| Summary | None |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2007-07-10 00:25:13 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Eric Gilbertson
July 5th 29 miles While the other guys were going rock climbing I decided to bag the highest point in yosemite and hopefully find some good glissading. I headed south on the PCT from Tuolumne meadows at 5:30am, travelling up the lyel canyon through some cool meadows. After about 11 miles I left the trail, relying only on a brief route description I had read on summitpost the day before. Basically I had to head for a col between Mt Lyel and another mountain to the south, where the only way to tell which mountain was lyel was to see which one was taller. I climbed over some class 2/3 rock and soon reached the massive Lyel glacier. It doesn't have any crevasses, just a ton of snow that stays year round. I managed to find a way on rocks around the side of the snow field to keep my running shoes dry, and climbed up to the col. As usual with sierra mountains, the other side was a shear cliff dropping several hundred feet down - very impressive. From the col I had two options: either climb some class 3/4 rock to the summit, or climb some steep snow. Since the snow was still a little firm (it gets cold at night up there) I opted for the rocks. The climb was actually pretty fun, and by noon I was greeted with the summit. That has to be one of the most remote places in the sierra, because I could see basically no signs of civilization in any direction, just mountains and snow. I hung out for about an hour, then decided to take advantage of the glacier with a different descent route. There was a couloir of snow reaching up towards the summit, and I scrambled down some scree to reach it. It was steep and still a little icy, so I carefully down-climbed until I reached some nice soft snow in the sun. This was what I was hoping for - glissading! The slope was severely suncupped, but I just plowed right through them on the steep parts and hopped over them on the less steep parts. It was awesome. My running shoes got soaked, but I thought it was worth it to not have to hike in my huge winter boots. By 3pm I was back on the trail and still feeling full of energy, so I jogged most of the way back. In hindsight running shoes are not made for snow and scree - mine took quite a beating and I highly recommend boots for such terrain. |