[Old Guy Hiking]

Inspired by the great Guye Peak postings of the last few weeks, Anne and I decided to give it a try today. It was a first ascent for both of us. Because of the conditions, we decided to try the east approach via Commonwealth Creek. Everything went fine until we came to what looked like the obvious route up the col. There had been a slush avalanche triggered by a large chunk of ice falling off the rock wall. Avalanche conditions were iffy and were supposed to deteriorate more throughout the day, so we decided to keep going and try to find a better route. We went past all three creeks that come down the east side of the ridge and ended up trying to climb the SE side of Cave Ridge near the 3rd creek. It was raining and there was about a foot of soggy slush over the decent snow. Without snowshoes, postholing was a problem. With my monster old-school Tubbs, kicking steps in the slushy slope was very tough. I had a hard time getting my feet in deep enough to hold my weight and I ended up slipping quite a bit. To make matters more interesting, I made a conscious (and bad) decision this morning to leave my poles at home and to rely on my axe. With the bad traction, and constant slipping into the snow, I wore myself out pretty good. Anne was crusing along just fine, but neither one of us felt good about the snow conditions. We backtracked to find a better route and chatted briefly with a group digging snow caves in the forest near the first creek. We still didn't like the look of the conditions on the usual route, the rain was increasing, and I was pretty tired, so we decided to call it a day and try it again under better conditions. My congratulations to those who made it up last week! The good news is that my snazzy new wool base layer and pack worked great! Pictures of crossing under the slush avalanche and climbing out of the Commonwealth Creek crossing courtesy of Anne at http://www.wideangle.ca.

Crossing below the slush avalanche. Note the large ice block that fell from the cliffs above.

Climbing out of Commonwealth Creek.

[Kat]

[Old Guy Hiking]

It was definitely an "Ibex wool base layer, Seattle Sombreros, and old Viking rain coats" kind of weekend. :-)

[Kat]

[moosefish]

Ooh ooh! Me, too! I also though, duh, yeah, Guye Peak. No problem. Only problem was I didn't have a day to do it so I dragged one of my sort-of-serious hiking buddies out at night. Got to the trailhead at 8:30pm and cruised up the packed trail. Only had a couple of misteps due to poor visibility (uh... it's dark, duh). We stood on the bank of Commonwealth Creek for a while thinking it was a lot deeper than it really was. My dog finally went down and we realized it'd be easy.

We started up toward the saddle, but my buddy informed me in pretty clear terms that he wasn't interested in too much more so we returned to the creek for hot chocolate laced with a variety of liquors. The trip through the creek was WAY more fun the second time around.

I'm sad to see the nightshoeing season end. If I could just convince my kids to go to sleep at 4pm I'd have the whole evening open for early evening hiking...

[Kat]

[moosefish]