East Face

This 16-pitch winter route aims for a series of corners just left of the summit pyramid. The most difficult section is on the upper third of the face with two crux pitches of steep technical ice. At half height there is a large obvious steep gully which was avoided by traversing into the top from out left. The first ascent party experienced an unplanned bivvy near the top of the face below the final crux, but this could have been avoided by an earlier start and climbing in the longer daylight hours of August. This crux was a pitch of near vertical chandelier water ice. If the face is climbed in thin conditions, short snowstakes, pitons and snargs to bash, weld and coax into the mountain would be better than a rack of shiny titanium ice screws, although these would still come in handy. The face seems to form up between June and September. After September, because of the low altitude and sunny aspect, the ice on the face probably self-destructs.

Access to the East Face is via the Rainbow Valley and gullies on the south side of Wilmot Saddle to a notch at the base of the East Ridge. This notch leads down onto a large terrace that bisects the bottom of the face. The East Face is a spectacular sweep of rock. The upper third is the steepest section. The first ascent of the face took a line up the center, topping out close to the summit. The route starts on the right hand side of three faint pillars in the middle of the face. Careful route finding is required through the top of these, at grade 16, as you move slightly left to line up with the top of the summit pyramid. It then carries on up to a pocketed slab on fantastic rock (grade 14 or not, take heaps of cams from size #1 Friend to #1 Camalot because you will wish to belay this if possible because the route is very hard to read from one move to the next due to it all being on horizontal pockets). This steepens and merges with the summit pyramid, a loose blocky grade 17. Sveticic & Dickson soloed most of the route, belaying only two pitches, in three and a half hours. Other rock routes are possible on this huge face. Note the summit pyramid is not the summit, the real summit is several hundred metres to the west. Descent was down the North Ridge, scrambling down ledge systems to the big terrace that bisects the bottom of the face, an easy descent route.