by soylentgreen » Mon Jan 25, 2016 9:59 pm
My partner and I were up just yesterday (Sunday, Jan 26th, 2016). We hiked from the ranger station in Long Valley up to Wellman's Divide.
Conditions: packed snow & ice the entire way. From the ranger station, I wore snowshoes and my partner wore microspikes. This was fine for about 2.5 miles (until we were about a mile from Wellman's Divide) at which point the packed trail kind of died, and we were forced to go "off trail". After a few hundred yards of post-holing, my partner put on snowshoes and we followed a track that basically followed the creek up to Wellman's.
I was kind of surprised that even though the big snowstorm had happened 10+ days prior, there was not a well-traveled trail up to Wellman's.
Weather was about 45 at the Tram at 8500', and dropping below freezing as you got up towards 9500 feet. We had lunch at the divide which was actually wonderful, calm and sunny and we ate on the rocks.