giggy
New member
bit long winded - have some time to kill while baby sleeps!
Well plans change and that can actually be for the better under the right circumstances. My original plan was for sleeping bear (lindsay) and myself (guy) to head up the castle trail to hit jefferson - which in winter has been my nemesis since about 2000. I have done it in winter condtions before - but I was about 0 for 7 (some where bewtween 6 and 8, don't know for sure!) from calendar winter attmepts.
I was in contact with MEB and KMAC thru the week and if they weren't able to summit jefferson on friday, they were going to join us.
I spoke with them late friday and like I have many times, they were turned back (with Damon) right above the edmunds col due to low visibilty and high winds and cold temps. It souded to me like a typical northern pressie bad weather winter epic with losing trail, etc.. it happens
So, they weren't too keen on the castle, so we decided on the caps ridge. I got the weather report and summits were about 0 for highs and winds 20-50mph - pretty average winter winds.
Lindsay and I met karen and Marsha at lyons and we drove over to the cog to meet up with some others folks that MEb had cooridinated with -unfrozencaveman,abster,& DRitter, so I packed up my ice axe and we head off to the caps ridge, - we get on the trail
and I find out the plan is the jewell - Lindsay and I decided to head up the jewell with thew crew - even tho I had said many times that I always wanted my #1 jeff winter ascent to be from the north via castles, or Edmunds. I was out for fun this day and nothing more, so it turned out to be a great day with fun people - with many many laughs on the trail that I can't document here due to the bathroom humor!!!
So we headed up and the nice thing about jewell is its quick to treeline and IMO - very easy footing when packed out. (tho we did don spikes right out of the lot - it was icey.
We soon hit treeline and the gulfside, and wind was pretty much nothing, but visablity wasn't great either. So we all made our way over to sphinx col taking some brief rests every now and then. The winds were starting to pick up a bit, but still not too bad, it was cold though, and we really needed to keep it moving to stay warm. So we went up monticello lawn and visabilty was still not great, though every now and then we would get teased and things would get bright for short periods etc..
We all then made our way up the last push to the summit and re-grouped up there. Finally, I got this damn summit! We summited about 12:30 or so. This was # 47 for both MEB and DRITTER. Rested for a few minutes, got some water, ate some food and as usual, MEB whips out her bag a goodies and we all had some hot coccoa. NICE and thanks!
We all made out way down back to the jewell/gulfside junction and around there we stopped and I was going to change my gloves as my hands were getting rather cold and needed to out my bigger ones on. so KMAC gave me her half used hand warmers and man - did those feel good! thanks KMAC - I did buy her a beer for that after. Damon (Dritter) still needed washington for his 48 so lindsay and I went up washington with him., while the rest went down jewell.
It was also her first winter summit for george and while I was going for number 13 washington winter summit - I had never taken the gulfside up - so that would be a first for me as well. Visability got pretty bad and we got a bit sidetracked a couple of times high on the gulfisde, but a quick look at the map and all was fine and we made it to the gulfside/great gulf junction and followed it up to the trinity hieghts connector - now in most weather, you can see the summit building pretty easily here - or at least something, all we saw was a wall of white after on that for a few minutes (its only .2 miles long), I knew we were close and then a faint image of the tower not more than 50 feet popped out and you really had to look to see it - so we tagged the summit - congrats to damon and lindsay for their first winter summit (and damons # 48 4ker) and we decided it was time to start getting down as it was about 2:45 or so and the wind wasn't too bad - maybe 20-25, coming down the crawford path, but it was so cold, it was IMO dangerous windchill, in fact we did have a couple of frostbite scares with white skin that when re-warmed, turned out ok - but white skin is never good
Crawford path was very icey and we needed to make sure crampons were biting on the bulletproof ice on the snowfield (now mostly icefields) - you really don't want to fall on this section as self arest would have been very tough
- made our way by the hut - the snowcave is still there and down the ammo (lots of ice) to the cog
I had a blast on this hike - really enjoyed it - nice to see people get their #1 washington winter summit and to add that to someones winter 48 - I thought that was a treat. Plus - I finally got the damn jefferson winter summit. and that monkey is off my back.
nice meeting lindsay, damon & abster and always a pleasure and fun hiking with steve, karen. meb, marsha
someone will share pics I am sure.
I left MEB, karen and marsha this am in NH and they were heading to the bonds so MEB can finish her winter 48.
