But, of course, my “happy to come back the next day” comment was foreboding. We awoke even earlier on day 3 to beat the light only to step outside and find Thunder Bay a low angle slab ice problem of extremely large size. Nate almost ate it getting to the car. The above was the only picture I took on day 3 and it was from inside the car at the start of the trail to White Lightning. It was raining/drizzling and about 0 degrees. But, before the picture was taken Nate and I explored the Northwest Face of McRae for possible routes – we couldn’t really tell if they were in from the car due to low visibility. After several hours and about 300 vertical feet of talus and some fun glissading we only came up with a couple empty gullies and set of footprints of some sorry sap doing the same as us from the day before.
It was my lead, though, and White Lightning was the only way to salvage the day. Thing was is it was raining. I racked up with 10 screws, I think, and didn’t really trust any of them when I moved above them. Thankfully the bolts that Nate skipped I remembered and I got a nice cold shower clipping the one anchor. The water leaking under my goretex gave me a wiff of the capilene I’d been wearing for the last couple days and I commented to Nate that we should have brought some soap. Through my wet dog smell I made it to the top and rung out my gloves noting how waterproof the material is that marmot made my shell gloves out of. Nate blasted to the top before I froze and we got the heck out of there.