Discouraged by the crappy ice conditions Wes and I ditched our ice climbing plans and opted for some cold weather free climbing. Having free-climbed many easy routes in below freezing temperatures we never tried climbing moderate/hard routes in these temps, so we wanted to see what would happen. Here are the results:

"Warming" up on Maria



Gloves off for the Le Teton crux:







And Directissima



It was surprisingly fun and it was only really cold when we took our gloves off. By the end of the day the wind was really whipping but having the cliff to ourselves more than made up for the bit of suffering and the lack of snow meant we stayed dry.

Proud stuff. Way more fun than trying to send your hardest with dogs yapping, kids crying, sweat in your eyes and bugs biting your ears; and I'm sure you got some pump going, too.

Wow. That's all I can say.

and no ticks or chiggers!!!

Awww, but you didn't REALLY do Directissima! That arete to the left looks awfully lonely in your last shot.

Bt who am I to criticize...the hardest thing I've done in the past two weeks is rotate my tires.

how do you do directissima Rob? That looks a lot like how i did it... traverse to the pin and go up with some big reaches on good holds..

the other question is just how you shot that pic of Dir.... are you just leaning back from the stance I never belay at? the camera looks somewhat lower than that.

Those ice boots remind me of rock climbing in Vasque Ascenders BITD. What were we thinking?

Yeah, looks like a pretty normal path to me, too.

GO

cfrac and friend did the normal path. Rob was jokingly suggesting that cfrac should have done a more direct variation which goes straight up once you get around the corner, avoiding the ramp and the traverse and instead making some 5.10 moves up to the pins.