Round Top & Red Lake Peak

[lizolas]

Round Top & Red Lake Peak – March 31 - April 1, 2018

Last March I went with Henrique, Jessica, and Faryar on what was supposed to be an easy introduction to snow climbing on Round Top. Maybe climbing the couloir would have been relatively easy, but the high winds forced us to turn around just short of the base of the climb. I decided I was never going to be a mountaineer and had been a complete idiot wasting money on gear I’d never use because I wasn’t good enough for real mountains. A year later, I decided that I was going to be a real mountaineer someday whether or not I could ever find anyone to go with me. Round Top seemed like a good starting point. I’d already been there once and had a general idea where I was going, it’s recommended as a beginner snow trip, and it’s on my list of prominent CA peaks to summit. Right across the street is Red Lake Peak, just over 10,000’ and another easy beginner summit. I’d bought snowshoes as a birthday present for myself in December, but due to the dry winter I hadn’t tried them yet. Both peaks had more moderate terrain where I could get some use out of them.

I left Gilroy after work, with a detour by REI for some new gaiters; my old ones had broken the first time I used them (and I couldn’t find them anyway), and using a coupon during an REI “sale” seemed like as good a time to replace them as any. I’d expected even heavier traffic than usual, but by 7 when I left Saratoga, 680 was almost completely clear. Maybe the Easter weekend prompted most people to leave work in a different direction and/or go earlier than usual. I arrived at the Sno-Park that allows overnight parking just before midnight and went to bed. I decided that as nice as it would be to wake up early and watch a sunrise, I’d like to sleep a decent amount, and what I had planned for the next day didn’t necessitate a pre-dawn start. I woke up at 7:30 and stayed in bed until 8, then got up and got ready. I left the trailhead a quarter mile up the highway at 8:45 with snowshoes and hiking poles on me, and crampons and an axe in my pack. This seemed to have been the correct choice, as the recent storms had left a couple feet of new snow. Following the trail – marked with blue diamonds but also with numerous tracks of footprints – proved fairly easy. It’s also fairly choose-your-own-adventure almost the entire way to the lake, and then as long as you go generally to the right, up to the notch before the summit. The snowshoes were less awkward than I’d worried they would be. Cool, I didn’t waste $150 on gear for an activity I hated. Through no fault of the snowshoes, I started feeling hot spots on my heels since I’d forgotten to put on 2 pairs of socks. Fortunately the day was short enough that no actual blisters developed.

By 10 I had reached the lake – and the end of the easy flat terrain. From there the actual trail goes a ways west toward another lake, but I started up a more direct line for the saddle partly to practice climbing up steeper snow and partly because I’d rather tire myself out walking a short steep distance than learn to pace myself. I saw other hikers and skiers going along the path the trail would follow as well as one skier climbing near me, plus a group I’d passed earlier that was following my more direct route almost exactly (not because I pick great routes so much as because my path zig-zagged between the obvious resting-spot rock outcrops above the snow). At the last good sitting-down rock, I took off my snowshoes and put on crampons. I got my ice axe out too, I think more because it makes me feel cool than because I was worried about needing to arrest a fall. Unfortunately, in my typical style of inadvertently winging things, I’d neglected to make sure my snowshoes would attach to my pack using the built-in bungee cord loops. They didn’t quite reach, so I had to put the snowshoes under the lid, strap them down tightly, and hope that the trekking poles would help hold them in place. It worked fine except for once while I was coming back down the summit ridge, they slipped out the side where the poles weren’t holding them. Thankfully they fell right behind me, and didn’t go tumbling down either side where the dropoff was too steep to have reasonably justified going after them.

I would probably not have gone chasing my snowshoes down this.

As I turned up the final few yards to the saddle, I heard someone making some indistinct kind of noise. I came over to find a woman on her hands and knees, making some kind of distressed yelling/crying sound, and a guy sitting calmly a few feet away. I asked him if everything was okay, and he replied that she was with another group, but they/she said everything was fine. Everything did not seem fine, although she was pretty clearly not in any immediate danger. She didn’t want help, but neither of us wanted to just leave her, so we both hung around for a few minutes until the rest of her group did indeed come back for her. I left without asking for further details from her group, but I assumed it was a known medical condition that she was used to.

View up toward the summit from the saddle

This trip didn’t turn out to be free from people who assume I know nothing about goats. I made a comment about how maybe I should have looked at a map to tell me the best way to the summit, and the guy I’d been waiting with informed me that it was still up a ways from where we were, and that I’d be the only one going up. Yes, I can in fact see that the summit is above me. In his defense, I think he was trying to tell me that the little peak right in front of us wasn’t the summit – which I knew – and that there was some scrambling and not just hiking, which I also knew and thus why I wished I had more beta since there was no trail to follow. It turned out to be a fairly straightforward “take the path of least resistance in that direction” up to the first little peak, then on the ridge beyond that. The climbing was fun, although in some places felt maybe harder than 3rd class, or at least, more risky than 3rd class in the case of a fall. A fall seemed far from unlikely, too, as the volcanic rock crumbled or pulled free frequently.

