A female climber was killed Saturday night or early Sunday morning while descending the Mountaineer’s Route with a group of several others on Mount Whitney. At this time there seems to be an almost total lack of confirmed information about the incident.

Sketchy reports from persons in the area were briefly available on the Whitney Portal Store message board. Unfortunately, due to the forum owner’s policy regarding fatal accidents, that thread has been deleted. There is also this.

From what I’ve heard, the party may have planned to watch the sunset atop Whitney and then descend back to Iceberg Lake. Or perhaps they planned to spend the night atop the summit, but changed their minds due to unfavorable conditions—it was an extremely cold night in the Sierra. I happened to be several miles north, climbing through the night toward Shepherd Pass at the time. It was very cold and windy.

Regardless, the snow at that elevation would have quickly frozen into ice after sundown, turning a challenging snowbound route into a technical ice climb. I myself would go to great lengths to avoid downclimbing in conditions like that without a rope and excellent anchors.

I can’t help but wonder whether the group’s experience level was of such a high caliber that they felt confident they could safely descend the icy chute in the dark. Or did they feel they had no other options? It is possible, given the large numbers of inexperienced climbers who attempt Whitney each year, that they were simply unaware of the extreme hazard they were exposing themselves to.

Deaths on Mount Whitney are unfortunately not entirely rare, particularly in the Winter and early Spring climbing seasons, particularly while climbers are descending either the Mountaineer’s Route’s upper chutes or the steep snowfield above Trail Camp. Whitney in Winter is a technical endeavor, requiring specialized skills and gear for safe travel, and subject to unpredictable weather and conditions.

If more substantiated information becomes available, I’ll post links here.

Tyndall – Almost

The plan was simple: Tyndall in a day. But as I made the pitch to my climbing partners, one by one they found various reasons to be elsewhere.

And who could blame them? To get to 14,018′ Mount Tyndall, you must first contend with one of the worst approaches in the entire Sierra—the Shepherd Pass trail (more…)

Swany X-Change II

These past few days I’ve been working on a flurry of end-of-season gear reviews. First up: gloves.

Swany was kind enough to send a pair of X-Change II’s a few weeks ago. Thanks to this year’s very strange Spring weather, we got to try these in a huge range of temperatures, from balmy SoCal 60′s to frigid single-digits and 60mph winds below Palmyra Peak (more…)

Mt. San Antonio

Back home now in sunny Southern California. Here’s a look at Mt. San Antonio’s north face as seen yesterday through the plane window.

I was hoping to catch a peek at San Jacinto’s north face, but our flight path took us way north—too far to see anything.

Looks like Baldy’s north face still has plenty of snow to ski. Of course, you’ve still got to climb up there, ski it, climb back up, and then hike all the way down to your car. Or maybe cut across the Devil’s Backbone to the ski area.

As for the Sierra, sounds like things are mostly stable, but unsettled weather is expected this week, with the possibility of snow Friday. That may be enough to keep me skiing locally this coming weekend.

Telluride Dust Storm

Red Snow

Well, instead of snow, so far we’re just getting more dust. As the afternoon progressed, the sky grew more and more pink, and the snow started to look as if God had sprinkled cayenne pepper everywhere.

What a mess!

Adding to the atmosphere, today is Telluride’s end-of-season celebration downtown, so a live band is playing while costumed revelers party down.

All that’s missing to complete this surreal image are some radiation-stunted mutants trolling about in the shadows, and Mel Gibson leading a fuel convoy at breakneck speeds down the highway.

It’s hard not to look at this as some sort of bleak preview of future scenes to come. “It looks like a movie,” my Mom said as we rode up the Gondola. “And not a movie I want to see.” (more…)

Chair 9

What a funny trip this has been. I really agonized over whether or not to go, and finally decided at the last minute, thinking I’d enjoy some late-spring skiing.

And then this happens…day after day of fresh snow. More snow overnight. Chair 9 was brilliant this morning: fresh tracks and even a peek of sunshine to put the sparkles on everything.

New snow blew in later today, but this batch was red-tinged, mixed with dust from Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. Dust, I’ve discovered, does not make for such great skiing. Runs like you’ve waxed your skis with pine sap. We’re supposed to head home tomorrow, but they’re forecasting a big storm tonight, and if Lizard Head Pass closes, well, I guess we’ll just have to stay and ski another day.

Telluride Powder

Literally. More new snow today; more powder skiing.

Ordinarily these are the kinds of days that would have kept my dad off the mountain, but he got a new pair of Volkl Mantras, and I have to say, the skis have made a huge difference. He not only skied today…he had fun.

I’m going to have to put up a review of those Mantras sometime. Just by reputation alone, they’re a fantastic ski. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a wide (94mm) but not mega wide all mountain ski with a powder tilt.

So instead of skiing by myself today, I got to ski the deep with my dad, and chuckle every time he suggested we head for the next stash of untracked powder. Funny thing: while the Mantra lets my dad ski powder, he hasn’t picked up all the tricks of the trade that you’d normally acquire over the years skiing powder.

Example: while skiing a wind-scoured catwalk on a white-out ridge top, I watched my dad ski directly from icy hardback into a big wind drift. He didn’t realize the wind drift was going to act like an anchor, and he went right over the falls, doing a nasty-looking cartwheel and leaving both skis buried behind. Luckily, no injuries resulted. We spent a few minutes looking for the skis, and then he got right back into the saddle and kept skiing.

Another great day!