Cobb Squared - May 20, 2013

All the recent posts about sweet looking Couloirs on Cobb Peak, combined with the fact that my friend Troy's last name is Cobb, inspired a trip into the Pioneers on Sunday to see what this whole Cobb mania was about. The forecast was less than stellar, but since some of my best days in the mountains have come when I ignored a bad forecast that ended up being incorrect, we decided to ignore it and go anyway. Worst case we'd have a nice hike in the rain.

The day started out sunny:


And continued to alternate between cloudy and sunny all day. We watched several good looking storm clouds unleashing what looked like serious precip to our south, but they kept missing us and left us mostly in the sun all day.

Here is a picture of Cobb on the approach. You can see the thin white line of the comma couloir extending way down the face.


After an exciting creek crossing we dealt with some mild bushwhacking en route to our thin white line:


The snow in the lower drainage was not continuous. We hiked on a combination of snow and scree, with a few short class 3 sections to bypass some cliffs in the drainage. The views behind us just got better and better . . .




Once on the continuous snow I'd say 19 out of every 20 steps supported our weight and had nice styrofoam for our crampons to bite into, but every 20 steps or so . . . BAM You're up to your waist!

Better living through postholing:


Higher up was scrambling over snow and rock. The exposure was high, but the rock is solid, so we felt fine without a rope. The dark "cloud" well below us is actually by thumb over the lens 


Before we knew it we were on top. I thought for sure we were looking at a false summit, and would have a long way to go on the ridge, but nope we were almost on top. We did have a slight bit of ridge climbing to do since we took a left trending variation of the Comma Couloir towards the top.

Troy on a bit of knife edge ridge:


Troy soloing some mixed climbing near the summit.


Looking back at Troy from the top


The ridge to Old Hyndman . . . I'll be back for this!


Troy with Hyndman Peak in the background


There was a perfect "lounge chair" rock right on the summit. This is me enjoying summit hot chocolate and sunshine:


Summit baby, yeah! Cobb on Cobb! Me and Mr. Cobb on the summit!


There was a geocache on the summit. We took a sweet gold arrowhead necklace and left a fishing fly


On the way out we took our time and enjoyed the beautiful lush scenaery around the trail


9:10 car to car. Overall a great day!