[pct-l] Snow Travel

[CHUCK CHELIN]

Good morning,

For those among you attempting a typical first-time thru-hike, there may be
concern about what preparation and gear are advisable for snowpack travel
in the higher elevations.  http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=264464
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=264576

There a practical way to get the snowpack hiking question into perspective
– and its fun:

Most of you have – or darn well should have by now – copies of all 8 of the
wonderful “PCT Class of …” DVDs; you should have a set of Squatch’s “Walk”
videos; and you all have access to many trail journal websites.  I
recommend revisiting all of this enjoyable material with an eye towards
learning what previous hikers use and wear -- particularly on their feet
over snow.

The people in the photos are typically not serious alpine mountaineers, nor
are they even well-honed winter snow travelers:  They are PCT hikers, and
even over the heaviest snowpack it is rare to see hikers wearing anything
but sneakers; and it’s extremely rare to see hikers  using crampons,
wearing mountaineering boots, or even traditional leather – read “heavy” –
hiking boots.

Many mountaineers recommend full-platform crampons to be sure there is
never an instance where one would slip, but while crampons are great for
ascending steep pitches, they really aren’t worth the trouble for trails,
even trails with side-slope.  Implicit in a recommendation of crampons is
the need for heavy boots to which to attach them.  Heavy, stiff boots are
what are best for “edging” footsteps on a crusty side-slope, but there
really isn’t a great deal of that because far and away the most likely
situation is you will be following someone else’s tracks rather than having
to stomp your own.

Walking can be slick when on a snowpack trail, or in the tracks of others,
so what’s helpful is to have some kind of minor traction aids just to bite
the surface.  http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=264768

For all that Jardine chirps in his books – appropriately -- about the need
for light-weight sneakers, he also claimed to use boots in the Sierra.  That’s
understandable because his background prior to thru-hiking was
mountaineering so he’s attitudinally spring-loaded towards boots on the
snow.

Much the same can be said for snowshoes.  It is extremely rare to see
snowshoes on the trail because they are just not worth the trouble for
limited use.  I have several pairs but I don’t use them on a PCT hike.

Many hikers carry an ice-axe but few really need one, and even fewer know
how to use one for its signature purpose of self-arrest.  They’re OK for
chopping an occasional step or two, but beyond that they are mostly just a
security blanket.  I have several but I don’t use them on a PCT hike.  If
the snowpack was really I might carry one, but mine are very short models.
http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=264671

Thru-hikers aren’t super-heroes; they are much like you and me hiking over
snowpack.

The fact that the vast majority of thru-hikers are successful wearing
sneakers with occasional traction aids is a pretty good indication of
what’s the most appropriate compromise in terms of functional value per
weight.

For those interested in an interesting – and long -- narrative about hiking
the Sierra in a heavy snow year I recommend:  "Impassable is a State of
Mind" by Chris Bailey which is reproduced below.

Steel-Eye

-Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965

http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye

http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09/



"Impassable" is a State of Mind



By Chris Bailey



1998 ranked among the three snowiest years on record in the High Sierra in

the last 25 years. In this article, thru-hikers Chris Bailey and Jenelle

Wilhelm share some of their experiences from the trail.



It is no longer news that 1998 was a big snow year on the Pacific Crest

Trail. For many ALDHA-West members, it is no longer news that all that snow

had a disruptive effect on ‘98’s north-bound thru-hikers. The Gazette’s

editor has asked us to provide a little of the flavor of what it was like to

thru-hike in a big snow year.



First, some background. Jenelle and I set out from Campo on April 26, 1998

and finished our hike at Manning Park on September 22, 1998. We became the 4

th and 5th hikers to have made it straight through from Mexico. Four others

finished in late October, for a total of nine who left the Mexican border

and hiked straight through to the Canadian border in 1998. Josh Dhasalear,

Jason Lakey and Jonathan Breen finished ahead of us, and Jennifer Pittman,

Mark Dixon, Jim Horan, and Graham Johnson behind us.



During the winter, we had been following the snow reports from the Sierras

and had become increasingly concerned, Poring over the data via the

internet, we’d have conversations like, "what the hell is snow water

content," and "well, 180% doesn’t seem so bad: maybe it will melt."

Obviously, we were in denial. Adding to our paranoia was Ray Jardine’s

published advice that if the snowpack was exceeding 200% of normal (which it

was in most of the High Sierra during April), we’d be better off to postpone

our hike for a year, or failing that, "that you not start until late May,

that you prepare to hike many miles of snowpack in southern and central

California, and that beyond the High Sierra you press ahead with a will in

order to finish before the early-winter snowstorms hit the North Cascades."

