We made the Climbers' Bivouac and got a flat area near the trailhead to park and set up "camp." We already ate at Lone Fir in Cougar on the way so we just had to get our packs ready and get some sleep.
I woke at 2:30 and we decided to just get going so at 2:45 we were hiking. The walk through the trees was easy as always although it was much warmer than we had anticipated. We easily cleared the treeline in under an hour and hit the boulders. It turns out that hiking with headlamps on the boulders is not much slower than in the daylight since you have to be careful on each step.
From the boulders up it is a slog. Every step is trying and parts of your body start talking to you like the devil on your shoulder saying "There's no shame in quitting." We were eyeing the snow on both sides of Monitor Ridge for potential descent routes.
The pre-dawn and early light is a precious gift that you have to get up early to enjoy, but it pays you back triple. Mt Adams is on your right most of the upper part of the climb and watching the light change is fantastic!
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| These balancing rocks are along the ridge at about 6000 feet of altitude. |
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| We spotted Tami and crew on the way down. Thanks for the passes, Tami! |
Once you clear the boulders you have about 4.2 miles behind you and you are at 7000 feet of altitude staring at a shy half mile with 1200 feet of elevation gain that is deep, loose scree. As we were just getting started on the scree a couple of young trail runners came scooting by us. I noticed that they had taken a route in the scree along the snow line on the left so I checked it out.
I have summited this mountain 8 times, but you can learn something new every time. This time I learned that wet scree packs and is much easier to ascend. We had this wet scree for maybe half of the scree field so we were very lucky.
Twenty five minutes at the top and then we took a glissade chute down 600 vertical feet of the scree field. It was icy in places, but almost anything beats descending in scree. Pam liked the way the snow looked on our left descending so we skipped almost all of the steep boulder face and opted to take the snow for a much quicker and less painful route.
We crossed to the other side of the ridge at the bottom of the boulder face and used the snow there and the low trail to avoid even more boulders along the ridge nearly to the turn where the trail leaves the ridge and heads back to the Ptarmigan trail in the tree line.
The Ptarmigan trail was still mostly in the shade and cool as we descended back to the trailhead. We arrived back at the car at 10:10 and had a bite to eat on our way to Cougar to check out and head home.
Why do we keep putting ourselves through this? Every time it is different and you can learn something new. Every year you are older so the test is different and even more fulfilling when it goes well. The light for photography is always different allowing you to capture unique shots every time. I have others, but that's enough for now.
Be very well and more soon.....
