After all the snow we got during the holiday, and after seeing a couple posts about it on SummitPost, I decided to climb Baldy again this weekend to check it out. I had to spend Saturday waiting around the house for a plumber who never showed up, so I went up on Sunday, something I normally try to avoid since Sunday afternoon freeway traffic is usually terrible.
Anyway, I got to Manker about 6:30am and the first thing I noticed when I opened the car door was the roar of distant wind. It was rather forbidding and I wondered whether I really wanted to hike up into that (forecasts were for gusts of up to 50 MPH). But I put on my boots and set out anyway.
I saw only two people on the trail to the Ski Hut, it was really weird. Except for the wind is was supposed to be a beautiful day for hiking. I conjectured that perhaps most folks were still recovering from holiday tryptophan overdoses. Luckily, I hadn't had any turkey at all this year, so I was up early and raring to go.
I got to the Ski Hut at about 8:00am. There was very little snow in the Bowl, a lot less than I had been led to expect from the postings on Friday:
There had been some kind of holiday party in the Ski Hut all weekend, and a friendly fellow named Pavel invited me in out of the wind for a few minutes (it wasn't really very windy at the Ski Hut, but I was slightly chilled from my sweaty hike up). There were a number of people still asleep in the Ski Hut, plus a lot of empty beer bottles and two kegs sitting outside the door. I guess they whooped it up.
After I set out again I encountered the first significant snow at about 8,500 feet just above the boulder field at the base of the Bowl.
At this point, in the woods, the trail became icy and treacherous, with evidence of significant melting during Saturday, that froze up solid during the night. I pulled out my famous Italian ice axe to use as a cane and provide some confidence, and stayed to the side of the trail. I suggested the same to a couple I passed who were hiking in trail runners.
Now despite the roar of the wind down at Manker Flats, there wasn't really any significant wind until I got to the start of the western ridge, about 9,000 feet. It was gusting furiously, and nearly blew me over a couple times. But after a bit of walking the trail passed behind some shelter and the wind dissipated considerably, never to really get very bad again until the summit itself.
Also, at that point the trail skirted along the southwest-facing side of the ridge, so that once I was out of the forest the snow had all melted. The hiking became much easier without all that ice and wind (though still very steep). It's too bad HikeUp didn't go a little further as conditions improved considerably above 9,200 feet or so.
Even after my shakedown climb of last week I was still pretty out of shape. I slowed down quite a bit above 9,000 feet, winded, though my legs were fine. As I got higher, the snow returned to the trail and with it the slippery ice, and negotiating the ice wore me down as well. Finally at that little flat about 450 feet from the summit I stopped and put on my crampons.
Once the crampons were on, I didn't have to worry about ice anymore, and I slowly, very slowly, made my way up the last slope before the top.
The wind was gusting like crazy at the top, but it wasn't so bad just below the summit. I arrived at about 10:30, and was up there long enough, maybe a couple minutes, to snap a few photos and to wait for the couple in the trail runners to get there so we could take pictures of each other. It was the girl's first time up and she was doing great.
They turned around and headed right back down, while I hunkered down behind the summit Christmas tree to eat some breakfast and remove my crampons. It wasn't really very cold at all, just windy, and the only part of me that felt much cold were my hands whenever they were exposed to the wind. I put on my glove liners and felt fine after that.
I was alone at the top for the entire time I ate my breakfast, unless someone had sneaked up from the Devil's Backbone side. It was strange that I encountered so few people on what was turning out to be a perfect day for a hike. After I started back down, I met the two people I had seen on the Ski Hut Trail, as well as about two or three other hikers, including a guy with a beautiful black dog named Lupe.
Then at the very steep part of the ridge I ran into at least a dozen Koreans coming up, plus a few other climbers. The mountain got pretty crowded pretty quickly. One of the Koreans complimented me on my ice axe.
I took it very slow and easy going down, since descending is much harder on me and my feet than ascending. I got to the Ski Hut by about 12:30, and spent some time chatting with one or two other hikers. It was a busy place by then. I took a very slow walk back down the Ski Hut Trail and got back to my car by 1:45, where I found a note from Taco scrawled on a sliver of toilet paper tucked under my windshield wiper.
My feet hurt less than usual when I was finished, and traffic was very light on the freeways getting home. I expected a lot more on the last day of a four-day weekend.
Damn, it was a nice day for a climb.
Moar photos.
(yawn) Yet another Baldy climb, 30 Nov 2008
Nunc est bibendum
This would be my guess
http://www.dankat.com/advents/santcr.htm
A group went down there on Saturday so the tracks would have been nice and fresh
Matt
http://www.dankat.com/advents/santcr.htm
A group went down there on Saturday so the tracks would have been nice and fresh
Matt
Now that's a proper TR! Great pics.
I wish I had had more time to continue on past 9000' - it looks like it would have been slow going but doable without crampons.
I think that use trail you saw also is the way over to the gold mine, but don't take my word for it.
I wish I had had more time to continue on past 9000' - it looks like it would have been slow going but doable without crampons.
I think that use trail you saw also is the way over to the gold mine, but don't take my word for it.
