Baden Powell Report 2/16/19

A Cold Day on Balden Powell

Baden Powell trip report 2/16/19

The road to Baldy was washed out recently and lead to a morning of change of plans.

The road through Wrightwood was icy, but very drivable, and the 2 was closed near the grassy hollow visitor center and we started by snowshoeing the road the rest of the way to the trailhead. At 6:45, when we started, it was 19 degrees. 

At the trailhead, it was pretty obvious where the switchbacks for the trail were, but they were fully snow covered. We took a pretty straight up path in snowshoes. In the process, we were on the northeast side of the mountain for most of it. As we crested the ridge near the summit, we switched to crampons and stayed to the less exposed north slope. At this point the views of a snow-capped Baldy were fantastic

Our descent was petty quick down a more eastern facing low angle shoot. There were a few trees mixed into it, but there was enough snow cover that a glissade was possible. 

Temps were in the teens for the bulk of our 6 hour round trip. Back at the car at 1:45 it was still only 30.

We expected hard and fast snow conditions with fairly abundant ice due to the recent rain and cold over the top of the base of snow from a few weeks ago. We ended up finding more powdery conditions. Probably 6” of powder over the more consolidated base.