Journal Entries

It's a long, steep, snowy climb to the pass. It's supposed to save us a bunch of miles over the easier Texas Pass, which I did last year. There's a ton of snow on Texas right now, though, so even though this one was pretty scary, I guess it was the right choice.

Crossing the outlet of Lonesome Lake at the bottom of the Cirque. Possible thunderstorms today, so we're trying to hurry up and over the next pass.

Arrowhead lake on the way up Jackass Pass. Called it a day somewhat early last night, and oh man am I glad we did.

A late lunch or afternoon teatime by Black Joe Lake. So many wildflowers! So much beauty. So tired.

That's where we came down from. If you look real hard, you can see our paths in the snow. It's gorgeous out here, but I'm so tired I'm shaking when we stop moving.

Who knew glissading could be so exhausting? Between a wrong turn and then a 1000 foot glissade, I was just as wrecked as yesterday. And we still had several miles to go.

Summited at about 10:30 AM. Feels good. Next, a long descent.

Plenty of snow to go over on the way up. We used our ice axes quite a bit. Luckily, the snow is soft enough to walk on comfortably, but not so soft that we post holed.

I felt about a million times better this morning, which is especially good since we have our biggest climb of the trip this morning. Wind River Peak, over 13100 feet high. I'm elated that the elevation isn't killing me this morning.

Made camp early, since to go any further we'd be ascending Wind River Peak. I'm pretty beat from hiking up to 10,500 feet today, so an early day is fine. I just hope I'll feel 90% better by tomorrow morning.