Well plans change and that can actually be for the better under the right circumstances. My original plan was for sleeping bear (lindsay) and myself (guy) to head up the castle trail to hit jefferson - which in winter has been my nemesis since about 2000. I have done it in winter condtions before - but I was about 0 for 7 (some where bewtween 6 and 8, don't know for sure!) from calendar winter attmepts.
I was in contact with MEB and KMAC thru the week and if they weren't able to summit jefferson on friday, they were going to join us.
I spoke with them late friday and like I have many times, they were turned back (with Damon) right above the edmunds col due to low visibilty and high winds and cold temps. It souded to me like a typical northern pressie bad weather winter epic with losing trail, etc.. it happens
So, they weren't too keen on the castle, so we decided on the caps ridge. I got the weather report and summits were about 0 for highs and winds 20-50mph - pretty average winter winds.
Lindsay and I met karen and Marsha at lyons and we drove over to the cog to meet up with some others folks that MEb had cooridinated with -unfrozencaveman,abster,& DRitter, so I packed up my ice axe and we head off to the caps ridge, - we get on the trail
and I find out the plan is the jewell - Lindsay and I decided to head up the jewell with thew crew - even tho I had said many times that I always wanted my #1 jeff winter ascent to be from the north via castles, or Edmunds. I was out for fun this day and nothing more, so it turned out to be a great day with fun people - with many many laughs on the trail that I can't document here due to the bathroom humor!!!
So we headed up and the nice thing about jewell is its quick to treeline and IMO - very easy footing when packed out. (tho we did don spikes right out of the lot - it was icey.
We soon hit treeline and the gulfside, and wind was pretty much nothing, but visablity wasn't great either. So we all made our way over to sphinx col taking some brief rests every now and then. The winds were starting to pick up a bit, but still not too bad, it was cold though, and we really needed to keep it moving to stay warm. So we went up monticello lawn and visabilty was still not great, though every now and then we would get teased and things would get bright for short periods etc..
We all then made our way up the last push to the summit and re-grouped up there. Finally, I got this damn summit! We summited about 12:30 or so. This was # 47 for both MEB and DRITTER. Rested for a few minutes, got some water, ate some food and as usual, MEB whips out her bag a goodies and we all had some hot coccoa. NICE and thanks!
We all made out way down back to the jewell/gulfside junction and around there we stopped and I was going to change my gloves as my hands were getting rather cold and needed to out my bigger ones on. so KMAC gave me her half used hand warmers and man - did those feel good! thanks KMAC - I did buy her a beer for that after. Damon (Dritter) still needed washington for his 48 so lindsay and I went up washington with him., while the rest went down jewell.
It was also her first winter summit for george and while I was going for number 13 washington winter summit - I had never taken the gulfside up - so that would be a first for me as well. Visability got pretty bad and we got a bit sidetracked a couple of times high on the gulfisde, but a quick look at the map and all was fine and we made it to the gulfside/great gulf junction and followed it up to the trinity hieghts connector - now in most weather, you can see the summit building pretty easily here - or at least something, all we saw was a wall of white after on that for a few minutes (its only .2 miles long), I knew we were close and then a faint image of the tower not more than 50 feet popped out and you really had to look to see it - so we tagged the summit - congrats to damon and lindsay for their first winter summit (and damons # 48 4ker) and we decided it was time to start getting down as it was about 2:45 or so and the wind wasn't too bad - maybe 20-25, coming down the crawford path, but it was so cold, it was IMO dangerous windchill, in fact we did have a couple of frostbite scares with white skin that when re-warmed, turned out ok - but white skin is never good
Crawford path was very icey and we needed to make sure crampons were biting on the bulletproof ice on the snowfield (now mostly icefields) - you really don't want to fall on this section as self arest would have been very tough
- made our way by the hut - the snowcave is still there and down the ammo (lots of ice) to the cog
I had a blast on this hike - really enjoyed it - nice to see people get their #1 washington winter summit and to add that to someones winter 48 - I thought that was a treat. Plus - I finally got the damn jefferson winter summit.
and that monkey is off my back. nice meeting lindsay, damon & abster and always a pleasure and fun hiking with steve, karen. meb, marsha
someone will share pics I am sure.
I left MEB, karen and marsha this am in NH and they were heading to the bonds so MEB can finish her winter 48.
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