[scot'teryx]

1130am - Cold and windy at parking lot - about 25 degrees with 15-20 mph winds. Once out of the parking lot it continued to stay consistently windy and cold to the base of panorama point. Been a long time since I was able to hike in fleece, shell, and balaclava and not get hot. Half way up panorama point it was real icy, and w/o some sort of crampons - it would be a real tough endeavor. We had snow shoes so the teeth helped us gain the top of panorama point. The wind was blowing about 40-50mph+. After hurdling a few small ice/snow barriers to gain the ridge, the wind started to calm down a little bit once we reached McClure Rock. The rest of the trip was a slog, with 50% patches of blue ice mixed with 2 inches of spindrift - so the traversing on snowshoes really sucked. We set our turnaround time for 330pm. A member of our team shot ahead and was kicking butt, but never knew we had a turnaround time. We reached 9000' at 330pm and decided to have lunch there. Sergio was a few hundred feet above us and came down to us as well while our other member w/o a radio continued on. We waited for a long time but got cold so we got out our skis and snowboards (Sergio had a splitboard) and started heading down. The first 1500 feet were okay, with good snow followed by patches of ice - so it was a challenge. From 7500' on down it was a real challenge as it was pure ice, so we were happy our edges were real sharp. The descent down panorama point was a little hairy as it was pure blue ice. The lower portion to the car was all heavy snow and slow. Up to 9000'in 4.0 hours, and down in 45 minutes!