So hey, this is that probably one in a thousand experience, compounded poor decisions on my part. If you’ve read my other installments here though this seems more like the norm than a rarity.
Alpine conditions: just because you can’t see them from the trail head, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
This hike wasn’t fun, it had moments of great beauty but an obscene start and majority of the Climb are switch backs that just make it dull. Until if you’re us, you encounter ever increasing ice slides and snow covered patches. It culminated in the trail being completely obscured by feet of fallen snow and because I hike with two serious badass ladies with salt in their veins, we decided to bushwhack it to the peak.. again. We made it. It was gorgeous. Actually one of my favorite views of any in SoCal. Definitely a hike worth feeling, seeing and experiencing.
The climb down on this one was actually dangerous. Despite have multiple lines of rope and crampons we left them all. Indeterminate depths of snow drifts and no trail for the beginning of the decent made it sketchy. The worst was the ice in the most narrow patches of the eroding mountain side that nearly took us for a ride more than once. It’s steep.