Cara Sur de Pico Milluni

Gregg Beisly, Roberto Rauch and I made what we believe is a new route on the south face of Pico Milluni:

We called it Ya Pues (M5, WI4, 18,000', 500m of face followed by 500m of ridge climbing).  We were able t climb the initial 300m without ropes but falling would have been bad:

Getting to the first belay:

Nice hard snow, ice and easy mixed climbing:

Gregg on the crux:

Some patches of deep soft snow kept it real:

The middle portion of the route had a series of classic narrow mixed gullies:

Still a lot of face above:

A couple of enjoyable mixed moves on this pitch:

Roberto:

Better cold hands than rockfall:

Exiting the gullies onto the steep upper face:

Smiles all around for this excellent route:

Still aways to go:

Finally, the ridge:

And the prospect of some sunlight:

Looking 500m down the route:

At last into the sun:

The next few hundred meters were similar to the Upper Exum on the Grand Teton but 4,000' higher and maybe climbed one or two times in this direction.

The summit complete with cairn:

Nice late afternoon light:

Roberto waiting his turn to rappel:

We made three rappels and followed a series of ledges to loose scree and talus.  Gregg knew the descent so it went very smoothly.  I imagine it might be hard to figure out if you didn't know where you were going.

Another few miles of hiking in the dark brought us to Casa Blanca where Robert and I had soup while Gregg ran the 10k or so to retrieve the car from the other side of the mountain.