Since this snow season is short, Sally and I went back up the same route we took a week earlier. The good news -- snow had consolidated well. The bad news -- the snow tongue up to the ridge had dropped. Wore microspikes all the way to the "base" (about 9.7 K) of the western-most chute, then donned crampons. We could see faint tracks of snowshoes from our previous trip or other folks. The wind was really blowing -- at times we had snow facials. Went right to the ridge when the snow ran out and scrambled about 100 feet up to top. Hustled over to the peak and found shelter in the summit rocks.
We retraced our steps and went down the ridge until we were confident we had adequate snow to glissade. It was our best glissade yet -- we were able to go faster without feeling any loss of control and glissaded lower before having to don snowshoes. The snow was already melting in the morraine area and we sank periodically. We kept the snowshoes on to the bottom of the gully that is one ridge over from the winter route. Ran into Deb and Heather after the Dollar/Dry Lake junction sign. I thanked Deb and Nomad Adventures for having my crampons -- the REI in Rancho didn't even have them.
Got back to the car in 10.5 hours and had dinner at El Mexicano in Forest Falls -- the Oaks was closed for the day. Thanks to Sally for picking up my crampons and a wonderful day that took a lot of pain out of being robbed on Sunday.
Miles of smiles,
Ellen
