Because we'd moved up the date, it was only three days after the end of the big storm earlier in the week, and we wanted to be cautious about avalanche safety. We chose a route that stayed out of snow chutes and terrain traps as much as possible. For the final ascent route to the summit, we planned to use one of the forested ridges.
The parking lot at the South Fork trailhead had a lot of snow in it, so we parked on the road, shoveling out some snow to improve a parking space someone else had made. We started up trail at 6:45.
Snow conditions were various flavors of powder, and snowshoes were necessary. On the steeper terrain, it was helpful to have snowshoes with built-in crampons and flip-up heel risers, and the snow was firm enough that we were almost always able to get a solid self-belay with our ice axes when we wanted it.
There was already a pretty good boot track along the South Fork Trail. The map below shows the clockwise loop we made beyond South Fork Meadows. I'm not sure if the creek is usable as a water source right now, or if so how much work would be required to access it. We never saw any flowing water.
From the Dry Lake basin we located a ridge that looked like it was doable and had plenty of trees, so that we could be pretty sure it wasn't susceptible to avalanches. (The one on the east side of Big Draw also looked like it would have worked.) The ridge worked well. Conditions got steadily colder and windier as we went up. The only negative of this route was that near the top there were a lot of rocks that had been swept clean of snow by the wind, but we were able to detour around those to the right.
Once we were on the summit ridge, the cold and wind made us not inspired to go over to the summit. At this point I unwisely suggested that it might be "more mellow" to return by circling around to the west, as shown by the map, on the theory that it would be physically easy and less windy. Aurelio bought my argument, and we outvoted Lara, who wanted to return by the same route.
Traversing toward Charlton was actually extremely physically demanding, because the slopes are very steep. It was difficult to judge what elevation to shoot for, and I initially led us too low, which took us into steep terrain below Jepson. From this point on, we started using frequent GPS fixes to plan our elevation, and that worked better, although it was still slow and strenuous travel.
Once we reached the saddle between Charlton and Little Charlton, the suffer-fest ended. We plunge-stepped rapidly down a descent route that I had used before, and got back to South Fork Meadows just as it was getting dark. We hiked back out with headlamps. There was a reddish crescent moon, and the lights of the night-time ski slopes at Big Bear were prominently visible to north, making reassuring beacons. For the most part it was easy to follow a well-worn boot track, but the area around the cabin at Horse Meadows got extremely confusing because of the maze of tracks, so we had to briefly resort to keyhole GPS-ing in order to get back on track. We got back to the car at 8 pm. The Oaks was closed, so we had a late dinner at Cuca's in Redlands, which was good.
Ascending to the right of Christmas Tree Hill, to stay out of possible avalanche path:
Late afternoon at the saddle between Charlton and Little Charlton, getting ready to descend.
