Back to Farnham, one of the few that got away. Mt Farnham is the tallest peak in the nearly 400km long Purcell Mountains. When Ian and I tried last March<\/a>, we found a stout adversary, with ceaseless winds and hardly enough snow to cover the many chokes of the couloir. We made it up though, but the dream of linking the summit with the couloir remained for another time. I knew the summit block did fill in, I’d seen pictures in June. I figured it just needed that late spring snow, with nice high freezing levels so the snow that fell on the summit block would paste on instead of just blowing away.<\/p>\n I had been down in the doom and gloom of another season wrapping up too early, with damn near no spring precipitation, the best of the best lines that are just rock or ice before the wet heavy snow comes remained in that state. But all of a sudden, so late in the season I initially thought it was too late, the precip came, and lasted with good freezing levels. It was time to go back for Farnham. I had no idea how badly melted out the west couloir would be from the punishing spring-long high pressure, but there was only one way to find out. The beautiful steep north glacier on the Farnham-Hammond Col would be a good consolation prize if Farnham was no good.<\/p>\n Out of Golden at midnight, as I wanted to hit a short weather window that closed before noon. Plus, there’s a fair bit of spring snow up there sticking in untenable positions, my many tries at the Narao Peak couloirs years back have given me healthy respect the ease with which such snow awakens. Don’t feel the need for the sun to knock things down on my head. The trail up was as good as I remembered, but I got off course at one point on the traverse over to the hanging valley. I remembered that I was in sub-alpine terrain the whole traverse last time, and all I saw below was trees, so I traversed and climbed… and ended up on greasy slabs on Hammond’s NW ridge. I was able to keep givin er and end up in the hanging valley, glad I decided to go for hiking boots instead of clambering around in ski boots because then I definitely would’ve turned around before things got interesting, and that’s no fun.<\/p>\n