
The mountain ahead:

The sun is coming:

We got water, looked out at the campers

And continued to climb

At this point you're on a steep, soft, featureless slope for seemingly forever

It all looks like this. My pace was faster than my friends', and I planned to get to the cliffy thing on top of this photo, and wait to regroup there. I kept climbing, but it never got any closer, so I stopped and waited before. This happened several times. Because, as I now know, that feature is almost at the summit. But there're no trees, and it all looks the same, and it's impossible to tell how far away anything is. The last photo is the view for maybe 6000ft of gain. The view back down from everywhere:

Higher:

In a few places there are larger rocks

There are no plants and there are also no animals. Except the butterflies. From maybe 10k, they're everywhere. You're swimming in butterfly soup. It's a strange place.


This also shows the Trinity Alps, one of a small number of notable landmarks visible from the top.
Oh look, a crevasse!

Eventually you clear my regroup rock, and can gimplse the summit block

At this point the whole place starts to smell like a USFS bathroom. Because this is still an active volcano, and there's an active sulfur hot spring up there. Looks like a spring

but smells like death, and is loud and gurgly. In any case, you push a bit more, and you're on top!


There're some rocks, a register box and a blade stuck in a rock for would-be kings.

I had a bad headache at this point. Took some ibuprofen, which didn't do much. Eventually I gave up, and went back down. The pain-in-the-ass loose-and-steep terrain was perfect for plunge stepping on the descent. I made it back down to the spring at 8600ft in what seemed like no time at all. The descent cleared the headache, I drank some water, and felt like a million bucks. Eventually we all descended back to the trailhead, had some celebratory late dinner, and went to bed. Went to the McCloud river falls the next day, which are pretty, great for cliff jumping and such, and look like some sort of non-tropical Hawaii.
So... I think the cool-stuff-to-effort ratio was off on this one. If it was 1/3 the effort, it would have been perfect. I could be convinced to go back for a winter climb
