| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2005-08-26 12:23:15 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Date: July 10-11 2005
Mountaineers: Matthew and Eric Gilbertson We hiked to the base of the mountain July 10 and were forced to pitch the tent on snow. Matthew leveled out a tent pad on the heavily suncupped sheet of ice. We were pleasantly surprised in the morning when we discovered that our water bottles were not frozen. Some warmer air had moved through the area that night and as a result temps did not dip below a balmy 35. We began our trek at 8am under beautifully clear skies and immediately donned the crampons to help us ascend the first icy slope. Until that point, we had relied on a route description that we had researched extensively back in town, but soon we realized that the route followed a whimpy class 3 talus field. So we decided to make it interesting and instead we chose our own route. We headed up an extremely steep snow slope (55 degrees, we estimated) and made it to a sharp snow ridge whose pictures appear on the first page. From there, it was a definite no-fall zone across half a mile of glacier, especially because we were not equipped with ice axes. But we made it across safely and reached the summit at 11am, after ascending ~4000 vert ft. The view from the top was absolutely incredible. We had an unobstructed view of 50 miles in every direction. With little wind and temps already soaring into the 60s, Matthew took off his shirt and we lounged around at the top for a good hour and a half. But despite the spectacular weather, it was still hard to believe that it was no longer winter in the Sierra. Snow capped peaks stretched all the way to the western horizon and indeed the mountains had experienced such epic snowfall earlier in the year that much of the snow will not melt this season. On the way down, we got to do some awesome glissading. On one stretch of snow, we boot-skied down about 1000 vert ft over 1/4 a mile in less than two minutes. It's unbelievable how much faster you can descend on snow than on rock. Even after a twelve-mile hike back to the trailhead (elev. 8000ft) we could not yet pat ourselves on the back, for we still had a 1000ft, ten-mile bike ride back to town. But we did not linger at the trailead too long, as the vicious swarms of mosquitoes voraciously devoured most of the red blood cells we had gained from days at high altitude. |