The Three Finger Bang*, March 13, 2004

*2nd attempt at a first descent of the East Face Couloir on Three Fingers (6,854ft.)

Who:  The Hummels, Sky Sjue, Ross Peritore, Bill Frans and Sam Avaiusini

Well, we said we'd be back, so here we are.  Older and wiser?  You decide.  This time, instead of making our approach via the Clear Creek Road, we opted for the more direct Squire Creek Road approach.  The road was blocked about 900 vertical feet short of the 1900ft. trailhead.  This left us with roughly 1.5 miles of road to hike.  Here's why:

As we reached the trailhead we opted to follow the trail up the valley towards Squire Creek Pass...BIG MISTAKE!  We should have hugged the creek at the valley floor.  Instead, we gained elevation via the trail and had to give it all back by skiing barely snow-covered 40° rock slabs.  By the time I got to this section, there were several totally bare sections to negotiate.  "No way!", I said, "Not on my brand new Rossi B2s!"  Instead, I opted to down climb the steep treed area next to the slabs.  This actually worked well enough that I caught back up to Ross in a few minutes.  We finally made it to the valley floor where we should have been all along.  By the time we made it into the cirque and actually started up the route, it was past 11:30. Time was working against us and the sun would soon be falling behind the peak to the west. The route laid out above us:

We climbed the red (when Sky got to where the red line met rock, he down climbed and ascended the green).  Bill, Ross and Josh stopped at the bench (blue).  Jason, Sky and I went to the bergschrund (yellow).  We skied the green.  Here's a close-up:

The traverse into the couloir seemed pretty icy, and at 50°, there was not room for error.  Due to the impending schwackage to the car over unfamiliar terrain, we ultimately decided it was time to turn back and aim for hitting the cars by dark. 

The ski down from the couloir was actually quite a blast!  We skied the only remaining snow finger that connected the upper and lower cirque.  That pitch was exceeding 50° and had sick exposure to skiers left.

Despite getting skunked for a second time, the trip was a lot of fun and we had a great crew.

Click here for our previous attempt

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