Jim gently hinted that we should stop and camp there instead of continuing on the route, which seemed like it was starting to decrease dramatically in flatness.

We were woken up by morning alarms and rain pounding on the tent and seeping into the vestibule. We definitely weren’t going to climb in the rain and there was nothing to do about the weather except sit there or leave. Alex and Andy and I chose by inaction to sit there in our dry-ish tent with our 2 days of extra food and go back to sleep.

We were woken up again a couple hours later. This time Jim and Nino were hinting, not so gently, by having their tent already packed up and ready to go. The guidebook back cover view was hidden in dark cloud but whatever was happening behind that cloud was definitely not improving things. We went back down.

Was that the right time to decide to bail or could we have climbed it if we’d waited another day? Were we not persistent enough in the face of a little discomfort, or wise in quitting while it was easy to quit? If we’d gotten an earlier start could we have gotten higher that first day and seen snow instead of rain? Should we could have chosen a different objective, waited for a better weather window? Were all these things we should have known already?



We parted ways with Jim and Nino and headed back home via Squamish and Index. Back to where we could trust bolts and gear in solid granite to protect us and let us fall and fail.