bryan
New member
date: 3/9/11
trails: jewell, gulfside, jefferson loop, airline, osgood, valley way
conditions: jewell had a little snow on top of hard pack. lots of leaners to duck under. above treeline is a hard icy crust on top of powder. in some places it held our weight, in some not. cut across snowfields towards sphinx col. some tricky areas where crust was particularly icy. same crusty conditions to jefferson, though more breakable. bypassed the steep snow slope coming off jefferson to edmands col by staying more west on the descent. crust continued to adams. a track was broken out from there to madison hut and up to madison summit. care is definitely needed on some of the snowfields and right now conditions aren't great for one specific kind of footwear. crampons posthole through, but in some places snowshoes (msrs) were just on the edge of acceptable traction. valley way had a nice soft snowshoe track.
equipment: snowshoes, crampons. used snowshoes from jewell until madison hut and then crampons up and back from madison summit. carried an ice axe, but didn't pull it out. certainly woudn't have been a bad idea on some of the snowfields, but i was more comfortable sticking with poles.
comments: have been waiting for a nice day like this for a couple weeks. winds were virtually non-existent until later in the day and there was a great mix of blue skies and clouds hanging below the summits. congratulations to val on her winter 48 and timc and jeremy their single seasons. managed to cap off a single season w48 myself and feeling pretty good about it as this time last year i was rehabilitating a serious injury and partially motivating my rehab with this goal in mind. thanks to mark, jeremy, val, tim and cynthia for a great hike. awesome day to be out.
bryan
[email protected]
trails: jewell, gulfside, jefferson loop, airline, osgood, valley way
conditions: jewell had a little snow on top of hard pack. lots of leaners to duck under. above treeline is a hard icy crust on top of powder. in some places it held our weight, in some not. cut across snowfields towards sphinx col. some tricky areas where crust was particularly icy. same crusty conditions to jefferson, though more breakable. bypassed the steep snow slope coming off jefferson to edmands col by staying more west on the descent. crust continued to adams. a track was broken out from there to madison hut and up to madison summit. care is definitely needed on some of the snowfields and right now conditions aren't great for one specific kind of footwear. crampons posthole through, but in some places snowshoes (msrs) were just on the edge of acceptable traction. valley way had a nice soft snowshoe track.
equipment: snowshoes, crampons. used snowshoes from jewell until madison hut and then crampons up and back from madison summit. carried an ice axe, but didn't pull it out. certainly woudn't have been a bad idea on some of the snowfields, but i was more comfortable sticking with poles.
comments: have been waiting for a nice day like this for a couple weeks. winds were virtually non-existent until later in the day and there was a great mix of blue skies and clouds hanging below the summits. congratulations to val on her winter 48 and timc and jeremy their single seasons. managed to cap off a single season w48 myself and feeling pretty good about it as this time last year i was rehabilitating a serious injury and partially motivating my rehab with this goal in mind. thanks to mark, jeremy, val, tim and cynthia for a great hike. awesome day to be out.
bryan
[email protected]
