Ngie and I got up to Moolock Mountain today in the snow. We got started at 7:20 am from the Oxbow Loop trailhead. We took the Bessemer road and then took a left on the CCC trail and crossed the creek. Not to far from the creek crossing we took a faint trail to the right, and pretty much followed this trail all the way up to the forest service road up at 3880 ft.
I have been wanting to check out these trails for awhile, and today was the day. The mountain bikers who have built these trails have done a nice job. The trails that we took had multiple jumps and nice turns built thru the open forest. This trail must be for expert riders as some of the sections are pretty gnarly.
Once we got out onto the road at 3880 ft we ran into some deeper snow, as getting up the last part to this road we ran into some spots where there was 4 ft of snow deposited. This short spot gave us a glimpse of the kind of terrible snow conditions we were going to encounter up higher.
We followed this road around to the west side of a peak that is between Moolock and Bootalicious to avoid some avalanche terrain. We thought we had a good route , but it ended up being terrible. The ridge we were going to up and over, ended up being a knife edge ridge that was impassable. We dropped down and went up numerous times with no luck. The snow was also so unconsolidated and had no grip to it. It seemed like every step would slide back a foot or more. Also our poles would sometimes sink in all the way. 40".
We ended up traversing around and up to Moolock. It took some determination(..by Ngie, as I could of bailed, as I was so stinking tired..lol) for us to get up there. Coming down was no bargain either, for me at least, as there was many holes in the buried talus to fall into. We were so relieved to have got back down onto the road. By this time the light was fading, and once we got down into the forest it got dark fast. We wore our headlamps for the last hour and a half of the hike out, finishing at 6:25 pm. 11.2 miles with 4450 ft gain
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