Damn headwalls

Dec 31/ Jan 1 2004 Our initial plan was to climb Mt. Pershing but due to the Jefferson road being closed, my friend and I decided to try an accent up Mt. Stone instead. We decided to follow the abandoned logging road (FS 1576) for the fist portion of the climb instead of the Putvin trail. A great decision, easy to follow and great camping sites. We began snow shoeing around 2:30pm after we dug out a parking place. The snow Level at the road (700ft) was almost 2 ft. After 1.5 hours of hiking we made camp on the road at about 2200ft. When we woke up it had snowed about another inch. The weather was great! High overcast which permitted wonderful views of Mt Pershing. We left camp around 6:30am and headed for the summit. Route finding was no problem until we came to the first headwall. Here the snow was more like 4-6 ft deep and it was extremely light and powdery. This made it almost impossible to climb up for you couldn’t get a grip on the ground you would just slide backwards. The snow was so light it made it almost impossible to arrest. Ice axes were almost useless. After about 2 hours of looking for the passage and trying to climb over the Headwall we decided to just belay back down to the meadow area. It was now snowing very heavily. We were planning on staying a second night on the mountain but we were afraid we would not be able to get our car out if it continued to snow the way it was. We packed up camp and dug the car out and were on our way out the Hamma Hamma by 4:45. Although we didn’t summit it was a beautiful experience!!!