[b00]

knowgrass(near snowgrass) 10-3 + 10-4-2013

taking a lesson from presidential history, we found a great spot to declare "mission accomplished" and then headed home. our original plan(neither paul wolfowitz nor richard perle were involved) was to summit snowgrass then frosty peak and then camp at lake grace day one. day 2 we would do big chiwaukum on the way out. with perfect conditions that would have been a lot to accomplish with a short october days, but with the conditions we found ...

the road was in great shape. we started hiking at the empty whitepine creek trailhead and made really easy time on the recently maintained trail. somewhere around 4k we hit snow and followed the trail to the near the outlet of lake grace. maybe a foot of unconsolidated snow over alder that covered the trail mistakenly convinced us to head uphill to cross the lake grace outlet(we should have just fought the alder). after battling the alder and such, we returned to the trail and followed it to the basin sw of snowgrass where we headed up.

the snow got to be three to four feet deep. lack snowshoes made it slow going. gabriel kicked most of the steps. at about 6600' we gathered water from a stream for camping and headed up to ~6800' where found a nice spot to camp on snow. it was 5 o'clock and we had just enough time to casually set up camp,

eat dinner and enjoy a gorgeous sunset.

the temps at night where about 10 degrees below the noaa forecast of mid-thirties

and i was really glad that at the last minute, i brought a little extra clothes. a 32 degree bag works really well camping on the snow with temps in the mid 20's. carla had mercy on me

and gave her partially used hand warmers, which i shoved down my socks and then i put on almost all the rest of my clothes. our camp spot did not get early morning sun, yet morning was beautiful. after breakfast, we got a late start, about 9:00am, and headed for snowgrass. we reached the upper ridge but determined that we needed to drop off to the east and traverse over to reach the summit. my thoughts were that snowgrass was going to be easy and it would be a done deal. unfortunately my thoughts were not doing time calculations. after descending a few hundred feet and a lot of time evaporating, gabriel looked at the watch, 10:20am, did some mental calcs and said let's talk about this. i know when he says let's talk this over, it is his very polite and very deferential way of saying the plan is not going to work. after going over the time-line with us, i hate it when logic gets in the way of a summit, we decided to call it.

desperate times require desperate measures. two days and no summit was unacceptable. i immediately thought, what would w do? just above us was perfectly good summit with at least 5' prominence, so we ascended it, named it knowgrass, aka no-grass, and pronounced: "mission accomplished!"

20.32mi 6700' gain - total both days day 1 - 9.91mi 4785' gain 9:10 car to camp day 2 - 10.41mi 1915' gain 2:20 camp to knowgrass summit 0:57 summit stay 0:15 stop for snow art 0:35 summit to camp 0:32 break camp 4:51 camp to car 9:30 total day 2 time

equipment: ice axe

[MLHSN]

Thanks for the report guys! I was wondering how the snow was doing in the area.

[Magellan]

Gorgeous pictures. I'm amazed how much snow there is .

[raising3hikers]

looks like a fun snow camping october trip! looks like knowgrass was a good place to turn around probably better than snowgrass anyways