Trifecta

After crossing the lake, we surveyed the climb up to the cave in front of us. We immediately noticed that avalanches were falling all around the cave. After watching the behavior of the avalanches, we determined that none of them would remotely come close to the cave, so we decided it was safe to proceed. However, we would separate out should something happen. So, we take even more time to assess the risk and route.



By this time, we had passed the main avalanche risk, so Kris proceeded to go ahead of me to help blaze the trail. I reached one point on the 600-foot ascent in knee-deep snow with snowshoes where no matter what I tried, the step I built to help me would always collapse.

To say the extraordinary effort to make it up and into this cave was worth it is an understatement. We immediately saw that the cave was a masterpiece. A massive ice wall curving up and over to an equally enormous rock fall with a frozen waterfall cascading down it. How could anything get more exciting than this? We also determined that the cave was much more active than the ones we had been in before. We watched where we went and quickly grabbed our shots.



The Trifecta story of an ice wall, a rock wall, and a frozen waterfall needed to be captured. Looking at the various angles, even with a wide angle, the only way to capture this shot was to lay on the pointy frozen ice that had fallen and point the camera up. This excited me even more as the angle was not your typical one. Shifting an inch here and there, I ensured I got the component parts in the right spot. Trifecta was carved digitally from the icy walls on the side of Aiguille Peak.