I underestimated the time it would take me to do the last scramble to the summit. Maybe when there’s no snow you can stay off the narrow top of the ridge, but I have a feeling that’s the most stable way to do it in any conditions. I’d taken my crampons off, but found a few snowy spots I had to cross. I accomplished this by gracefully crabwalking across them. I also tried to crabwalk most of the downclimbing in the notches I had to cross, but finally came to one too steep to allow that. Being the intrepid outdoorsperson that I am, I almost turned back. I did turn around, and start walking away, but only got a few feet before I reminded myself how much I’d regret it if I stopped less than 50 feet from the summit just because I didn’t want to learn to properly downclimb. There were plenty of large, solid jugs in the rock to hold on to while I inched my way down, backwards, trying to find holds I could trust my feet on. Once I’d made up my mind to get across that last gap, I fairly easily found a way down to the last snow crossing. On the other side, I began the steepest scramble of the climb so far. It was going great until I got to a section with a lot of loose rocks. I had the realization that if I fell, I’d probably end up in a pretty bad situation and nobody would be coming along shortly to possibly notice me. Unusually for me, rather than scare me even more, I immediately calmed down and proceeded up as carefully as I could. Nothing I weighted after testing actually broke, and I reached the summit a few feet later just after noon.

I think this is looking toward Tahoe

I stopped just long enough to take pictures and eat a couple snacks. It was windy up there and fairly chilly. Getting back down was largely uneventful, although in a couple spots I forgot how I’d gone up and went a slightly harder way. The section I’d been terrified to downclimb was an easy climb up. Right before the end of the ridge, my snowshoes fell out of my pack and I had to stop and reattach them.

On the way back to nice, fluffy snow

I thought I was going to follow my path back down, but after I got off the rocky ridge, I swung wide of my path on the way up and ended up wading through deeper powder than my footwear could comfortably manage. Rather than go back up (which was unnecessary) I headed down for a less steep contour that I could follow back to the lake. It really is entirely up to you where you want to go when it’s snowy, and on a mountain where I could clearly see where I was going, that was pretty fun. I passed the lake at 2 and considered going up Elephant’s Back but I was also hungry and wanted to get back to the car. I slightly lost the trail on the way back. I ran into some blue diamonds and started following them, but they were a different trail that was taking me back up toward the mountain. It only took me a couple hundred feet to decide to check Strava and realize I was on the other side of a small hill from where I’d come in. I got back to the correct trail and was back at the parking lot shortly thereafter.

Another group returning at the same time asked what I’d been doing, and when I told them, acted highly impressed that I’d actually summited. I got this reaction from everyone I talked to, which made me think that it’s less that Round Top is a difficult summit and more that it’s one that almost nobody tries, because it’s scrambling and they came for some easy skiing/snowshoeing. I could also be taking my climbing experience for granted. Part of what made me stay calm on the last section was the realization that if I were leading something with a section like that, I would feel completely comfortable just continuing past it without protecting anything, besides maybe a piece every 25-30 feet for good measure. For someone without a good sense of how to use all your limbs to get up something, I imagine that would not only be more difficult physically, but also a lot more disconcerting.

Despite having been a lot slower than I would like to be, the short hike had only taken 6 hours and I was back at the car well before sundown. With nothing better to do, I sat in the car and read/people-watched while my stuff dried in the sun next to the car. I may be Californian, but I’ve never been “Play in 3 feet of dirty snow in a parking lot” Californian. I can’t decide if my feelings about people who do that are judgmental, or just sad that that’s the extent of their outdoor activity when they could be having so much more fun hiking or climbing things.

By 6 I’d parked at the overnight Sno-Park again, had dinner, and then listened to an audiobook for a while. I also finished reading the NOLS cookbook, which mostly taught me how to cook for an expedition with an overkill amount of supplies. I’d have to be out in the woods for a looooooong time before I tried baking bread in a frying pan, and I’m not sure what trip I’d ever be on where food is carried in separate duffle bags to the camp. Maybe eventually I’ll get more creative with my cooking.

The next morning I again decided that I could afford to get a good night’s sleep and still have time for my planned activity. Maybe if I’d been more ambitious I would have gotten an early start and tacked on Little Round Top after Red Lake Peak, but I got this odd idea that maybe I would have fewer hikes that lasted hours after dark if I stopped planning things such that even if everything went perfectly, I’d still be out after dark. I had very little idea how to estimate what my pace would be for either of the days, and it seemed like I’d have more fun if I erred on the low mileage side.

