I can rule out Wandering Dutchman Couloir as it does not fit the story.justiner wrote:I remember this story:
http://www.postindependent.com/sports/o ... s-earlier/I can't tell what couloir they were talking about - I can't think of anything it could be except the Wandering Dutchman ... From below, Wandering Dutchman looks pretty gnarlyFrom their vantage point, it appeared as if the snow followed a straight path down to the basin below. What they didn't know was that what looked like a clear path to the bottom was actually a line-of-sight illusion that hid a large field of exposed boulders.
...
The three eyed the couloir and prepared themselves for the descent. John Heckert, being a bold and adventurous man, volunteered to go first. He sat down to slide and picked up tremendous speed almost instantly. His attempt to self-arrest proved futile as he plummeted down the chasm, hurtling toward the rocky teeth protruding from the snowcover below. He crashed into the stone at a high speed and was killed instantly.
If you skip to "TV for the night" on my Capitol TR where I go via WDC (reloaded the pics and nixed the PB hotlinks), you can see it doesn't match the description. Take the following excerpts from the story:
John Heckert was part of a three-person team that had hiked up toward Capitol Peak from their basecamp at Snowmass Lake. They had already reached the top of Snowmass Peak two days before, and the group's goal was to summit each Fourteener in the area. The team, consisting of Heckert, who lived in Wilmington, Del., Richard Slusser of Aurora, Colo., and Eileen Ginter of Denver, continued on and, shortly after reaching the top of Capitol, decided to attempt a glissade down a couloir toward Pierre Basin in hopes of saving time and returning to camp before dark.
"In a matter of seconds he was swept out of sight where he struck the rock. ... "The snowfield here was quite steep, possibly at an angle of 30 degrees or so, and it was actually no more steep than the snowfield below Snowmass Peak at the beginning that we had glissaded only two days before," Slusser said.
* It is far from the summit, past K2, not "shortly after," and no shortcut.When asked if he would've attempted a glissade down the couloir, his mood lifted, an impish smile forming. "I know it wouldn't have happened to me because I couldn't get across the knife's edge,"
* WDC has a lot of run (see TR pics). Angle of 30 degrees? The start of WDC from the top would be steeper then mellow, but it read like theirs went from mellow to steep and into sizable boulders.
* The Knife Edge isn't an obstacle to reach it.
If you go to http://www.summitpost.org/capitol-peak/816421/c-816641 and click on the image of Capitol from Daly for a larger version, you can see the whole standard route from the lake and WDC notch on the left (atop a snowfield, somewhat camouflaged if you don't zoom in). You can also see WDC from hills above El Jebel, CO.
WDC formed due to this weakness running through the rock. It looks gnarly from afar, but going up wasn't bad. I found getting from the saddle onto the ridge trickier, and the photos show why.
Another look at WDC: