#the sinus infection slog is hard to beat

[andrea-lyn]

love how I've yet to be able to write anything since early february and have two fics that could be done this week if I worked on them

and my brain instead went, hey, but what if you wrote some malex

[ayeletinthemountains]

Mount Morrison

3/29/17

It had been nearly 3 months since I’d last climbed a big mountain, and I was itching to cross something off my list. I was (and currently still am) in the Eastern Sierra for the start of my grand trip with Leo in our van Betty. We only had about a week or so from starting the trip to a commitment we had in Napa, so we planned to stay in CA and head over to the east side. We first spent a few days skiing in Tahoe because of some new snow(!), and then headed down south to the Bishop area.

The map of our GPS track for Morrison, with the GPX file here.

We had two friends who would be in town for the whole week — Kwyn, for avy 1 and then to hang out and ski, and Marco, who planned to head to Bishop to boulder. Kwyn was feeling pretty beat up from avy 1, the previous day’s ski tour, and a sinus infection. Marco had scraped himself up really badly skateboarding down the Rock Creek road two days prior. So, it looked like just Leo and I would be up for the challenge. Wednesday (the day of our climb) looked to have excellent weather for Mount Morrison (a high of 47 with winds of 10mph). The problem was, it was already 9pm on Tuesday night and we were at camp with very little service, and Leo felt like he hadn’t done enough research on the route yet. I said I felt pretty comfortable on what I had read up on. Of all the SPS accessible from the Eastern Sierra, Morrison is perhaps the most accessible in winter. You start from Convict Lake, which is one of the only roads to trailheads plowed in the winter on the east side, and the hike itself is only about 8mi with less 5k ft of gain. No other SPS peak really has stats that are even somewhat comparable to that in winter on the east side.

Sunrise on the hike in.

Finally, at 9:30, we decided to just go for it. Thursday was going to have a small storm system, and Friday we needed to start driving back towards Napa, so Wednesday was our only option. And even though we were tired and wish we had more time to prepare, we wanted to take advantage of the weather. Here goes nothing.

We spent the next hour preparing and were in bed around 11pm. The alarm was set for 3:50am. Excellent. I slept pretty poorly. I think I was pretty nervous about what conditions we’d find, and if my body would be up for it — since I literally hadn’t climbed any true mountains since New Years Day.

We got up at the planned time, and were on the road at 4:15am. Since we had been camped with our friends at the Pit campground in Bishop, we had a 45 minute drive to Convict Lake. We finished up our last prep once we arrived — put on our avalanche beacons, threw the last things in our packs, put our headlamps on our helmets, and then headed out. The snow came right up to the parking, so we put on crampons from the get go.

The snow wasn’t as hard as I was hoping it’d be. I figured it would feel nearly rock solid, but it surprisingly still had some give to it even as we set off at 5:15am in the dark. Two days earlier, I had visited the trailhead and spent 15 mins walking around to make sure I’d be able to see the start of the route in the dark. I was definitely glad I had done this, so we had no trouble route finding on the actual day of the climb.

Beautiful bowls to ski in the early morning light.

You pretty much start heading uphill immediately, and it never really stops until the summit. While the snow was definitely patchy down at lake level among the shrubbery, we headed over to a snow-covered gully that is along the mountain and then headed up from there. This put us at the edge of the mountain itself. Our chosen route for the day was the east slope, so we would traverse around the eastern edge of the peak, until we got to a slope that was reasonable enough for us to take to the top. In summer, this is an easy class 2 route, that does feature some talus. I was crossing my fingers that in this heavy snow year, we’d have enough snow coverage to completely avoid any talus whatsoever.

We made good time heading up the mountain. After just 1h10min we’d already gained 1.4k ft. Okay, so maybe my legs could still do this mountain thing after all! The snow was generally still good, but we were breaking through a wind crust here and there. Ick. The sky started to get light pretty early on, and soon enough we were treated to a gorgeous sunrise over the Mammoth area.

More sunrise views.

We were hauling our snowshoes on our packs, and I kept wanting to ditch them because they are so heavy. Leo insisted that we should haul them until we got to the steep uphill of the east slope itself. I kept saying, nah, it’s fine, let’s leave ‘em here. It’s no big deal is we posthole downhill! Leo seems to think snowshoes aren’t that heavy. Oh, to be very strong and fit.

