| Don't ask me what I was doing... | [ Sizes: Orig | Med | Small | Thumb ] |
Don't ask me what I was doing on Blanca as the sun was going down. This was taken after completing the ridge looking North towards a snow shower. You can see the flash on the summit rocks.
Comments
[ Post a Comment ]| Jabberwocky | I know you said not to... | | Voted 10/10 | ...But I have to ask!
What in the world were you doing on the summit of Blanca at sunset? Was it a daring, planned bivouac? | | Posted Sep 21, 2003 5:50 pm |
 | | truchas | Re: I know you said not to... | | 
Hasn't voted | Well, I basically dragged a buddy of mine up something that I probably shouldn't have dragged him up. After a usual late start (I am not a morning person), we headed up the wrong route. See the Wrong Couloir Route I added to the Little Bear Page. Further time wasting was done roping up and rapelling back down the couloir after my partner dropped his pack about 100 feet below where he was.
Getting him over the ridge was time consuming as well, plus I wasn't going as fast as I normally do since I had a full length rope and way too much heavy gear.
Then about 3/4 of the way across, we got in a pretty horrendous lightning and hail storm. Fortunately, the lightning was mainly concentrated down around Como Lake, but we still had to hunker down for about an hour about 20 feet off the ridge. That is as far down as we could go. This ridge is very exposed.
After summitting and watching the sun go down (at this point what was the point in hurrying, right?), we headed down with one headlamp between the two of us. We made it to approximately 13,700 ft. when that headlamp quit working, although not because of the batteries. We were forced to bivouac. We ended up freezing our ass off the rest of the night getting little sleep as we slept on the rocks with no bivy sack or sleeping bag. Fortunately, we did have quite a bit of warm clothing, but it was still way too cold to be comfortable.
At about 6 a.m., we hiked back down to the tents. Before hiking out we slept until about noon when we woke up burning up from the sun on our tent. It was an epic journey which I would rate as the most fun I have had on any trip. | | Posted Sep 21, 2003 7:42 pm |
| | Jabberwocky | Re: I know you said not to... | | Voted 10/10 | Thanks for the additional info on your adventure! Sounds very cold and exhausting. Climbing with Rookies can get you into trouble.
Keep up the great posts and fantastic photos! | | Posted Sep 23, 2003 11:03 am |
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