As a previous report mentioned, there’s consistent snow near the top. It’s a lot of side hilling across steep avy chutes and some steep vertical climbing, so one should be comfortable kicking steps and plunge stepping. The run outs are not great, and a fall/slip could end up pretty bad. There’s also a considerable amount of water running below a couple of the snow crossings through an avy chute, so I can imagine snow bridges may become weaker and more precarious. Other than south facing aspects, the snow was relatively firm but still made travel quite slow since a lot of it was side hilling.
Spikes would be very helpful, and in my opinion, ice axe is necessary. I only had poles and eventually stopped short of the final traverse to the summit as I didn’t feel comfortable without an axe to self arrest. I attempted to traverse along the ridge proper (rather than take the trail just south of the ridge) to avoid the snow, but it was pretty treed and shwacky and I didn’t feel like dealing with it.
probably would give this trail 2 more weeks for it to melt out, if you’re looking for a snow free hike. Otherwise, exercising extra caution and bringing appropriate gear would be a good idea.
Comments