Baden Powell: Missed it by that much.
Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 7:31 pm
My hiking buddy and I, after failing to summit BP a few years ago in the Fall due to poor planning and a water bladder failure, decided to take another stab at the mountain, this time from the Vincent Gap side. Since we're both fairly new to the winter travel game we opted to keep it relatively mellow and ascend via the use trail. Left trailhead about 7:15. Weather was great, clear and calm. Trail was well trodden and easy to follow. A light dusting of snow from the previous night gave just enough purchase for us to climb to about 8000' before needing crampons. The ice axe came in handy prior to that though, as it was there on an icy, pucker factor 8 slope that Buddy, who was leading, realized that we should have donned the crampons a bit sooner, because he needed them on NOW. With some careful self belay and some harrowing back tracking, we managed to get to a safe spot to don our crampons. Lesson learned: put them on BEFORE you need them. From there we proceeded up, with the security of good traction, to about 8600'. Here the trail became a bit elusive and we set out and upward on our own path. Reached the Northeast ridge at 10:45, about 15 minutes past our turn around time, since my buddy had afternoon plans. Rested a few minutes and reconnoitered at about 9200' with the summit in sight but too far to reach in our compressed time frame. C'est la vie. Began our descent which became a bit hairy at times due to the coating of snow over the ice, but soon we reached the trail and made decent time down, stopping to chat for a few minutes with a well traveled and seasoned hiker on the way up. He left us with stories of Anapurna, Everest, Denali, Kilimanjaro, Ranier and much more (talk about your fish stories!). Back to car by 1:00 just as we had planned, only the mountain had eluded us one more time. But, we live to hike another day. Attempt #3 coming up. Pics to come.
