Earl Lunceford smiling at the top of the route having successfully completed the first ascent. The day was only half over though. The adventure wasn’t over until we were back at the truck. We still had to rappel down 700 feet, scramble another 600-700 feet down to the kayaks, then paddle back to the truck.
rim. Once we reached that, we knew we had done it, but the work was only half over. We still needed to get down — 1,300 feet back to the lake and our waiting kayaks. Now was not the time to relax. Statistically, most climbing accidents happen while climbers are rappelling. Add in the risk of rock and icefall, our exhaustion level, how late in the day it was, (there’s no question that my reduced physical fitness lev - el certainly held our progress back a bit), and the extremely complex na- ture of the anchors we had to build meant that we needed to stay on our A game until the very end. A couple hours after reaching the top of the climb that I had been dreaming about for over a decade, we
like that meant immediately bailing and rappelling as fast as possible to the bottom. By the time Earl belayed me up to the top of the second pitch, I was tired. This was the biggest ice climb I had ever embarked on, and I was not in the shape I used to be. Alas, we still had about 400 feet of climb- ing to go. I quickly led the next 70-me- ter pitch despite my utter exhaustion. The third pitch was unremarkable as a mostly steep snow climb with sever- al short ice and rock steps. >> Realizing a dream The final pitch was another 70 me - ters up a thin ribbon of variable ice to the top of a gully at the edge of the tree line and not far from the canyon
lumbered back to that isolated beach where our kayaks sat waiting for us in the dark. We took our time getting our climbing gear off and our kayak- ing gear on while watching the early evening turn into night. We set back off on the water, back toward the launch and the truck. Once there, we could finally quietly celebrate our accomplishment over a victory beer on a cold and deserted boat launch in North Idaho. Le Carcajou, WI3 250 meters, first ascent Earl Lunceford and Chris Celentano. N
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