River nicely frozen over, no problems there ! The thing looks huge from afar, really imposing and beautiful. Another ice waterfall off to the left would also have been an option, and anywhere else would be a classic. But once we got up close to Topaze, we didn’t want anything else.
A party each were already climbing Opal and Topaze, sending teacup-to-fishbowl-sized chunks of ice down at bone-shattering speed. After awhile of pondering we decided to start up after we lost sight of the last climber on Opal, I guess we felt lucky. And I was ! On my way up the first pitch (which was arguably not part of the usual Opal route) I was nearly done in by a pretty huge chunk. I paused under the shelter of a curtain about 30 meters up, started to make an anchor in this safe spot, then continued as the frequency of ballistics had diminished.
Jay joined me at the first anchor and went off on his lead. He had a nice standing belay on a boulder sitting proud out of the ice at climber’s left. I traversed to him, we took some selfies and then I traversed back right continued the fun! An easy, short, but narrow gully against the rock took me to a chandelier section about 2 body-lengths high. There was a 6 inch horizontal gap in the main pillar of this thing, but it was actually convenient because it made for an excellent step once I was halfway up !
Time for a lesson: ice screws ball up, and longer screws are more likely to ball up. If you’re planning on saving 2 screws for your anchor, keep that in mind. If one anchor screw starts to ball up early, you can probably pull it out an clean it. If it balls up beyond 10cm you will not be able to clean that thing. Two options: 1) girth the shaft close to the ice and equalize it with the 2nd anchor screw, or 2) if there’s already other screw holes at your anchor station you can re-use a hole with the balled-up screw as long as the screw is protecting in leverage (vs. relying on strength of the threads biting in the ice).
Jay forgot his headlamp so he lead a bit of wi2+ in the dark like a bat, going by the sound of his axes to keep moving forward. After that we were done and dusted ! Rappelled through a lot of shrubs that made me worried for pulling the ropes, but otherwise a great end to a great day.
As a side note, the climbs on this property would be incredible in the summer. There has to be least 4-5 uber classic routes in there. Primarily slabs, but there were short crack sections and Fiat-sized roofs around too !! Probably there’s no access rights, but man they would be sweet.