Craig and I had had a phone conversation the night before about where we wanted to go. The avalanche forecast was “considerable”, so we were cautious, about where exactly to go. We decided we’d aim for the Douglas Boulder as there was a fair amount of snow so A) we didn’t fancy plodding through heaps of it to get places and B) we imagined finding gear and things may take a while so didn’t want to over commit ourselves. We again pushed bikes to the top carpark which is my new favourite, before I save enough pennies for a key to get passed the gate!
We left the bikes just as it was getting light and were greeted with another awesome sunrise as we headed to the CIC hut.
We geared up near the base of the boulder and after making sure we were both still happy with the snow and conditions made our way around to the base of the West Gully. This did require a couple of scrambles over icey steps but was all very manageable. We made our way up West gully a short way and met another couple who were new routing on the right hand side of the gully. We had a good chat with them and they let us know that there was a good in-situ Bulldog on the ridge crest for a first belay. We made our way up to this and climbed the West Ridge.
This gave a cracking climb at grade IV with good interest the whole way up. Entering onto it where we did, we ran the whole thing out in 2 long pitches, topping out in time for a snack a-top the boulder. There was some tat in situ and after a quick inspection of it we used it to abseil into the Douglas gap and descend the eastern gully.
Seeing as we had made good time on the western ridge we decided to give the eastern ridge of the Douglas Boulder a crack too. It’s slightly harder (IV,5) but we could see the line from where we had stopped, found a belay just on the edge of the gully and made our way up. We again did this in 2 main pitches with 1 final short pitch getting us to the top. The snow was surprisingly a fair bit “cruddier” making it a little awkward in places. The crux was the steep corner, which has an awkward pull onto a slab followed by another tricky corner. There was good gear to be had though thankfully and we again made it to the abseil in good time.
We walked back down to the CIC hut, sorted bags and walked back to the bikes, extremely pleased we had taken the effort to push them up when we eventually got to them. A great day completing the “Douglas Double” and happy we managed some fairly steep (for us!) Climbing.
If you like this report check out our others here. If this has inspired you to have your own adventure contact us or have a look at all of the adventures we offer click here.