[TR] Mt Pugh - 12/1/2012

[trees4me]

Trip: Mt Pugh -

 

Date: 12/1/2012

 

Trip Report:

A quick condition report for anyone looking to get out high. We made a quick run at Pugh on Saturday. Snow was falling at Metan Lake, but no snow sticking until above 4000'. Followed the summer trail until the edge of the trees then donned snowshoes to climb to stujack pass. Boulder field was mostly filled in, but a few deep holes kept in interesting.

 

Big difference in snowpack above Stujack Pass (5500-6000'). Soft windslabs had formed on both sides of the ridge, but were deeper on the NE (4-12" Q1). Easy to trigger this upper layer, and there was a deeper soft slab in places (18-24" down Q1.5).

 

Spent 1.5h wallowing in snowshoes to make it up to pt 6170 before giving up. Could just see across the Straight, but no summit view. We weren't gonna make the summit in daylight and the reactive softslab was getting deeper. Wish I had skis up high, but that's a long way to carry them for 1k of skiing.

 

Took everything, but only used snowshoes and a second ax (for a rocky crux). My bro pulled over the crux with just one ax.

 

Gear Notes:

ss, avy gear, 1 ax

 

Approach Notes:

4h to stujack, pretty easy, very low avy risk until boulder field

[trees4me]

Photos of climbers trying to snowshoe, I still don't know what happened here

 

[JasonG]

Maybe it had something to do with the lack of poles? I like it!