supernaut

here is text from an email I sent last week to snow@mtbaker.us regarding camping in their lots. There is no charge for camping and there are no hookups, you are > allowed to park you car in the upper parking lot at Heather Meadows, > but if it snows you are required to move your RV so we can plow the > parking lot. Thank you, Snow

I hit the trailhead about 4:15, packed light and a full head of steam. I didn't put on my shiny new princeton tec apex headlamp at first, I like to hike in the early dusk and let my eyes adjust to the snowy trail. I passed an old timer wearing old school wooden snow shoes coming down the pratt trail. I ended up overshooting the granite turn off by well over a mile! I thought there was no way I could miss it, even without my headlamp on yet, but miss it I did. So a relatively quick jog back down the slight pratt trail grade, with my new 3 watt LED headlamp bursting with light this time, and I hit the granite turn off. Up the switchbacks I went, crossing the avalanche chutes with my ice axe out for security. soon the boot path petered out and left me to find my own way up the south eastern flank. I tried the freedom of the hills slow and steady makes the summit mantra by zig zagging up towards the ridgeline. I don't remember the trail going as far out towards the east as I had ended up by following tracks. I blundered upon a blue and white tent set up nice and tight to shed the wind way out on that eastern flank in the moonlight. I passed on without a word, the wind was gusting and whistling pretty good by that point. I chuckled to myself at the thought of busting into the tent and giving the occupant a swift kick to the nads if it was "bug". I had a clear view of Rainier at this point as well as the alpine lakes peaks to the south. At the dell where the eastern end of the ridgeline starts is where I decided that I would bivvy in one of the tree copses on the south face instead of on the actual summit. The wind was making it colder than I expected and I am relatively new to this kind of "extreme camping" in cold weather. I continued on for a ways, getting on the actual ridge and then stopped and dug a shallow snow grave for my bivvy, wind whipping the ultra dry snow all over the place as I freed the powder and tried to unsuccessfully pack it into walls. My stupid jetboil failed to work properly, it sputtered and shot out gouts of yellow flame like an overprimed whisperlite. No dehydrated pro-pak dinner for me. Another powerbar and some more water and I called it a night. I was glad to experience hard crust snow travel in the blasting wind, I haven't had the chance to do that yet. My trips to camp muir have always had clement weather. I expect I won't be as mentally shocked when it inevitably happens on a future alpine ascent of real altitude. I still wrestle with the sweat thing. Your first lay gets soaked with sweat, at least your back and butt do from your backpack. Are you supposed to shed that at your camp spot and have another dry first layer to replace it with? Or maye just put on merino wool or fleece mid layers on over it? I have learned to change out socks when you hit the sleeping bag, but i'm not sure about the other sweat soaked layers. An interesting side note is that at the last minute a friend of mine was going to meet me on the summit that evening, with an earlier start and plans to go our usual summer route, straight up the second gully to the top. Although this time he planned on going up the chute and maybe heading over to the western ridge approach, depending on how things looked when he got up to the granite slab talus field. He ended up breaking a crampon partially up the chute and deciding to head back down at that point. The snow had a really hard crust in most areas towards the top. I would have definitely broken my crampons out if I was going for the chute approach. We happened to miss passing each other as he came down because I was happily stomping up the pratt trail thinking to myself "damn this seems a lot longer than a mile!" (it's about a mile from the trailhead to the granite turn off). Sorry no pics, I couldn't find my digital camera when I was packing on thursday night. Although my fellow climber who turned back said he got a few nice shots of the terrain at night. I'll see if he will post them to this thread.

I would have called it camping but i'm taking my bivvy sack instead of my tent, with the intent of a spartan outing, so it's not camping in the traditional sense of the word. In fact I relate camping to cars, hunters and cement slabs, what this is, I believe, is a form of backpacking. bivouacing in the winter has been fun since i decided it was.

going to bivouac on a peak in the alpine lakes friday night. nwac and noaa say weather is constant and avalanche danger low. sounds good to me. anyone know something I don't?