Guinness Stout

Name of climb

Guinness Stout

Ice quality was:

Good

The day was:

• Cloudy
• Warm

Wx: temps stayed around 0C for the day, wind was calm & there were intermittent flurries throughout the day, no significant accumulation.

A 70m rope gets you to a belay tree (to the right) in the throat of the gully leading to Stout, from the top of the last pitch of Guinness Gully. We took 1 hour to post-hole through unsupportive avy debris & facets to get to the climb (I'll attribute the lack of a good freeze as the cause).

We climbed 2 pitches of 'approach ice' to get to the base of the main piller (cut down on rope drag). The final pitch was a beauty, definitely in the 4+ category (maybe even 5). We climbed a dry line just R of centre on good ice. There's tons on snow on each top out, with almost 18" on the last pitch. I didn't find an obliging tree for an anchor at the top so we V threaded off. A 70m rap gets you to the base of 'P2', & one more short rap gets you off.

Of note, there is a fallen tree in between the top of the ice on P2 of Guinness Gully & the rappel (tree) higher up, blocking the usual rappel over P2. At about the same elevation as the original rap tree, there is a replacement tree "lookers right' of the snow gully. This gets you to the rap trees above P1.