Was it a technically difficult climb?
| The answer to this question
depends upon the climber's experience and technical skills. A strong climber with a lot of
experience on crampons, especially someone who is comfortable on ice slopes greater than
60 degrees, would probably consider the West Buttress Route
technically easy. On the other hand, experienced climbers die on this route almost every year, so it's not exactly "easy". Speaking for myself (Stevo), I found it to be very challenging for where I was at, technically, at the time. As you can see from the climbing resume which I handed in with my application, I had five years of mountaineering experience at the time of our trip. In those five years I crammed in an enormous amount of hiking and peak bagging, a fair amount of technical climbing, very little ice climbing, and a few trips on Mount Rainier. I had also gone through a few of the mountaineering courses offered by the Colorado Mountain Club. I found the following five sections on the West Buttress Route to be technically challenging: |