GR 405451 (‘Tiara Peak’) - WI2 (120m), South-West slope

Sunday January 8, 2012, I did a long slog up Porcupine Creek, solo climbed a short section of waterfall ice (WI2, 120m) then scrambled the South-West slopes/ridge of “Tiara Peak” (GR 405451).

I parked along the highway was charging up Porcupine Creek by 8:30am, unfortunately the creek bed became quite snowy with boot deep snow, with a very annoying thin, unsupportive top crust that would not support body weight, but did require additional effort to break though; this arduous plod continued for about 3.5 hours.

About four hours after leaving the car, I was swinging my ice tools into the cool little ice fall (GR399445). Not a very difficult climb, but an aesthetically interesting route, with most of the climb formed in between two large tilted slabs. About 120 metres of easy ice climbing ended too soon and so I packed away the tools, had a large lunch and picked a line to access scree on the South West slopes.

The plod was not too bad, deep snow gave way to solid scree, but to my surprise, the slope ended with a difficult (and snowy) down climb to regain the final summit scree slopes.

Final plod to the top was very, very windy and I reached the summit about 6.5 hours from the car. Last summit entry was from September 2011. From the summit I spied what looked like a nice ridge traverse heading North West, back towards the highway. Quick plod down, checking for access to gain the West Face, hoping to try the traverse route. When I reached the location of the down climb, I found relatively easy access to the West Face, so I headed down.

Turned out be very, very sketchy, steep slab covered with pebbles and pockets of verglas and rock hard snow patches. A lot of time and careful scrambling got me to the ridgeline; and so much for a quick ridge walk. Several steep slab gendarme sections presented difficult scrambling, but I eventually reached GR 395458, GR 392456 and GR385460. The descent from the final high point was down a steep drainage, with soft deep snow, but at least the trail breaking was downhill.

Finally reached Porcupine Creek and follow my earlier track, but still took a lot of energy. The last few km’s felt like an eternity, but forced myself to keep a quick pace. All in, 12.5 hours car to car. I decided to name my little first ascent ice route, “Tears of a Crown”, bet it won’t see a lot of traffic.