simonov's solo summit of Baldy, 20080216
Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 8:13 pm
After He219 escorted me to the top last week, I got the Baldy Bug in a bad way and decided to try it again this weekend. The wife had something else going on, so I could do whatever I wanted.
I had been watching the weather reports carefully all week, and decided conditions would be similar to last week, ie, nice crusty, icy snow in the morning with plenty of nasty slush in the afternoon, if not sooner. My new Grivel G12 crampons arrived from Backcountry.com almost before I had ordered them, so I was ready to go (BTW, all these photos are from my Flickr account, so click on them to see monster high resolution versions, if desired):
I left Costa Mesa at 4:30am on Saturday and after hitting every red light in Ontario on the way up Euclid (we take Euclid all the way from Orange County), started on the trail at about ten minutes after six. It was just light enough to work without a headlamp.
ENTIRELY BY CHANCE, I started walking from my car at the same time as a young woman who was parked just in front of me. We had a pleasant enough chat as we walked up the San Antonio Falls Road to the trail. When we got to the trail we stopped to remove clothing layers (it was getting warm fast), and I started playing with my camera. I snapped a photo of her, just for giggles, whereupon her demeanor changed and she expressed concern that she might be holding me back with her slow pace. As Mrs Simonov didn't raise no dummy, I understood this to mean she was not interested in sharing the trail with a creepy mountain stalker dude, so I set off on the trail in front of her and within a couple minutes had left her well behind me. C'est la vie! She liked dogs, too.
Anyway, before too long I had a nice glimpse of Baldy:
I'm not sure that looks any different than it did a week ago. Here's another shot as I got closer to the ski hut:
Maybe a little less coverage there, I dunno (well, there was definitely less coverage at the lower elevations, where I hiked through rock and icy mud).
The walking was wonderful. There was an icy crust on the snow that the crampons bit into easily. In fact, for most of my climb to the top, I barely even left footprints, mostly it was just those little crampon tracks. I made excellent time, even surprising myself.
I got to the ski hut, for example, by 8:00, and after a short breakfast of turkey and onion sammich and granola bar, had already crossed the bowl and was halfway up the southwestern ridge (or whatever it's called) by 9:00. There was only a handful of folks at the ski hut when I was there:
Anyway, instead of heading straight up the face as we did last week, I decided to take the Baldy Bowl trail to the west and south:
I found this to be somewhat easier than going up the face because while some of the faces on this route were probably just as steep, you had little rests at the top of them, before you moved onto the next one. It was certainly longer than the face.
While crossing the bowl I saw the remains of a couple of big rockfalls:
I'm not sure whether this was the one He219 and I witnessed or a later one from during the week.
Over on SummitPost, folks wanted to know what the Backbone looked like. Here it is:
I saw a couple of climbers moving along it toward the summit, but they never got to the summit while I was there.
I hurried up the mountain. I was in a hurry because I knew it was only a matter of time before my wonderful crusty easy walking medium would melt into a nasty (and dangerous) slush. In contrast to my experience the previous week, where it seemed that after hours and hours of climbing you were never any closer to the damned rocks up there at the top, on the Baldy Bowl Trail I was quite pleasantly surprised by how much ground could be covered with a simple routine: ten or a dozen steps, then a rest of about one or two minutes, then another ten or a dozen steps. Every cycle I would look around and be amazed by how much elevation I was gaining.
Finally, by about 10:15, I gained the summit:
That was only four hours after I left my car. Whoa.
In contrast with last weekend, the summit was windy. So windy, in fact, that nobody hung around there. I was the second person up, and the first person found a great windbreak behind the highest tree on the mountain (shit!). I had to settle for squatting behind a pathetic bush. The third person up simply turned around and started back down the mountain again as soon as he summited.
Before I hunkered down behind my bush, I got a shot of Baden-Powell, where Taco is this weekend:
. . . as well as a cool wide-angle view looking east:
There was no one around to help me with the traditional summit portrait, so I had to do it myself:
In short, I had a great climb, really fun and enjoyable.
The descent, on the other hand, was a different matter. It was unpleasant, slipping and sliding through the slush that, in the bowl at least, sat atop irregular ice formations. I removed my crampons on the south-facing ridge so I could slide around better, but this was a disadvantage once I crossed over into the bowl, where the snow was only partially melted (so I glissaded down on my ass). Below the ski hut, the trail was a soupy mess. I was astonished to see a scout troop make its agonizing way up the trail as I headed down. It was almost painful to watch them slipping and sliding under their heavy packs (they were staying the night at the hut), especially considering what an easy time of it they would have had if they had left a few hours earlier. There really is not much point, if you want to climb in these conditions, with sleeping in until 10:00 or whenever. May as well stay in bed.