I left the parking lot at 9:30, a little later than I’d intended even with my intended late start. In hindsight, maybe I should have studied some topos a little more (or at all) before setting out, but from what I could see of the mountain from Round Top the day before, there was nowhere you could actually get that badly stuck. I wanted to have an adventure finding my way up to the ridge without trying to follow a map exactly, and instead just experience the different options I had. I knew the PCT ran out from the west of the parking lot, and continued around 1 mile west of the summit I was heading for. I tried to stay a bit to the right to avoid heading out on the trail and missing my peak entirely. It turned out that I zigged when I shoulda zagged. At first the route was great. Easy snowshoeing took me up to a hill where I could now see the false summit right in front of the real summit that I was heading toward. I ran into a couple who said they were training for Shasta, but acted immensely impressed that I’d done Round Top. Evidently they have a friend who’s done Shasta and Rainier, but said that Round Top was even scarier/harder than either and required roping up. Nothing I encountered on my route was worse than I imagine Shasta or Rainier would be, but it’s possible that someone using Round Top as training for Rainier picked a more technical line than I took, like the couloir. Regardless, nothing I said could convince them that I was really rather clueless and not following any specific path besides “up.” Despite my protests they followed the route I took.

My route was fine to begin with. The mid-morning sun was turning the snow a bit slushy but it was nothing my snowshoe crampons couldn’t handle. The slope increased noticeably right about the time I realized that I was in fact ascending very near where a pair of skiers were descending. At that point I realized I was likely taking the hard way up. This was fine with me, as it was strenuous but didn’t seem at all treacherous, and part of the reason for this trip had been to get more experience on steeper snow. The only thing I regret – which I didn’t realize until after the fact – about that ascent was that I didn’t use my ice axe. My trekking poles worked fine, but when I got back to the car I realized they were bent. Too bent to collapse anymore.

It didn’t look this steep from the ground….
The skiers were descending just over there to my right.

A few times, I tried to traverse to climber’s right, thinking that the terrain looked a bit less steep there, but each time my footing seemed less solid doing that than it was just continuing straight up. So straight up I went until I finally crested the ridge and reached mercifully flat ground. There was only a short portion of snowy ridge in front of me until I came to mostly dirt and rocks, with shallow snow. I decided to leave my snowshoes there – weighted with rocks on the off chance the wind might move them – and see how far my boots would get me. Up on the ridge, I guessed (correctly) that nothing ahead would require snowshoes, and the crampons in my pack would serve if I needed more traction on something steep.

On top of the ridge (this was actually on the way back, right after the woman from the other couple asked if my plan was “walk over the cornice” to which I replied “It’s not a cornice on the left side”)

There are several large rock outcrops near the summit. The farthest one is fairly obviously the tallest, so I headed around the base of the others to get to it. It was easy going through soft snow to get around them.

View toward the summit ridge; I skirted around the right side of the closer rocks.

There are probably several preferable ways up the summit block, but it did seem to have numerous options that would all be convincingly only 3rd class. I picked a route up that looked like it was traversing on ledges about 8” wide, with jugs above for handholds. This climbing was a hell of a lot more fun than the Round Top scramble. The holds all felt more solid as well. I would have enjoyed it if it kept going for another couple hundred feet, but I was quickly on top of the tallest pinnacle with the summit register. As far as I could tell, there is no USGS monument on top, so I signed the register and took pictures. After a quick snack break, I headed back down a slightly different way than I came up. It was a little harder by virtue of being more vertical, and had the only non-solid hold I encountered on the climb. When I was almost back on walkable ground, one of my footholds blew out. I held onto my handholds, but it was a little disconcerting to think what might have happened in a slightly different position.

Looking back the way I came
Very official looking summit register. I almost felt like I must have missed something because I’m sure more people summited this year than that.

When I got to the ridge on the way up, I saw a line of tracks heading along the ridge. I assumed that meant there was an easier way following that all the way up, and it would be a straight shot back to the parking lot if I just stayed on top of it the whole way back. That was true for a while, and then became not true as the ridge suddenly dropped off a few dozen feet. The tracks led around the side, and I followed a set of boot prints traversing a couple times across a steeper slope than I’d have thought to walk up, but it ended up being pretty easy. Eventually I ran into the rocky continuation of the ridge down below the dropoff, and decided to just take my snowshoes off and walk the rest of the way in boots when I couldn’t find a good way around it on snow that wasn’t steep.

I got back to the car just after 1, spread my things out in the sun to dry again, and left to drive home just before 2. I managed to avoid much traffic on the way home and even got home while it was still light out. Maybe next time I should pick a longer activity.

Alpine draws are my high-tech attachment solution for just about everything.

Lessons Learned:

• If you’re going up the way people are skiing down, you’re not taking the easy way.
• My snowshoes are pretty great at ascending steeper stuff, but kind of suck at powder. I was still sinking in up to mid-calf sometimes, and the guy I talked to on Sunday had the men’s version and said his did that too. Probably a function of them having serrated metal rather than a tube around the edge.
• Downclimbing isn’t that bad if you calm down and think about what you’re doing. And you get fewer holes in your pants that way.
• A lot of things aren’t that hard if you take a moment to decide that you’re going to do it and it’s going to be ok.

Comments

[joshua0]

A lot of things aren’t that hard if you take a moment to decide that you’re going to do it and it’s going to be ok.

Man is that a lesson I have "learned in retrospect" time and time again. Maybe one day I will internalize it enough to not even have to hesitate the first time, either. Good to rediscover, though!