We walked up in the morning, passing a swiss guide and his client who made some remarks at the car park about the size of our sacks and obviously coulden't live up to them! After about 45 minutes you pass Chantilly Falls on the left which I did earlier in the year, and then after another 15 the Moonlight/Snowline area which is looking pretty thin at the moment. 400m or so past this we came across Combo Falls which had been on our list of potential objectives, but at WI2 and relatively short it looked a little bit easy. This is the last route in the most recent guide.
Unpacking gear in the upper creek, Rehab Wall behind.To get to the upper creek from combo you can follow the creek base as the creek bends to the left and approaches a waterfall, bounded by two impassable cliffs on either side, the falls itself were frozen and looked climbable being a short pitch of WI2/3 however the plunge pool below was not and none of us fancied going for a swim - this might be possible in the depths of a cold winter. We scouted for a way up the rock ledges to the left of the falls but to no avail, the rock is also very loose and fissile her. The best option we found was to back track about 100m from the falls before climbing a shallow gully on skiers left, and then bushwacking through forest for around 150m of heigh until you gain the ridge crest, then carry on traversing above cliffs on the other side of the waterfall until the gradient lessens and you can get down to the creek, now above the falls. From the falls this takes around 45minutes - so all in all to get in your looking at around 2 hours, but I imagine under fresh snow this could take a hell of a lot longer.
We wondered around the creek for a while to scope out some of the routes, we had a little bit of beta but not much so decided to go for what looked like a nice WI3 pillar style route just to the right of Rehab Wall, the mixed climbing area. It consisted of an approach pitch of no more than WI2- which we soloed, followed by the crux of the climbing, a 20m freestanding vertical pillar with some very chandeliery ice. Above this was was another pitch of around WI3 which lead to the top.
Me leading the WI4+ crux pitch of Slurpee.I lead the steep pillar with Frank holding my ropes and Joe taking photos. Good screws were a rarity, especially in the bottom half, the fact that I managed to thread a collection of columns about half a meter deep into the pillar highlights this I think. All was going well until about a third of the way up I pulled up on a poor hook, the axe pulled through the ice as I made the move, both my feet blew and the next thing I new I was hanging a few meters further down the route looking up at my other tool still planted up on the route. Frank checked I was ok, and I did likewise as I brought down quite a bit of ice. The screw that held me had a screamer on it and I ripped about a 1/3 of it, I do wonder if I'd had a static sling on it instead if it would of pulled. Anyhow I lowered down and retrieved one of Frank's tools and then carried on back up, climbing a little more carefully until I got to the better ice above, finally pulling myself over the top quite relieved. I brought Frank an Joe up who both agreed it was a pretty scary pitch before Frank led up the final easier pitch, we both followed and then got off in two abseils.
A little research after showed the route to be Slurpee WI4+, albeit in pretty tricky conditions because of the ice, one of the hardest things I've led here.
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