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We fueled up with the Denney's Grand Slam and then drove up to North Lake. Unfortunately the road was closed at Alpendale, about 2 miles shy of North Lake. It was doubly frustrating because the road crew came by and opened the gate (a repeat of our Gilcrest luck!?) but wouldn't let us through. They were "working" on the road. Well, an hour later and a thousand feet higher we finally reached snow near North Lake and started skinning. We had some skin tracks to follow, but somehow got slightly off course and had to do a traverse that only cost us about 30 minutes. Eventually we got above tree-line and as we looked up there appeared to be someone on the ridge above us. Down came a snowboarder who just shouted hello at us as he went by and wished us well.
Finally, at 5pm, we reached the top of Lamarck Col at approximately 13,000. That made the day's elevation gain almost 5,000'! Needless to say, we were delighted to reach the high point of the day. From there we had to down climb through some rocks to get to consistent snow and then ski down to the Darwin Lakes where we saw evidence of the mystery split boarder's camp. After looking around a bit, we elected to camp along a moraine separating the first two lakes because Eric found a trickle of water we could use. He made a little dam and reservoir to collect water and then we used the hose from my Camelback to fill bottles. Later I found a more convenient spot in the ice that pooled nice fresh water. We were beat by the time we finished setting up camp and the Megamid, but enjoyed dinner time as the sun started to go down and enjoyed some Thai food and a sauvignon blanc.
Saturday we decided to give Mt Darwin a shot. We headed up to the snowboarder's old camp and then followed his tracks up the North Couloir of Darwin using our ski crampons until it got too steep and narrow and then we followed his boot track. Luckily it wasn't icy so even without boot crampons were were okay (I had a Whippet and Eric had an ice ax). It got really narrow and steep at the top, plus there were two sets of tracks and one of the sliders just side-slipped down, making it very unpleasant looking for the descent. Anyway, we got to the top (13,831'), which is a broad plateau with a gendarme sticking up and enjoyed the views, great weather (no wind) and lunch. We decided we were men enough to downclimb the upper section of the couloir, which was scary enough, and then skied the lower 2/3 and on to the apron. I was pooped when we got back to camp (my allergies were kicking in, surprisingly enough way up there!) but we went out for an afternoon "corn harvest" before dinner.
Sunday was our "easy day". We broke camp and shouldered the packs, now a bit ligther than on the in, and headed up for the summit of Mt. Lamarck (13,417'). It was a fairly easy skin up almost to the summit (especially compared to Mt. Darwin) and some great views. It was really nice to realize that we were basically done with climbing and could now enjoy the ski down to North Lake. The corn off the summit was spectatular and held up great until around 10,000', then it got mushy. Eric led us on an interesting line down the steep section above the lake and then we "enjoyed" the walk back on the road to the car.
The fun wasn't over yet; we stopped in Walker at Mountainview BBQ and had some incredible BBQ. It's my new favorite!
It was a great trip and with the heat wave we're now having, I think the timing was just about right.
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1 comment:
How about some pics of the climbing chicks and the butt name spelling game!
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