Atlantic Peak - 13,841 ft

Date: 4-30-06

Climbers: George Barnes, MarkDB, Nate Stutzke

Route:  North Face Direct, Class 2

RT distance:  6.0 miles

RT time:  6 hours

Elevation gain:  2,900 feet

USGS Quadrangle:  Copper Mountain

Trip Report:

Mark, Nate, and I left the Mayflower Gulch 2WD trailhead just after 7AM and made our way up the road with snowshoes on our packs.  It will probably be a while before this road melts out enough to drive, but the snow has been packed well enough to allow easy travel.

At around 11,400ft we left the road to trek across the Mayflower Creek basin.  We found some faint snowmobile tracks here, and were able to walk across the frozen snow without snowshoes.  Our intent was to ascend the rugged west ridge on Pacific, traverse to Atlantic, and then come down the west ridge of Atlantic.  At 12,000ft we stopped to refuel and felt confident enough about the rest of our approach to cache our snowshoes.

1. Mayflower Gulch

2. Pacific Peak's West Ridge

3. Atlantic Peak

4. Mark and George

As we made our way into the Pacific-Atlantic basin, we took notice of some darkening clouds to the northwest.  Not anxious to deal with high winds and blowing snow on an exposed ridge, we began to look at Atlantic for alternatives.  We were far enough past the west ridge of Atlantic that we didn't really want to back track to it's start.  The north face of Atlantic was mostly bare, but did hold a promising snow climb that ascended nearly directly to the summit.

As we made are way to and up this snowfield, the already strong wind continued to increase.  About half way up the snowfield we began to wish we'd carried crampons and had to resort to cutting steps with our ice axes.  This got old pretty quickly so we worked our way over to the talus, and would follow this to the summit.

As we climbed higher on the face we experienced the full force of the jet stream like wind.  This coupled with heavy snowfall produced near whiteout conditions.  The summit arrived rather abruptly, and the only way we knew we were there was the lack of any higher ground.  We paused long enough on the summit to put goggles on and discuss our descent route.  To descend the standard west ridge would have us face into the wind for a long time on a fairly exposed ridge.  This didn't sound appealing, so we opted to reverse our tracks down the north face.  After rock hopping for several hundred feet we worked our way over to the face's central snow field.  We cautiously glissaded on several inches of new snow, making sure we stayed close to the rocks on one side.

As we made our way back to our snowshoes we were more than a little disappointed to watch the weather clear up over the summit of Atlantic.  Nevertheless, another great day in the mountains, where it doesn't have to be fun to be fun.