I've noticed that many first "winter" ascents in Secor's guide happened in April. Considering that April is in spring, why are April ascents considered winter ascents? If one climbs Whitney in wintry conditions in July would that be considered a winter ascent?

Secor states on page 31 of the 3rd edition that 'an ascent during the months of December, January, February, March, or April is given credit here as a "winter ascent"'. Page 29 of the 2nd edition has the same language but it appears absent in the first edition.

Mark Twain said that Mammoth has two seasons, winter and August.

Winter begins on the Winter Solstice (around December 21) and ends on the Spring Equinox (around March 21). A winter climb is one that occurs in the winter. Duh!

The days are as long on April 30 as they are on August 12. Defining winter as being five months long, to put it politely, doesn't make sense to me.

Doesn't spring start March 20th in the Northern Hemisphere? The snow is often more consolidated in the Sierra in the spring than in the winter, so winter and spring climbs shouldn't be lumped together.

Here is a picture of Main Lodge on the Hill, the morning of April 6th, 2006 after a 76" dump in four days.


What do you think???

The Chief wrote:Here is a picture of Main Lodge on the Hill, the morning of April 6th, 2006 after a 76" dump in four days.


What do you think???

Wow, great spring skiing conditions!

No matter when winter ends and spring begins, let's all hope for a long wet winter and spring this year. It looks like most of the weather forecasters are predicting a wet winter this year, so I'm hopeful they are correct.

Winter is very distinctly (and easily) defined. An ascent outside of this time is NOT a winter ascent.

I don't think we should call it a 'winter' ascent but one could call it a 'spring' ascent in winter conditions if there's a lot of snow.

IMO, there's only two conditions: snow and 'no snow', the rest is pretty irrelevant in the Sierra.

I've been backcountry skiing, and made a peak at -21F before Dec 21, would that be a Winter Ascent?

Diggler wrote:Winter is very distinctly (and easily) defined. An ascent outside of this time is NOT a winter ascent.

Hmm... Merriam-Webster has a couple relevant definitions. I guess you are thinking of the astronomical definition of winter, but many places around the world ignore that one in favor of a definition more matched to the local climate.

"The colder half of the year" definition seems to be the closest match to Secor's December-April definition. Personally I think that works well for the Sierra.

Perhaps a distinction needs to be drawn between a "calendar-winter ascent" and a "wintry non-calendar-winter ascent". But that distinction is clumsy enough that it would probably never be used. So maybe instead we should just talk in terms of "wintry" ascents. But that would not seem to do justice to wintry ascents done in calendar-winter.

Since the four-season classification system is causing so much trouble, and since it is contrived anyway, perhaps we should take steps to do away with it altogether.

Bill Kish wrote:

Diggler wrote:Winter is very distinctly (and easily) defined. An ascent outside of this time is NOT a winter ascent.

Hmm... Merriam-Webster has a couple relevant definitions. I guess you are thinking of the astronomical definition of winter, but many places around the world ignore that one in favor of a definition more matched to the local climate.

"The colder half of the year" definition seems to be the closest match to Secor's December-April definition. Personally I think that works well for the Sierra.

from Webster (cited): "or as reckoned astronomically extending from the December solstice to the March equinox"

from Wiki (also cited): "Meteorologically, the winter solstice, being the day of the year which has fewest hours of daylight, ought to be the middle of the season, but temperature lag means that the coldest period normally follows the solstice, so the season is sometimes regarded (in the USA and England) as beginning at the solstice and ending on the following equinox[1][2]. In the Northern Hemisphere, depending on the year, this corresponds to the period between December 20 and 21 and March 20 or 21."

If one desires to attribute any significant relevance to a "winter ascent" (first or otherwise), seems like a concise definition would be logical, instead of some vague, flowery definition that is used to describe how the conditions were on the mountain. I've been on mountains when it was -10F, & been snowed on others, in the summer- 'wintry' conditions, by most people's standards. These were, however, not winter ascents.

Well the first part of that first Webster definition says "usually the months of December, January, and February", so there is ambiguity here from the start.

I understand the appeal of a crisp definition, but the problem is that winter is an 'analog process': each year Winter gradually comes and then gradually goes. And each year is different. So any attempt to define 'winter' by fixed dates is always going to have problems when it comes to describing actual conditions.

My second point is that local climate is potentially more relevant than the astronomical solstice and equinox when it comes to determining actual conditions. Modifying the definition of winter to match local climatology will at least minimize the error inherent in any fixed-date definition. This is what I believe that Secor has done.