[Bungee Boy]

With a forecasted East wind at the pass area for the whole day last Wednesday my friend Scott and I decided to scramble up the East Ridge of Bandera and traverse over to Pratt. We left the Talapus Lake TH around 8:15 am and at around 3,000 ft. started going cross-country up the spur of the East ridge. Hit snow around 3,500 ft. where the steep scrambling began. After negotiating the steep snow covered rocks and a traverse on the south side of the ridge, we entered a steep gully that took us to the top of the ridge again around 4,700 ish. From here put the snowshoes on and treked to the top of a very windy Bandera around noon. We lost time postholing in the steep snow and negotiating the snowcovered rock spurs. An excellent ascent route however but not for the timid. We then descended to the saddle west of the summit at 5,000, found a break in the corniced ridge, jumped off and snowshoed down to Island Lake through a beautiful open forest with lots of powder snow. After traversing Island Lake (still buried with lots of snow) we changed our bearing to the SW slope of Pratt. With the East winds still prominant and the weather holding we plunged on the the summit of Pratt arriving around 2 pm. After a brief summit pitstop behind a wind deflecting tree, we headed down the East ridge of Pratt to the Ollalie Lake outlet and the Talapus Lake trail arriving back at the TH just before 4 pm and as the rain shower started. This was a great roundtrip loop and an excellent way to say good bye to winter.

[Bungee Boy]

Just to reiterate this is a trip report from 3/19.