I decided to take a few days off work for the holidays and go stretch my legs.

Saturday I got an alpine start of 7am (haha) and headed up to the North Peak glacier to look at how the couloirs are shaping up this year -

left

middle/right

I traversed up from there, hoping to do some the Northwest Ridge. Looking down at the start from where I was I decided instead to cross a suncupped snowfield to what the SP route page calls the 'second impasse'. Wish I'd taken a pic, but there's kind of a chimney-ish thing (2nd or 3rd class) which offers a view of Upper McCabe Lake -


I scrambled up to the ridge from there - here's the part I missed out on (plus the 5.3 crux :)


I headed up from there. I didn't feel strong enough to stay on the ridge proper, but took some kind of class 3-ish bypass on the right side. A view of the fun parts of the route -


After a short bit of that, the route becomes class 2 walking.


From further up -


The views were of course stellar -



At the summit I heard voices and looked down at the couloir exit - skiers ! Sure enough when I got back in town there was a post on SP from the guys who skied the couloirs.

Thought about doing the glacier route on Conness, but by then I'd had enough for one day :)