I strangely do enjoy shoveling snow, and the pot of Stagg Chili was pretty good.
Thanks to those who still made it out even with the crumby conditions and weather. This actually turned out to be a really fun trip.
Myself, Ruger81, Streetpirate, and Icemans headed up Saturday morning. In the past week alone I'd say another foot had melted off.
The snow was compacted pretty well, so flotation wasn't really an issue... especially when you hit gravel at 3600'.
We made really good progress across the 53rd. After a short break at the top, we ventured down to the base camp. Streepiratemobile was looking for asphalt.
After ditching some gear, we went off to do some exploring. We got up to 4000' on the 5304, and then started hitting some snow drifts. You either love them or hate them.
We weren't really feeling like dealing with them so we set off up the 42 to see what we could find. Ryan and Liz (Icemans) leading the way. There was a bunch of washed out sections, which made for some fun obstacles.
Jeep Force One in the back of the pack.
We rotated our lineup a few times, reseated a bead in record time (thanks Scott for the practice
), and then eventually topped out at 4000', and once again hit some monster drifts.
We had a few sketchy corners on the way up, and of course coming back down was worse. I like Liz's expression in the background.
Ryan was in the back, so by that time the ruts were already pretty stretched out. This was after getting him back on the road, I guess the first attempt had his front tires below where Dan (in the black) is standing.
We all made it back to camp in one piece. No igloo building this trip, but we did have a pretty good chili dinner if I do say so myself. Goblazers_6 graced us with his presence later that night, after a solo ascent to camp, and as always good times were had around the camp fire.
Airing up and putting an end to the first ever South End Hypothermia Run.
Assuming we get another decent snowfall this winter, I'm definitely down for another overnight trip or two.