However, we decided to stick with our departure date: we were too anxious to

wait until June and go southbound, plus the idea of hiking home (we live

near Stevens Pass) was very appealing. Again, we were in denial.



So we read again and again Ray’s advice, which was prefaced with a warning

to the effect (I cut those pages out and lost them somewhere) that hiking in

heavy snow years was really winter mountaineering and beyond the scope of

his book. We just didn’t see how bad it could be.



Our first tangible evidence came on our flight from Seattle to San Diego on

April 25th. Our flight path took us directly over the High Sierra. We could

clearly make out Mono Lake and we’re pretty sure we picked out Mt. Whitney.

That was where we were going to be hiking in a few short weeks? We took

turns with our noses pressed to the window saying things like, "damn,

there’s a lot of snow down there," and "yeah, but most of it will melt

during the six weeks it’ll take us to get there, right?" Our state of denial

rose to new heights.



The Journey Begins



At 9:20 a.m. on April 26th we set out, excited, nervous, anxious, but

confident. There was no snow at Campo – how bad could it really be? In fact,

there wasn’t a single patch of snow in the Laguna Mountains, which gave us

hope. But there were register entries from a couple of weeks before

describing how some PCTers had arrived on snowshoes.



It wasn’t until we climbed over the shoulder of Combs Peak (map B3) that we

got our first really good look at the San Jacintos. Gulp! Damn, there was a

lot of snow there. Somehow we almost convinced ourselves that we were really

looking at San Gorgonio, which we’d skirt around anyhow. But no, that was

San Jacinto and we’d be there in about 2-3 days. Yeah, but we don’t go over

the top, we traverse around a couple thousand feet below. How bad could it

be? This is starting to sound familiar, huh?



Unseasonable storms ran us off the Desert Divide into Idyllwild prematurely

and after waiting for 3 snowy, rainy days in Idyllwild we made our way back

to our bail-off point and continued north. My (Chris) journal entries for

May 8 - 10:



*"Finally left Idyllwild today, getting a ride back to Cedar Springs Trail.

Jenelle and I spent last night at the State Park Hiker/Biker site in the

rain, thunder and hail.  The weather still didn't look great but we were

really itching to get hiking after three nights in town.  Jason and Johanna

also squeezed into the van for the ride back.  All day as we continued north

along the Desert Divide, we remained in the clouds.  We would occasionally

catch glimpses down toward Palm Springs.  North of Apache Peak we hit our

first steep snow and broke out the ice axes.  They were definitely required

as one slip would have sent us sliding over rocks, cliffs in some cases, and

into trees."*



*"The majority of the trail today was snow-free but the snowy stretches were

tricky. We camped with Kojac and Jason and Johanna near the head of Andreas

Canyon. Our stove sprang a leak in the hose (after only eight days of use)

and turned into a fireball. So much for hot food and melting snow for

water."*



*May 9, 1998*



*"We spent all day today in the snow. Just after leaving our campsite this

morning, we were in deep snow after one treacherous traverse on solid ice

(refrozen over night). Tracks went everywhere, but we didn't trust any of

them because one set were Brian's, who was lost, and another set was Brian

and Martina's, who were lost and another was Lynn and Mike's, who were lost,

and another set belonged to a ranger, who was lost. We eventually made our

way to the vicinity of Deer Springs, but we didn't know exactly where we

were. We ended up camping on top of 10 feet of snow (with no stove). It was

a long, hellish day during which we would find the trail only about 10

percent of the time and hiked hard all day to cover fewer than ten miles."*



*May 10, 1998*



*"After waiting for the sun to soften the snow enough to get decent

footing,  we made our way across a really sketchy side-hill traverse before

finally finding the trail again just below the crest of Fuller Ridge. We

were so happy to be on it again, but it soon disappeared under 15 feet of

snow on the east side of the ridge. We picked up Brian and Brian and

Martina's tracks and followed them to Black Mountain Road below Fuller Ridge

campsite. Finally out of the snow, we found a great campsite and made a

small fire so we could have a hot meal for the first time in three days."*



We continued to have poor weather on and off, all the way to Kennedy

Meadows, including an 18-inch snowstorm in the San Bernardino mountains near

Mission Creek Trail Camp on May 13th and several other days of really lousy

weather. All, I’m told, remnants of the El Nino cycle, which didn’t really

release its grip on Southern California until mid-June.



