Tue, Dec 19, 2017
|
With: | Jackie Burd |
It was 23F outside when we got up and headed out around 7a the next morning
with a colorful sunrise
to greet us. With our Sno Park pass in hand (printed
out via internet), we drove up and over Luther Pass on SR89 and then up to
Carson Pass
at the top of SR88. My plan was for us to snowshoe a few miles out
to Winnemucca Lake and then climb Round Top if conditions permitted. We spent
about an hour covering
the distance to the lake,
finding it frozen and a novel experience for Jackie to walk along
the surface with several inches of solid
ice beneath us. Leniticular clouds had formed early overhead and we had little
sunshine for the first hour and a half. The winds increased as we
climbed higher
above the lake as Jackie's toes were growing colder. We passed a trio
of guys my age who had started out ahead of us on crampons, and Jackie was quite
proud to have been able to pass them (the conditions definitely favored
snowshoes today). We got up to about 9,400ft with the winds growing stronger
when, after a little pow-wow, we decided to turn around. Jackie felt embarrassed
that we would have to descend past the guys we had so recently outrun, so we
made a wide U-turn to allow us to make an end-around back to
the descent line
without going by them. When I looked back up, they had paused to watch us
descending, probably wondering why.
We returned to the lake and then continued northeast to Elephants Back in way
of a consolation prize. The upper several hundred feet of this smaller objective
were mostly free of snow, so we abandoned the snowshoes and climbed the
remaining distance in our boots. It was cold and windier
on top so we
stayed only long enough to post a few photos and videos on social media (pretty
much what you'd expect from a millennial). We got back to Carson Pass shortly
before 11:30a and decided to call it a day. The wind got the better of us
and we didn't really want to go back out and fight it any more. Though we didn't
make our primary objective and never got to use the crampons, Jackie still
reported having a great time. And that's about all Dad could ask for...
For more information see these SummitPost pages: Elephants Back
This page last updated: Tue Dec 19 19:03:33 2017
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