Thanks to WTA trip reporter thenomadicartist's trip report from this past Sunday, Glen99, SoaringEagle, and myself decided to give this one a try. What a beautiful day, and the views were awesome!!
The Clear Creek road is pretty rough. High clearance is highly advisable.
We got started at 8:45am. As others have stated, the trail is steep, and rooty. No snow on the trail until about 3400ft, and this is where we left the trail. The first 300 vertical feet or so was quite unpleasant, as the snow was less than a foot, and we had do deal with dense huckleberry bushes.
Once past here the snow progressively got deeper, so we put on snowshoes. Snow conditions were soft today, so lots of post holing, even with snowshoes. Great views along the way! The final bit up(75-100 vertical ft) to the summit steepens considerably. I snowshoed up the final steep part, and used trail crampons( micro spikes)on the way down 100ft from the summit, before this got less steep, and I put snowshoes back on.
We finished at 2:30 pm. 5.6 miles with 3316ft gain is what my GPS had. Great day!!
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