The High Sierra



We arrived at Kennedy Meadows on June 10th and spent four nights there

waiting for the weather to improve. By this time, we had decided we were

going to make a foray into the Sierra to see what it was like. The vast

majority of other thru-hikers had decided by now to skip to somewhere in

northern California or flip-flop to Canada and the hand-wringing, nervous

speculation, and endless debates about how to proceed had consumed a lot of

energy over the past couple of weeks. It had grown to be a nauseating topic.



The weather pattern had settled down on the 13th, and on the 14th, with our

new hiking partner, Randy (a section hiker who had started at Tehachapi

Pass), we headed up the trail. We were carrying six days worth of food and

our plan was to go at least as far as Trail Pass and then depending on how

we were doing, we’d continue to at least Cottonwood Pass and, best case,

continue to Crabtree Meadows and head over Trail Crest to resupply (and

decide whether to proceed) in Lone Pine via Whitney Portal. Within the first

half-day, we met two nay-sayers who said we didn’t stand a chance.



We knew of two hikers who had left Kennedy Meadows heading north ahead of

us. One said he was only going as far as Olancha Pass, where he would head

for Highway 395 and begin his flip-flop. The other hiker, we knew, was an

experienced nordic skier and had skis with him. He was a very strong hiker

and we felt certain he was out there ahead of us, which was (somewhat

irrationally) a comforting feeling. He was about a week ahead of us at this

point. We learned about two weeks later that he had only traveled about two

days (to Trail Pass or Cottonwood Pass, I think) before he wisely decided

that traveling solo was not a good idea. He later told us he didn’t think

anyone would come along to travel with, so he decided to flip-flop.



Before setting out from Kennedy Meadows, we had contacted a backcountry

ranger at the Lone Pine ranger station. He informed us that while there was

100% coverage in the high country, the snow was "bomber," i.e., in good

condition for travel. This (and the avalanche danger) was our major concern.

We knew we would struggle (post-hole) badly if the snow was unconsolidated.

The ranger’s information turned out to be quite accurate. While the PCTA

(and many, many others) were telling hikers that the Sierras were still

impassable, we found the hiking strenuous and slow, but quite doable. Here

is an excerpt from my (Chris) journals describing the conditions from

Kennedy Meadows to Kearsarge Pass:



"We encountered out first patchy snow at around 9,000 feet, on June 14th,

the day we left Kennedy Meadows. The next morning, traversing around Olancha

Peak, we walked on patchy to mostly continuous snow for a few hours (at

9-10,000 feet) and had more of the same north of Ash Meadow that afternoon.

The following day, we found the same snowpack composition as the day before

as we approached Trail Pass and Cottonwood Pass, with solid snow on north

and east exposures above 9,000 feet, especially in heavy timber. This

pattern continued all the way past Crabtree Meadows to just south of Bighorn

Plateau, where the snowpack became pervasive. In all this distance the snow

was of a uniform nature: consolidated enough to hike bare-booted, with only

occasional post-holing around "warming" objects like rocks and logs. We

encountered no sun-cupping yet either, until the north side of Forester Pass

in the Bubbs Creek drainage. One nice thing about this southern section was

that the southern and western exposures below 10,000’ were often melted out

almost completely, so many of our climbs were on bare switchbacks, while our

descents (since we’re headed north) were on snow. One disadvantage of

spring-like snow is that, especially in timber, the snow falls and drifts to

irregular depths, leaving us to climb and descend over miles of one to six

foot hummocks – an exhausting proposition."



"Forester Pass, our first major obstacle and the highest point on the PCT,

had worried us for a couple of days. When we first glimpsed it from a

distance, it made us cringe. We hadn’t seen any of the advice posted [on our

website’s guest book] about Forester and had forgotten about Jardine’s

recommendation of a possible alternate pass. When we got close enough to see

the six to eight foot cornice at the top, the steep couloir, the avalanche

debris, and the snow-plastered switchbacks blasted out of the steep rock

face, we decided we weren’t going to risk it, though we weren’t sure how to

proceed. As we ate lunch and stared at this problem, the pass just a short

distance to the east of Forester (and west of Junction Peak), started to

seem like an option, though we only had the topo map to indicate what the

north side might be like. The pass had a bare talus slope for the last 100

feet and no cornice and didn’t seem unbearably steep, so we decided to give

it a whirl. The snow was almost perfect for us to bare-boot up (our only

option as we don't have crampons with us and have found little real need for

them) protecting ourselves from a fall by self-belaying with our ice-axes.

The north side of the pass was steep, but soft and easy to descend."



