamp.
