A Weekend in the Ghost, by Brad Winter

My weekend was short but productive. Friday came with utter joy that
I would be climbing with a good friend and that meant I would be out
of Medicine Hat for the weekend (Hat is Hate without the "E"). I
arrive at MEC and try to get a hold of my partner without success so
I just rent her some tool and decide to head over to her place. Once I
got there she informs me that she can't make it. So I ponder my
options and then sleep off my frustration. The next day I do what any
sane guy would do, the next morning I head into the ghost on my own
with lots of fresh snow out there. The way in was decent if a "tad"
snowy so I kept the pedal down and kept on rolling, eventually I
foraged a new trail to the valley of the birds. Upon inspection of my
very wet truck post drive in I discover that the only running board I
had is now missing, so now both sides have the super cool snow
encrusted "super wings" that are my mounting brackets for the boards.
The valley of the birds was a great ramble however snow made things
fun. Dead Bird was soloed while "learning to fly " by tom petty was
playing in the head phones(don't ask I have no idea it was on my mp3
player). After a scramble up to the top of yellow bird I fixed the
line with the intention of coming back up with a shunt. that idea did
not go as planned. I let the rope fixed for a while while I ate my
lunch at the base (little did I know that I was much later than I
thought). I noticed the ice was very wet and rebuilding but I did not
think nothing of it other than I better put on the gortex. After
thirty feet up the rope was frozen solid and not feeding, requiring
much fighting with it. Which turned my hands into cold frozen blocks.
The re warming of frozen hands involved a glove shell being dropped.
After much frustration and yanking frozen rope through shunt for all
but the last 20 feet I got to the top. A long rope biting session at
dusk was intermixed with feeding the rope back and form over the rap
ring to get the rope to suppleness other than steel cable. Being
230lbs has it plus side that while on rap that any ice build up with
go through the device if I get enough speed so the 2 raps when
smoothly. and the down climbing in the snow was fine as well.

After I got to the truck and took off the ice encrusted armour that I
call my jacket and pants I found that my truck was just as frozen.
Once moving the truck did fine except for one thing which was soon to
become very apparent. brakes take a long time to defrost. All in all
it was a fun eventful day which should not have been that eventful. I
would have stayed the night however I left my sleeping bag at home and
I figured I had enough almost epics. I guess I am soft and would
never make a good alpinist.

So yeah here are the conditions. Also what setups work best for rope
soloing ice besides not using a rope with a worn out dry treatment,
and perhaps not setting up the rope in a stream.