Carine’s photos include a pretty good narrative, but I figured I would add a few words of my own…
The drive to the trailhead is a well-documented pain in the butt on a nasty 4WD road. Carine was glad when I decided to take my old diesel 4x4 and spare her scratching and maybe trashing her newer pickup. We got to the trailhead around 7:00 Monday evening. Carine heated some food, and we were asleep by 8:00.
We started up the trail with headlamps at 4:37 AM. We made good time until we lost the unmaintained trail a couple of times, but that didn’t cost us much time.
Somewhere around 10,000 feet, I started feeling that old age was catching up with me. I just didn’t have any energy. I slowly plodded along, glad that Carine wouldn’t blast past me because she wasn’t sure of the route. I started to perk up shortly below 12,000 feet and picked up the pace. To my surprise, I hit the summit at 12:20 with Carine not far behind. I’ve never exactly raced up Split Mountain, but this was my fastest recorded time for the ascent.
We took a long break and a lot of photos on the summit. On the way down, we met two guys on their way up from the JMT. After repeatedly warning Carine about how important it was to drop down to the east at the right point, I led her too far down/north, so we had to hike back up to our route. Embarrassing!
The talus wasn’t bad on the way up, but we had to go slowly on the way down to avoid twisting ankles, etc. We had trail again below Red Lake, but we still lost track of it a couple of times where it hasn’t been maintained in decades. We were back at the truck in just under 14 hours, round trip.
This was Carine’s fifth fourteener, and she will climb them all before long. I’ve been working toward getting the California 14ers six times each, and I now need just one more summit on Williamson to meet that goal. This was yet another successful and enjoyable day. Thanks, Carine!
SPOT track is
here.
