The Winter Club.
What it is:
The Winter Club is a Division of Pullharder.org, an elite group of individuals who excel in the art of suffering.
The Winter Club (WC) has been designed as a motivational tool to pull off the always elusive and hard earned “Winter Ascent”. Membership is granted when you complete a route in the winter season. Right now there are no members, only fearful onlookers who wish to reach WC status.
The WC has two rules:
- The route must be completed within the winter season which officially begins around midnight, December 21st (winter solstice) lasting for 89 days ending March 20th around midnight (spring equinox).
- The route should be a minimum of Grade III exceptions may occur where approaches last many, many days.
Good Luck!
Posted in Winter Club | 5 Comments
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Cullen Kirk and I (Victor Lawson) Did an 18 hour, tent-to-tent ascent of Sun Ribbon Arete on Jan. 19th 2008. We topped out the route, but neglected the summit proper because we had both been there before, numorous times (lame excuse) and because the fullish moon was rapidly dipping below the horizon (good excuse). Also exaustion, dehydration (water froze aprox 9 hours into ascent) and a don’t give a fuck attitude helped this descision.
I like your website.
Vic Lawson
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Whoops, Sun Ribbon Arete is on Temple Crag near the Palisades in the Sierra. It goes at IV 5.10- A0 but felt more like V 5.9 A2 in winter (we direct aided the main crux pitch and french freed other cruxes.) We had boots and gloves on at all times, the estimated temp was 0 F w/ wind chill.
Sorry about the double post.
Vic
I would say that the primary reasons that I was not into summiting, even through summits are important, was due to the fact we had niether bivy gear or a stove. Therefore as soon as we stopped moving the driving wind would push us to hypothermia. It was risky to tackle such a large route without the proper equipment. We learned so much from this climb. If one is wondering about Dark Star , Sun Ribbon could be a great route to warm up on to see if your up for the big one. I for one am not good enough at aiding yet, and a north face in winter is a tough place to learn.
Ya going on to the summit in that situation is a tough call given the conditions. Nice to see you bust it out in a push. I would have thought a bivy would be in order on that route in winter. You guys must have gone fast. How was the tyrolean traverse? Welcome to the Winter Club!
We didn’t do the Tyrolean, opting instead to rappel into the notch and then climb back up to the ridge which seemed faster and easier.
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