conditions on Jefferson

[pierceadams]

I started a thread a while ago looking for some beta and got some real helpful replies. My question now is has anyone been up there recently? Did the heavy snow fall of the winter last longer than usual? And one other, I talked to a lady at the Detroit Ranger station asking if I needed a permit to camp and climb up there, she said I didn't. Is she right?

thanks for the time,

Pierce Adams

[sweatinoutliquor]

No permit needed. I got a good look at it this weekend and it's still got a lot of snow on it. Any approach will require floatation (at least this weekend). I can't confirm, but I've heard that you can't drive all the way to the whitewater trailhead, so tack a couple of miles onto your approach probably, depending on which route you had in mind.

[tobytortorelli]

We climbed Jefferson to ski during the first week of June. We took the SW Ridge. You can drive to the Pamelia Lk. TH now, and you DO need a permit to access from that TH. This is mainly due to the heavy use the trail gets from day hikers. There are no climbing permits. The Milk Creek gully, which we paralleled on the accent, had not been filled in with slide debris, which you would typically expect, and some people use the gully for direct (sometimes risky) access. Maybe the upper faces are still set to avy?? We could skin from the TH to Pamelia Lk., then had to hike from Pamelia Lk. to the PCT, at which point we could put the skins on again.