Snow at Base Camp
June 8th
Today we planned to wake up at 3am and climb Urus but when we woke up Julio and Neil said Feliz Navidad because the ground was covered by two inches of snow! The snow was unexpected but then again we ended up with snow almost every night. So we slept in and had a lazy morning complete with scrambled eggs and toast. After breakfast the sun came out and we managed to dry some of our cold wet clothes and we attempted to dry our tents by digging drainage ditches so the snow melt didn’t pool under our tents as was the case the night before. We then decided to hike up to the lake so we followed Julio up the trail until we came to the steep rocky moraine that really didn’t look like it had any sort of trail up it. Turns out, there was a trail and we went up the snowy switchbacks until we found the lake. We watched rocks fall into the water and create ripples for a while, then went back to base camp to do some crevasse rescue training. We climbed up on a big boulder right next to our camp and pretended Henry had fallen into a crevasse then we set up and tested a system to create mechanical advantage to pull Henry up. We also learned how to use our prussics. Rain clouds started moving in and we went under the rock to practice self-ascension so we can climb out of crevasses on our own. That was fun; we climbed all the way up the rope then down. Then we went to bed early so we could try to climb Ishinca the next day.
Today we planned to wake up at 3am and climb Urus but when we woke up Julio and Neil said Feliz Navidad because the ground was covered by two inches of snow! The snow was unexpected but then again we ended up with snow almost every night. So we slept in and had a lazy morning complete with scrambled eggs and toast. After breakfast the sun came out and we managed to dry some of our cold wet clothes and we attempted to dry our tents by digging drainage ditches so the snow melt didn’t pool under our tents as was the case the night before. We then decided to hike up to the lake so we followed Julio up the trail until we came to the steep rocky moraine that really didn’t look like it had any sort of trail up it. Turns out, there was a trail and we went up the snowy switchbacks until we found the lake. We watched rocks fall into the water and create ripples for a while, then went back to base camp to do some crevasse rescue training. We climbed up on a big boulder right next to our camp and pretended Henry had fallen into a crevasse then we set up and tested a system to create mechanical advantage to pull Henry up. We also learned how to use our prussics. Rain clouds started moving in and we went under the rock to practice self-ascension so we can climb out of crevasses on our own. That was fun; we climbed all the way up the rope then down. Then we went to bed early so we could try to climb Ishinca the next day.
posted by Austin Paulson at 8:29 PM
1 Comments:
Snow can be a nice surprise! Some of my best hiking and camping experiences were in unexpected snow -- Yellowstone in September when the bison and elk came down to the geyser basins to appear as misty wraithes; and the Grand Canyon on the winter solstice when the top 100' (elev) of trail was icy and lit by the full moon when we got back from the river.
Thanks for sharing.
PAG
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