#newyearsamehike - January 1, 2019 - Clouds Rest

[lizolas]

#newyearsamehike - January 1, 2019 - Clouds Rest

Last year in order to avoid going on a solo night hike in a completely unfamiliar area I started hiking at midnight and summited Clouds Rest in time for sunrise. With substantially more snow in the Sierras this year than last winter (no snow from the Valley to the summit), I wasn’t feeling exceptionally more adventurous. Ian was in southern California and wanted to join me for a new year’s hike on his way back to Seattle, so it seemed like it was going to be even less of an adventure with 2 people on a trail I’ve done in the dark - at least parts of - half a dozen times now. I’ve realized that while solo outdoor trips are enjoyable, trips with other people are in some ways more meaningful. Having shared experiences is something I want to try to do more of in the coming year.

We met in Manteca on Monday afternoon. It was only 5 or 6 but felt later because it was already dark. We arrived outside the park on 140 at 10; as I’ve come to expect, packing up our gear took longer than expected. We took a quick nap but didn’t sleep for more than 10 minutes, then finished the drive into the park. At the trailhead while we were getting our things together and putting scented items in a bear box, a ranger (patrolling despite the government shutdown) asked if we had plans for where we were camping tonight. He seemed a bit surprised when I said that we were going to start hiking right away because it was the thing to do at midnight on New Year’s Eve/Day, but I think all he was checking was that we weren’t going to try to camp illegally in the trailhead lot.

As usual the hike started out cold, but 35 minutes later at the first bridge crossing the falls, we were hot enough to be taking most of our layers off. By this point I was surprised that Ian was still hiking without complaining about his choice of footwear. Or more accurately, his lack of choice of footwear. His only options were approach shoes and ski touring boots. Since we anticipated a fair amount of snow, he went with the waterproof touring boots for a 20+ mile hike. Last year when I did Clouds Rest the JMT was closed between the falls due to an area that needed to be repaired. This year the Mist Trail was closed due to snowy/icy conditions, so we took the slightly longer but less steep (and probably especially better in ski boots) way up to the top of Nevada Fall. Looking at Gaia’s topo I found out - note that this is at least my half dozenth trip up this trail - that my confusion about which was Vernal and which was Nevada was due to the fact that there are in fact 3 named waterfalls in that sequence, the middle being Silver Apron. I’m not 100% sure if Silver Apron is supposed to be the little falls with a bridge over them or the pool downstream.

We reached the top of Nevada Fall about 3 hours after we started, or 3:30 am. For a while after this the trail becomes less arduous since the slope decreases and you get to walk on mostly dirt trail rather than constructed rock stairs. I felt bad about complaining about the stairs since Ian was clearly faced with a greater challenge, but we’ve also established that I’m much worse at using my feet than he is. The pace this year was a lot slower than last year because of Ian’s boots - normally he can run in circles around me while talking about how out of shape he is. Walking the next portion of the trail to the Half Dome turnoff I was starting to doubt that we’d run into much snow. What if it was just a bit on the ridge showing up on the webcam image and he’d worn his boots the whole way for conditions that would have been manageable in approach shoes? We had been encountering isolated patches of snow that were fairly easily avoided, plus frozen puddles that were flat enough to be carefully walked over.

Just before the Half Dome junction, we were passed by another group. At this point we really knew we were going slowly by our standards, because this was a group of seemingly mixed ability with an experienced leader. They’d backpacked at Little Yosemite Valley which meant I wasn’t crazy, and I really had heard human voices as we passed despite it being unpleasantly cold for most people who would be backpacking there in the warmer months. We never learned what the outcome was for them, but their plan of record was to ascent Half Dome with a grab bag of equipment like snowshoes but no ice axes. Part of my reason for choosing Clouds Rest was that even with snow on it, it was still a doable peak if you anticipated a little climbing. From what we could see, Half Dome looked moderately terrifying although on the way down we met some people who were going for it, and had met a couple who said they did it with no problems.

Within a few hundred feet of the Half Dome turnoff the trail turned to continuous snow. In hindsight I think that approach shoes probably would have worked, but they would have worked in the same way my non-waterproof hiking boots worked the year before on Clouds Rest and earlier in the year on San Jacinto, which is to say ain’t nobody ever died of cold wet feet on a dayhike in nice weather.

I do a terrible job of keeping track of times when I’m wearing long sleeves and several layers, so my next point of reference for time is that just before 7 am, we were on the upper switchbacks and stopped to take some pictures out on the edges of the slab as the sunrise colored the sky.

