[TR] Mt. Jefferson - Pamelia Lake/Milk Creek 5/17/2009

[JoeMack]

Trip: Mt. Jefferson - Pamelia Lake/Milk Creek

 

Date: 5/17/2009

 

Trip Report:

I went up to Jefferson for the day Sunday. The road to the Pamelia Lake trailhead is completely clear.

 

The trail though the woods was dry at the beginning but I ran in to snow soon after starting, so I switched from running shoes to boots. The trail had more snow than I've seen this late in the year, but it was too dirty and patchy to skin.

 

 

The view from the lake was nice and it was getting quite warm already.

 

 

I headed over to Milk Creek. I've climbed that way before, but was surprised about the wall of recent avalanche debris.

 

A few years ago at the same time (May 2006), this is what it looked like:

 

 

I scrambled up the steep slope to the climbers right of the Milk Creek and ascended the ridgeline. Looking down into the Milk Creek, I could see the avalanche had scoured the gully to the dirt.

 

Above treeline, I started booting up to the Southwest ridge. The snow was soft and made it very difficult to boot up (too steep for skinning). I was postholing thigh deep and wound up climbing on all fours to try to keep from sinking in too deeply.

 

Being solo, I had no one to help put in the bootpack, so by the time I reached the ridge I was beat. I rested a bit and decided to ski down since it was getting even warmer and it was about noon. I skied down the soft snow. Big fun. My tracks are visible if you look closely.

 

 

I continued skiing down a gully and was able to ski all the way to about 200 feet above the lake. I descended a little further and found the Hunts Cove trail near the lake.

 

By the time I got back to my car I was quite tired. I didn't see another person the whole day.

[stoudema]

Thanks for the report - looks like you had a good time!

[rocky_joe]

yeah, i was up there the last weekend. that pile o debris was huge and the hike up the gulley north of the glacier was no fun. we camped low, like 5200' low. two of the three of us decided to hike up aways, as we hadn't been on the mountain before, but we turned around at 7500'.

[LostCamKenny]

What time did you start?

[JoeMack]

What time did you start?

 

I left the Pamelia Lake Trailhead at 6:30am

[sean_beanntan]

How was the west rib looking like for climbing, thanks

[JoeMack]

How was the west rib looking like for climbing, thanks

 

It looked pretty good from where I was, but I didn't get on the other side of Milk Creek to look closer. Here's a picture from the ridge on the south side of Milk Creek. The west rib is on the left side of the photo: