A winter summit of Baldy! In some ways, this was actually easier than doing it as a hike. Anyway, Chris called me up maybe 1-2 days before, and asked if I wanted to go up Baldy. Sure, I said! Sounds like a blast. Of course, I really didn’t know what was intended so much, but it seemed like good times anyway. Christopher had expressed interest, so the two of them had concocted this trip, then Chris had invited me along as bonus. All in all, it was a most gorgeous day to be up on the mountain, with pretty close to perfect weather, fabulous views, and several miles less of walking. You still have to ascend all 3800′ of elevation gain from the Manker Flats lot, but the trip back down loses a lot of that rather quickly.
Mirrored lenses both protect your eyes AND make everything way more awesome
The morning of the trip, the two of them came by to pick me up in the morning, and we headed on out toward Baldy. We were already a bit up the road to Baldy Village when Christopher realized he didn’t really have much gas at all, so we turned around to get gas in Upland, but eventually made our way up to the Manker Flats trailhead.
And…we started up the trail. The fireroad bit was mostly just fireroad, with a nice little view of the falls, and we quickly got to the turnoff for the real trail. I had forgotten how much up is in the early portion, I kept expecting to just get to the ski hut very quickly, which…did not happen. Anyway, for the first little bit through the woods, it seemed mostly normal, just with patches of snow, and then it started getting patchier and patchier until there was pretty reasonable snow cover by the time we got to the hut. At no real point earlier did I feel the need to put on my crampons, it was just an (occasonally cold) walk through the snow. I was even pretty warm, wearing my ski pants and all.
Finally getting to the ski hut. Baldy Bowl is that looming wall, and man, is that some blue sky
It is actually some 2.5 miles and 2200′ of gain to the hut (ouch!), so I will freely admit I was a bit tired when we got there. There were a fair number of people hanging out there, so we stopped for a break and a bit of a snack, and then headed over to the bowl. And, unlike the prior time I had gone, instead of traversing the bowl, then going up around the far side, we started walking right up that sucker. Well, after stopping for a little bit for Chris to show Christopher some self-arrest techniques with his ice axe. We then just started walking up the slope, ending up more or less inline with one of the two lines of people walking up the slope. I put on my crampons by this point, but Chris and Christopher just kick-stepped their way up. The snow was pretty ok for it, but my boots were much more 3-season than 4-season, so I was really appreciating the extra security.
Practicing some self-arrest
Chris looking pretty dubiously at me. It’ll be ok, I promise.
Both of them got ahead of me pretty quickly, as I was sort of slowly going up, both catching my breath, and just watching things around. At one point, there was a mini-avalanche on the other side of the bowl, precipitated by a couple of rocks heading down. Fortunately, none of them were anywhere near us. As we got up towards the top of the bowl, the guys waited for me, and then we did a jog around the rocks to the east side, and then looped back around to a flatter area before making a final push to the summit. There were some really cool ice formations on the trees up there, where they had caught all the blowing snow and then frozen into walls of ice on one side of a tree. We took some photos on the summit, enjoyed the 360 view, appreciated that we could see north to the Sierra, and generally then decided to go down just a hair from the summit and get out of the wind. We ran into part of the Caltech Alpine Club up there practicing some rope techniques, like building a giant (giant) snow bollard, and then showing how secure it was to rappel from. Pretty cool.
Other people taking advantage of the day
Tree with amazing snow wall it captured.
After hanging out up there for a bit, we went back to the shallow slope between the summit hump and the flat area we had come up from, and showed Christopher how to glissade. That area was almost not steep enough to really do it well, but the idea got passed, and then we headed down a bit further to a much more slope-y area, and…down we went! I will admit, this was a much steeper and more exposed drop than my prior glissade experience, when I had gone down Baden-Powell. There were a few places where we did need to stop before dropoffs, then head over to the next glissade area. We didn’t head back around to the bowl side, just sort of stayed over on the edge,and eventually came down near a creek just above the ski hut. I totally lost my chapstick while sliding down the slope :/ Oh well. I’ve packed out enough trash to overbalance that, I hope. Anyway, we took another rest at the ski hut, and then did the rest of the hike out.
The three of us at the summit
Snow capped Sierras in the distance
Overall, walking straight up the bowl got us to the top a lot faster than I would have expected, since linearly it just isn’t that far, and a few steps, followed by a few steps, followed by a few steps…got us up there pretty quickly. And even with the stops, the glissade down was pretty quick. Even so, that last bit of hike out was a little annoying, and right as we got back to the parking lot…I slid on a patch of ice and fell right on my ass. Oh well. Quality times, quality times.
Chris, glowing in the light on the way down.
Back in the flatlands, watching Baldy glow red behind us at sunset
