What are friends for, anyway? Show no mercy! Too bad, driver, that you've been gone two weeks. Get your sorry a$$ moving and up that trail! Well, so the plan was to assault(!) Jolly. The cast of characters included Middle E and Opus - who met the driver and Gus at the 65th P&R at 7:00 a.m.; and Trail Pair. We ended up right behind them just outside of lovely Ronald, Wa. Note: the road is clear all the way to the Sno Park parking area - but it ends there! But wait, there was Two Dog Dad and the lab-a-doodles waiting for us at the trailhead! What a surprise. Then, pulling up right behind us were a couple more Hikers who were heading to Jolly, too. Jack's Mom and Shadow, with (duh) Jack! Gus had a new buddy! They had a great time -for a while. Knowing that Jim K was still nursing a bum knee (from these same ""friends"" who showed no sympathy for him on Iron Peak last weekend!) - we were fearful this would be (perhaps) a ""pointless"" trip! But, fortunately, Jack's Mom (Chris) stepped right up and became an unofficial ""pointer"" to start the trip. Of course, no trip is complete with this group without a few map and GPS checks. Undaunted, up we started, just a little before 9:00 a.m. It was a beautiful morning, and quite mild (about 45 degrees). We decided to stay on the road for a while - until the second switchback - before heading up through some trees to cut off a lot of the road and shorten the distance. We intersected the road . . . and, you guessed it time to check the maps again and get a few ""pointers."" We reached an interesting, broad, flat area that could be either a meadow or a swampy area when the snow melts. We crossed this and headed back into the trees to continue or cut-off of the road and the switchbacks. At a fork in the road - one branch heading straight and one heading up, we chose the upper route and soon cut up-slope to head toward the ridge. Here's where we decided to put on snowshoes, because progress was getting tough. This was a steep climb and we would cross the road a couple of times. When we reached one of the crossings of the road, we stopped for a quick snack . . . but, unfortunately, at this point, Jack and Boonie had a bit of a discussion about ""manliness"" - and Jack took exception to Boonie's advances. Well, a pretty intense dog-fight ensued. It was at this point that we split routes with Chris, Scott and Jack and our motley crew continued our trek straight up, while Jack's Mom (Chris), Shadow (Scott) and Jack stayed on the road. The steep route up finally brought us to a ridge line - probably the summer trail between Jolly and Sasse. We headed north to a point where we hit the Jolly summer trail and the ridge that heads east. Some great views from here.
The ridge was easy enough to follow to a point where you drop down a little on the south side of the ridge and then head north and east to another ridge. We stopped for lunch just before we had to drop a couple hundred feet from the ridge to reach another ridge that would take us up to the summit of Jolly - which still looked quite a ways away! It was about here that I began to think that a summit was not in my future today . . . my legs were like rubber. Although the snow had been pretty good - a little sloppy lower down, but not too bad above 5000', I was whooped and whining was becoming a viable option. We headed down the slope a little and reached another junction
where we headed south towards Jolly and the final 500' of climb. The views were glorious - We all reached the summit and Bob asked me, ""Did you bring the wine?"" Oh yes, I had a fine whine all worked up and ready to go! A vintage year. But, alas, I had to admit that this was a pretty cool vantage point and probably should just keep my whines to myself. We figure it took us just a little more than 5 hours to get to the summit - in all, we would travel close to 15 miles today and climb about 4500'. We stayed on top (with no wind and it was warming up considerably) for about 40 minutes before heading down. About a mile down from the summit, we ran into two skiers - they had started out about 20 minutes before we did in the morning, but took a different route up - they were headed to Jolly. Their descent would be a bit quicker than ours, but it only took us about 3 hours to get back to the cars. A fabulous day to be out - and a good 50 degrees cooler than where I was the same time last week!!! Ok, ok, so they kicked my butt up to the summit, even poor Gus was exhausted - - - it was all he could do to eat his dinner and then stumble up to bed (lol). But it was a great day with good friends. A good work-out; no real hazards, but be prepared to burn a few calories!!
Comments