Having experienced the sudden change in wind after the final switchback before, I suggested we stop for a snack just before the trail turned the corner to the final stretch. The final stretch is really at least a mile to the summit, but I always think I’m almost there. As soon as we got up onto the ridge, the trail mostly disappeared. We followed boot tracks that took us uphill much sooner than the actual trail goes, but half the fun of snow travel is choosing your own adventure, right? The snow up til this point had still been compacted on the trail; on this portion I was sinking into the snow and breaking through the crust often, but not consistently enough to stop for snowshoes.

The anticlimactic climax of this story is that I neglected to get any pictures of the summit climb conditions because I was too busy being scared. I think we arrived at the base of the summit block around 9-9:30. There we paused briefly to assess the situation. The path where the trail normally goes - 2nd to maybe 3rd class without snow - was covered in snow and looked like it would have been climbable with proper gear. We only had one pair of crampons and one pair of snowshoes between us, plus one ice tool and once ice axe (we were using all my gear because Ian hadn’t brought any with him). The orientation of the snow slope was such that a fall that wasn’t arrested quickly looked like it would lead several thousand feet down into Tenaya canyon - certain death, short of a miracle. The ledges to the climber’s right side of the trail looked climbable, so we started up that way. It was slow going. Ian was doing better in his ski boots than I was in my mountaineering boots which wasn’t at all surprising after he had to convince me to walk up moderate snow on our last excursion. Even at Ian’s pace it would have taken a bit more time than we initially expected, and with me slowing us down we reached the summit at 10:20. It was very windy and thoroughly less pleasant than it’d been the year before when I spent well over an hour relaxing on the summit at sunrise. We quickly took a few pictures and got back to reversing the thing we’d just done. Reversing went a fair bit faster because we knew where to go and what moves to expect. Once we were done with the technical part, we stopped for lunch. We’re healthy outdoorspeople who follow the Adventist health message closely, so lunch was Taco Bell burritos.
that physical sunscreen application tho

The view from the top After that it was a straightforward hike back to the Valley, if a bit longer than we would have liked. The summit is only halfway, after all. We stopped for snacks again just after the turn down to the switchbacks. Actually I stopped for a snack and Ian made a whole adventure out of pooping. We stopped for snacks a final time at the Half Dome trail junction when I remembered that I’d brought summit Oreos and we hadn’t eaten them at or anywhere near the summit. But since the rule is that they’re still summit Oreos until you get back to the car, we ate them plus some other snacks before continuing. Arriving at the car at about 6 put us at 18 hours car-to-car. Slower than I would have expected for 23 miles, but I’m not surprised either.
Belated summit Oreo

The drive back home was more eventful than driving usually is. Normally I function relatively well with little sleep, but this was going on 40 hours awake. We tried taking a 2-hour nap in the car, during which I woke up enough to give Ian the impression I was mad at him, but not enough to clarify that I was mad at people in the dream I'd been having. Eventually we got that straightened out and started driving back to Manteca about 9:30. I would have loved to just sleep outside the park, but I needed to be at work at 7 the next morning. From Manteca it's only an hour and a half drive, which I did without incident. Then I got to sleep for all of 3 hours (after 40+ awake) and go to work. #worthit

Strava link, since embedding doesn’t work and they’ve been appreciating users’ patience while they resolve the matter for nearly a year now.

At this point I think I’ve done this shit enough that long hikes aren’t inherently character-building enough to need an extensive “Lessons Learned” section, but there are probably a few notes to be made nonetheless.

• I need to learn to climb more gracefully in mountaineering boots; I need to develop more confidence on mountaineering boots in general. I should have realized that the terrain we were climbing wasn’t going to have enough snow to necessitate an ice axe - although I think I did use it once to pull myself up a patch of snow between rocks - and put it away or at least learned to move it with me less awkwardly.
• I could have asked about conditions from a gym acquaintance who I knew had just attempted it recently because he posted pictures saying they failed due to the amount of snow. I did take some useful information from that, and he wouldn’t have had any information about the summit block, but he might have been able to tell us where the snow started and we could have assessed if it would maybe be worthwhile to pack the ski boots in and wear approach shoes for a lot of it. Approach shoes would have been fine for at least 8 miles each way of it, and possibly up to 10 miles each way.
• Should I learn how to properly eat for a Big Day Out? Yes. Am I going to change my Taco Bell and Oreos ways? Not likely.