rowantrollopestories

This weekend Collin and I climbed Mt. Baldy as part of our regular training for big mountains. I get up there at least once a month, since its an hour from my house in LA and I can there and back easily in a day.  But this time, the Baldy gods reminded us that the mountains are in charge.

Being familiar with the route, we packed light – ice axes, crampons, winter jackets, a litre of water, a bagel and an orange, one pack of GU, a first aid kit, a compass (on my watch) and headlamps.  We got started at 9am and made decent time to the San Antonio Ski Hut – the half way point on this route. So far there had been only a light dusting of snow and no sign of the winter storm that was forecasted to be approaching. At the hut, we chatted with a craggy looking mountaineer and his wife who were training for Mt. Rainier in May and Denali in June. It would be his third attempt on Denali, getting “blown off” twice before. They were nice to chat with.

After a 20 minute break, some water and food, we donned our crampons and ice-axes and planned our route up the bowl. Looking up we could see an ant-line of at least 20 climbers slowly plodding up the bowl with heavy packs laden with a god awful assortment of unnecessary items, a lack of fitness, or a lack of confidence on the steep, exposed snow slope, or a combination of all three.

With our light packs we moved up past the other climbers and into the center of the bowl. The last group we passed was a mountain guide with two clients who he had short-roped together (connected together with 15 feet of rope between each). He was giving these new climbers a lesson in rope technique and self-arrest. The sun was shining and they looked like they were having a great time. Both clients smiled and said cheery hellos as we passed.

Climbing the main section of the bowl must have taken us an hour and a half, and slowly, the line of climbers we’d passed receded in our view into what again looked like a line of ants. We felt good and the day seemed to be perfect to make good time to the top, however this was not to be.

As we reached the rocky outcrops which mark the center of the bowl, the clouds began to roll in, and within a matter of minutes a winter storm was brewing around us. The wind picked up and visibility dropped to a hundred feet. The climbers below us were swallowed up in a thick cloud remarkably quickly.  I remained hopeful that we’d climb out of it to a sunny beautiful day at the summit.

We pressed on.

As we climbed the visibility continued to drop. 45 minutes later, as we crested the top of the bowl, we could barely see the ground in front of us, and it made every step slow to a crawl. Minutes later a couple of climbers emerged from the white. The guy in front has his nose pressed to his GPS. He called out to us in a thick accent (sounded like eastern european) “Do you know where the trail is?” — “No, we’re not following a trail” we responded. He continued on, using his GPS to find his trail back. I our compass bearing (due north) and continued up.

We continued higher, attempting to follow in the footsteps of the GPS climbers in the hopes they’d lead us to the summit. At some point we lost their trail and were left wandering up the barren landscape. Eventually, using the altimeter, we hit 10,050 feet, which is the elevation of the summit so we knew we were close (altimeters are not precise).

We decided to stop and eat. Donning our jackets we’d brought up here just for this purpose, we sat down and discussed options. Our original plan had been to downclimb a route called “the Devil’s Backbone”, and we quickly ruled this out as there would be no way to find that route in these conditions. We decided to head down, using our compass to navigate and get us off the summit plateau. We couldn’t even use the tracks we’d made coming up, since the snow was hard and windblown and we left very little visible marks.

Trusting the compass to lead us to the entrance to the bowl, it took us probably 30 minutes to cover the ground which would have taken 5 minutes in clear weather, but eventually we found the top of the bowl and started down. The downclimbing was slow with the poor visibility and the need to keep checking the bearing on the compass, but we made steady progress.  Eventually, there was a break in the cloud cover and we briefly made out the ski hut a thousand feet below us. We took a compass bearing on it, so we could follow all the way back in zero visibility.

As we continued down the clouds began to break and visibility returned. The summit remained ensconced in clouds, but the path to the hut was clear.

The rest of the hike back to the car was uneventful, but we were reminded that the mountain is a harsh mistress.

Video of the climb here