Around 8:30am, we finished our traverse around the edge of the mountain and found ourselves at the base of the east slope. We finally got to drop our snowshoes, and we decided to get out a snack and put on sunscreen before continuing, since we’d finally be in the sun. Leo handed me the sunscreen from his pack, and I attempted to place it on the ground near my pack until I was ready for it. And then it started rolling. Downhill. I expected it to stop after a few feet, but it didn’t. It kept going. And so, in crampons, I started running. But I couldn’t run that fast for fear of tripping or stabbing myself with my crampons. The sunscreen was pretty much my exact speed by this point. I knew the only way I’d be able to catch it was to dive for it. So I did. And I just narrowly missed it. And so, I started running, again. And I dove for the sunscreen, again. Thankfully, this time I was able to snatch it. Thank goodness. There was no way I was going to chase after that thing for a third time and dive for it again. I started trudging back up the hundred feet or so of elevation that I had lost. And there was Leo, holding a PB&J and laughing as I slogged back up the hill.

Headed towards where we dropped our snowshoes (and where I dropped the sunscreen).

Sunscreen recovered and placed on our faces, we started to head up the east slope. It was finally steep enough to get out our ice axes. The first few hundred feet or so were pretty moderate, which I definitely appreciated since this was my first time using an ice axe and crampons this season, since I’d been learning to ski all season instead. Leo measured the slope at around 15°. As we got higher, the slope only got steeper and steeper. We were now entirely in the sun, and the snow was getting soft. Leo, being the guy that he is, insisted that he kick steps. This saved me so much energy, as the snow got soft and softer and steps got deeper and deeper. Given my current fitness, just starting to get back into mountain climbing, there was no way I could have gotten up the mountain in a reasonable time if I had had to kick the majority of my own steps. Thank you Leo.

On top of the first large slope.

We got to the top of the first large slope that we were out, and traversed left onto a ridge. Some of the climbing was steep with cliffs below, so we were definitely in no fall zones at times. This of course made the going slower, as I triple checked my axe placement, triple checked my next foot placement, triple checked my other next foot placement, and rinse and repeat. It definitely got a bit spicy, which was both exciting, nerve-wracking, and good practice for me for all the other stuff I’d like to do this season.

Leo kicking steps in deep snow.

We continued trudging up the ridge until we entered another smaller bowl or larger slope (whatever you want to call it), that took us just about to the summit. By this point, we’d sink in about a foot for every single step. To make matters more annoying, the snow kept balling up on our crampons within a few steps every single time, which made getting purchase on our steps beyond annoying. But, I just kept following Leo’s track, and soon enough we were at the summit! It took us only 5.5hrs to do 4.7k ft of gain, the last 2 hours or so of which were in deep, annoying snow. I’m going to count it as a win.

Views of Bloody Mountain, with the Minarets in the background.

The weather was amazing as the forecast had predicted. We sat on the summit in just our base layers and enjoyed the incredible views. The Minarets, Ritter and Banner, Bloody Mountain. Man, I had missed this stuff. It had been too long. We couldn’t spot the register (it must have been somewhere under the snow), so we took a pretty short break on the summit. The primary avalanche danger for the day was loose wet, given how warm it was and all the sun, so we wanted to get back down to the bottom of the slope as soon as we could. I swallowed a gu and then we started our descent.

Views in the other direction.

All the way up, we had been dreaming of glissading down. However, given that the upper parts of the climb did cliff out, we figured it would be safest to down climb until we got to the first slope we came up. That slope flattened out into a bowl at the end, where our snowshoes were, so we knew it would be safe. This left us with the not so fun task of retracing our steps. The snow was still balling up on our crampons like crazy, which made the going much slower still, since we kept almost slipping every time that happened. The post-holing wasn’t great, because the top layer was so warm that it would just slip. So, what we thought would be a super quick descent ended up taking us longer than we’d hoped, but it was still faster than the ascent at least.

Summit selfie, of course.

On the way down, we passed 5 skiers who were all heading up to ski some of the bowls. I looked on with envy, excited for the day that I’ll be good enough to do the same. Oh well for now. We finally made it back down to the original slope, and had some fun glissades back down to our packs. Since it was so hot out, sitting in the snow was a welcome change.

The descent.

We made it back to our packs around 12:30pm, happy to be out of avalanche danger and back at our snowshoes. We had some more snacks, took off all extra layers, and started the very casual walk out. At this point, I was very thankful that Leo had made sure we had schlepped our snowshoes all this way. They made the hike out very pleasant. We took the pace slowly, enjoying it as a nice stroll practically back to the van. We made it back at 2:15pm, making for a 9hr day. Not bad at all.

The view back down at Convict Lake.

Back at the van, we changed into t-shirts and shorts, and enjoyed lounging in the sun while we put our gear away. It had definitely been worth the 3:50am wake up call after all, and I was very glad that we had taken advantage of the good weather. I felt pretty spoiled as we drove away drinking cold drinks from the van’s fridge after a solid day.