Finally I approached the end of the trail, and took one last shot of Mt Baldy and her melting mantle of slush:
I got to my car by about 1:30.
I had been watching the weather reports carefully all week, and decided conditions would be similar to last week, ie, nice crusty, icy snow in the morning with plenty of nasty slush in the afternoon, if not sooner. My new Grivel G12 crampons arrived from Backcountry.com almost before I had ordered them, so I was ready to go (BTW, all these photos are from my Flickr account, so click on them to see monster high resolution versions, if desired):
I left Costa Mesa at 4:30am on Saturday and after hitting every red light in Ontario on the way up Euclid (we take Euclid all the way from Orange County), started on the trail at about ten minutes after six. It was just light enough to work without a headlamp.
ENTIRELY BY CHANCE, I started walking from my car at the same time as a young woman who was parked just in front of me. We had a pleasant enough chat as we walked up the San Antonio Falls Road to the trail. When we got to the trail we stopped to remove clothing layers (it was getting warm fast), and I started playing with my camera. I snapped a photo of her, just for giggles, whereupon her demeanor changed and she expressed concern that she might be holding me back with her slow pace. As Mrs Simonov didn't raise no dummy, I understood this to mean she was not interested in sharing the trail with a creepy mountain stalker dude, so I set off on the trail in front of her and within a couple minutes had left her well behind me. C'est la vie! She liked dogs, too.
Anyway, before too long I had a nice glimpse of Baldy:
I'm not sure that looks any different than it did a week ago. Here's another shot as I got closer to the ski hut:
Maybe a little less coverage there, I dunno (well, there was definitely less coverage at the lower elevations, where I hiked through rock and icy mud).
The walking was wonderful. There was an icy crust on the snow that the crampons bit into easily. In fact, for most of my climb to the top, I barely even left footprints, mostly it was just those little crampon tracks. I made excellent time, even surprising myself.
I got to the ski hut, for example, by 8:00, and after a short breakfast of turkey and onion sammich and granola bar, had already crossed the bowl and was halfway up the southwestern ridge (or whatever it's called) by 9:00. There was only a handful of folks at the ski hut when I was there:
Anyway, instead of heading straight up the face as we did last week, I decided to take the Baldy Bowl trail to the west and south:
I found this to be somewhat easier than going up the face because while some of the faces on this route were probably just as steep, you had little rests at the top of them, before you moved onto the next one. It was certainly longer than the face.
While crossing the bowl I saw the remains of a couple of big rockfalls:
I'm not sure whether this was the one He219 and I witnessed or a later one from during the week.
Over on SummitPost, folks wanted to know what the Backbone looked like. Here it is:
I saw a couple of climbers moving along it toward the summit, but they never got to the summit while I was there.
I hurried up the mountain. I was in a hurry because I knew it was only a matter of time before my wonderful crusty easy walking medium would melt into a nasty (and dangerous) slush. In contrast to my experience the previous week, where it seemed that after hours and hours of climbing you were never any closer to the damned rocks up there at the top, on the Baldy Bowl Trail I was quite pleasantly surprised by how much ground could be covered with a simple routine: ten or a dozen steps, then a rest of about one or two minutes, then another ten or a dozen steps. Every cycle I would look around and be amazed by how much elevation I was gaining.
Finally, by about 10:15, I gained the summit:
That was only four hours after I left my car. Whoa.
In contrast with last weekend, the summit was windy. So windy, in fact, that nobody hung around there. I was the second person up, and the first person found a great windbreak behind the highest tree on the mountain (shit!). I had to settle for squatting behind a pathetic bush. The third person up simply turned around and started back down the mountain again as soon as he summited.
Before I hunkered down behind my bush, I got a shot of Baden-Powell, where Taco is this weekend:
. . . as well as a cool wide-angle view looking east:
There was no one around to help me with the traditional summit portrait, so I had to do it myself:
In short, I had a great climb, really fun and enjoyable.
The descent, on the other hand, was a different matter. It was unpleasant, slipping and sliding through the slush that, in the bowl at least, sat atop irregular ice formations. I removed my crampons on the south-facing ridge so I could slide around better, but this was a disadvantage once I crossed over into the bowl, where the snow was only partially melted (so I glissaded down on my ass). Below the ski hut, the trail was a soupy mess. I was astonished to see a scout troop make its agonizing way up the trail as I headed down. It was almost painful to watch them slipping and sliding under their heavy packs (they were staying the night at the hut), especially considering what an easy time of it they would have had if they had left a few hours earlier. There really is not much point, if you want to climb in these conditions, with sleeping in until 10:00 or whenever. May as well stay in bed.
Finally I approached the end of the trail, and took one last shot of Mt Baldy and her melting mantle of slush:
I got to my car by about 1:30.