"One word here about avalanches. The three of us decided the risks

associated with doing Forester and the rest of the passes in the afternoons

was reasonably low, based on the conditions we saw and how the snowpack felt

to us. There was evidence of recent slides, but mostly of snow coming off

very steep rock or pieces of cornices breaking off – both situations we

rarely had to traverse under. It also appeared that the majority of the

heavily loaded areas had already slid. We saw no evidence of snowfields such

as the ones we were regularly traversing triggering, even when they were hit

by slides from above. Finally, the slide depositions we saw were very

shallow and the one time we actually saw a slide, it was moving about four

m.p.h."



"The snow in the vicinity north of Forester was pretty rotten in the late

afternoon, the worst post-holing through this whole section. Otherwise, the

snow conditions the rest of the way to Red’s Meadow became slightly better

consolidated, vastly more sun-cupped (in meadows and open stands of timber)

and deeper north of Silver Pass (we found snow almost all the way down to

Red’s Meadow Resort)."



On that first leg from Kennedy Meadows we managed to exceed our expectations

and were able to make it all the way to the Kearsarge Pass cut-off, where we

headed out to the Onion Valley trailhead to resupply in Lone Pine (where we

had sent our drift box). Unfortunately, the Onion Valley road had just

opened and had very little traffic on it. We ended up walking about 8 (of

15) miles down the road before catching a ride the rest of the way into

Independence.



After a couple of days rest in Lone Pine, we decided to continue north along

the PCT rather than flip-flopping, which we had left open as an option. We

made an 8-day leg to Red’s Meadow, where we hitched out to Mammoth Lakes for

more rest and resupply. Continuing with my (Chris) journal entries for the

passes north of Kearsarge:



"As for the rest of the passes: Glen Pass was steep on both sides, but we

took a line to the right, following some skiers' steps and topped out

through a band of rocks. It was a pretty easy pass, really, as it wasn’t

very exposed. The north side had some pretty rotten snow and a few cliffs to

descend around."



"Pinchot was quite easy as well. We took a line to the right making first

tracks. The back side was no problem."



"Mather Pass was terrifying. The whole pass was corniced, except for one

tiny spot above the pass on the left through the rocks. We traversed steeply

up the left side, partially exposed to cornices above, crawled through one

rock band, climbed steeply up very rotten snow to the next rock band and

continued on mixed rock and snow, following (roughly) a skier’s steps over

steep rock – quite a challenge! At one point while leading, I sank in to

rotten snow with both feet, up to my waist. I was very off-balance (tipping

backward on a very steep section) and couldn’t get a purchase on anything

with my ice axe (the snow was sno-cone consistency about one foot deep on

top of rock). My feet were stuck and I had to get Jenelle to dig them out

from behind."



"Muir, Selden and Silver Passes were very easy and straightforward. In all,

the snow has been hard work and has made route finding slow and tedious at

times. We saw the trail only briefly, except in the valley bottoms. Patience

is the key."



"We’ve heard there’ve been a few deaths in whitewater accidents from the

high run-off so maybe a few words about stream-crossings are in order. We’ve

actually had little difficulty with them. A little scouting for a good spot

or log goes a long way. The one that sounded the scariest from the guidebook

description, Silver Pass Lake Creek ("a hair-raising stream-crossing at the

head of a fatally high cascade") was mostly just noisy, but not difficult."



The snowy trail continued in earnest after Red’s Meadow and the snow level

actually dropped the further north we went in the Sierras. While there was

little snow on the ground in Tuolumne Meadows, there was still plenty in the

Yosemite backcountry and all the way to Sonora Pass. Our worst river fords

came between Tuolumne Meadows and Falls Creek, where we had several very

deep (chest high) crossings. A couple of the guys ahead of and behind us

inadvertently swam on one or two of the crossings. Thankfully, we were able

to scout for logs on a few of these. A few times we bushwhacked on the

opposite banks from the trail for a long way, crossing miles upstream where

it was safer. By this time we had become comfortable with not having actual

tread to follow. We had very little tread for most of the High Sierra.



Our last long stretch of snow wasn’t until shortly before Belden (map M10)

at about 6800 feet, though we encountered drifts and snowfields on and off

all the way through the Marble Mountain Wilderness in northern California.



Despite all the mental stress and hard work, the Sierras in ’98 were

indescribably beautiful, vast and awe-inspiring. The physical hardships, the

exhaustion, and the frustrations of constant route-finding, were rewarded by

solitude, by views that few thru-hikers ever see, and by the reassuring

knowledge that we were still heading north to Canada. We wouldn’t have

traded the experience for anything, and would suggest that future

thru-hikers (with adequate skills) at least consider taking the PCT on its

own terms, even when the conditions are difficult. Not that there’s any

"right," "better," or "best" way to hike the trail, but there is perhaps a

little value in continuity and accepting the challenges of the trail as you

find them.