Martyb's Mt. Rose Overnight

“We hit the road about an hour later than planned, due to Jerry's car's transmission dying. So we ended up hitting Davis's and Sacramento's commute traffic - it took us about 3.5 hours to get from the east bay to Auburn. After that it was pretty smooth sailing, and we reached Tim's ski cabin in King's Beach by about 8. We got some takeout from the local Italian Restaurant, then hit the sack around 11 (except for Glenn, who still had to sort through his gear and pack up).

We were up at 6 and shoveling down a giant breakfast, courtesy of Jerry. We hit the road by about 8 and arrived at our planned parking spot, only to find "no overnight parking" signs everywhere. We continued up past the trailhead (still along NV Route 431) to the summit, where there was a nice large parking area with no signs. We strapped on the skis, went about 100 yards down toward the trailhead, then took the skis off and walked down the road before starting over.

The snow was crappy - very hard and side-sloped, so those of us (just me) without metal edges had a struggle for about a mile or so. We reached the end of the part where snowmobiles were allowed after only an hour and a half, then skied north down into a meadowy area toward Mt. Rose. We found a nice place to camp after only about a quarter mile, then dropped packs and decided to head toward Mt. Rose with our lunch/snack food in the hopes of being able to summit before the storm moved in overnight.

After about a half hour, we reached a point where I felt it was getting too difficult, plus I wanted to relax around camp and take my time setting up my tent, etc., so I turned back. Jerry had turned back right after starting to return to camp and start a snow shelter.

After a while (deleting some of the story here - will elaborate later), Tim and Glenn returned, and Tim headed back to his car, as planned. So we spent our time setting up camp, I melted snow, etc. It was quite nice to have the time and energy to do all the camp stuff at a leisurely pace, since we hadn't skied all that far to get to the spot.

Around the time it got dark, Glenn and Jerry got dinner going, and we all hit the sack around 7:30. For some reason, I had gotten fairly cold - I think I waited too long to put on my warmest clothes and was having a hard time catching up. Nothing too uncomfortable, though. The storm came in around midnight, and was fairly wild. Not a ton of snow - we estimated about a foot or 18 inches - but pretty windy. So none of us slept too well, as the sound of the wind was too loud.

Around 3:30 I had to pee, but there was no way in hell I was going out in that gale, so I dug a deep pee-hole in one of my vestibules and contorted myself in some bizarre way to enable urination without soiling the tent. Is this too much detail?

Around 5:30 I had a partial tent collapse. The Half Dome Plus Two is really only a 3-season tent and is not truly built for snow loads. The snow had drifted about 2 feet deep on one side, so the poles popped out of the little velcro straps holding them to the fly. So I had to get out and shovel the snow off the tent and re-connect the fly to the poles. Also, once the snow closed up the gaps at the bottom of the fly, the small opening at the top of the fly was not enough ventilation, so I had a lot of freezing condensation - it appeared to have snowed inside both vestibules!

Anyway, I was up by 6:30 cooking my breakfast, and the storm was over. I'm getting tired of typing in this trip report, so I'll conclude by noting that the fresh snow made the skiing fantastic, and the clear weather made for stunning scenery.

Photos here.

New Gear Comments:
1 - Tent - easy to set up; loved the vestibules; too much condensation after getting snowed in.
2 - Climb-high down booties - great, really kept the toes warm.
3 - Hot packs - put one in each ski boot to dry them out overnight, which worked. Also put one in each pocket of jacket at bedtime to help stay warm.

That's all I can think of right now - enough already!!”

“Nice report Marty. The plowed in car pic is classic! Glad you had fun brother!”

“Nice, Marty! Sounds like you had a pretty good time!”

“Yes, it was definitely a fun trip. Some of the guys in this circle will go on these killer ordeal-type trips (which actually provided some entertaining conversation during this trip), but all of us agreed that this slower-paced, more laid back style is great to put in the mix. Personally, I really enjoyed my first experience dealing with a decent storm - I was prepared well enough to weather it, but also learned a few things from the experience to use next time.”

“Martyb, glad you had a good trip. Only one suggestion; think pee bottle. ;-)

Off to check out the photos.”

“Yes - pee bottle will be on the gear list next time! BTW, while Jerry's thermometer read 26 degrees in the morning, it also read 26 every other time, so it was not likely a reliable temperature gauge. I'm guessing it was around 25 overnight, but quite a bit colder if you consider the wind effect. One thing I need to do is to upgrade to somewhat colder weather gear, just in case of a colder night than we had.”

“Fresh snow - how wonderful.

Didn't anyone sleep in the igloo?”

“I use a 25* degree bag with a polar fleece liner that Weezr made for me. Material was cheap and it's very light. She just cut it to fit the inside of the bag and sewed it up. Works great for me. I also keep an extra set of long johns inside a ziplock that will be dry when it's time to crawl in for the night.”

“Unfortunately, Jerry started his igloo too big, so couldn't get the sides to angle up soon enough (i.e., it would have ended up about 15 feet tall!). He tried to bridge the gap with some old branches and twigs, then fill in with thin blocks of snow, but gave up after the second collapse.”

“Sounds like a great trip. I always like those where I learn something new.

I have a great photo I took near Mt. Rose last year of my size 11 bootprint right next to a bear print. Biggest Dam#$%@ bear print I've ever seen! I kept thinking
"Isn't this thing supposed to be hibernating?" I was hiking with Tahoe at the time, he & I decided to move down-mountain & camp elsewhere. Whew.”

“Can't get the bear print to show up, hmmm... it's a JPEG format.

How do you guys post pic's in a thread? Violin??”

“Looks like good times, Martyb. Nice pics !!”

“Yikes, Wanderer! I suppose if a bear had shown up between midnight and 5 AM or so, he probably would have wanted to get into the tent out of the wind and snow more than to eat my food!”

“When I seen lightning flashing over the Sierras, I decided that I would not be making it up to see you. The wind was screaming down here in town.
Glad you made it in one piece and had some fun to.”

“Yeah, I figured I wouldn't see you, the way things were going, tahoe. Although Sunday AM was FAAAAAN-TASTIC!! We did leave camp kind of early, though - were back to the car by about 11....

Maybe next time!”

“Awakening to a new morning like that had to be an incredible experience. An eventful night with a storm that would only transform all that was outside your tent. Sometimes storms will do that. Force you to look at things differently. Because they are.

Marvelous.”

“Great pics marty. as well as the trip report. It sure looked cold though”

“Looks like a fun trip! I really want to do a snowshoe/backpack!

We camped outside of Mammoth and had ~8" of powder on the truck Sunday morning. I got up at 6:30am and made a lot of tracks in the powder. Mammoth Mountain claimed 11", but there was more than that.”

“I love the pink flamingo... Nice Touch!! Great photos and report Marty!”

“Nice pics Mr. Marty.”

“A few additional notes:

When I unrolled my tent at home to dry it out, there were still some pieces of ice in there!

As I was putting my stuff away, I realized that the spare long underwear I had with me was about twice the weight of the stuff I had on. I had deliberately chosen the lighter stuff to ski in so as not to overheat. I should have immediately switched to the heavier set once settled at camp. Duh!

I'm now in the market for a shovel. One of the guys had a nice smallish one that he pointed out is not ideal if you have to move a lot of snow (that's why it took a half hour to shovel out the car), but that would suit me fine. Off to REI!

I alluded to part of the story I left out in the initial trip report. Tim and Glenn actually attempted the summit, and Tim succeeded. But after Tim made it, he came back down a slightly different way, and the two got separated. Glenn called me on the radio to see if I could spot Tim up on the mountain with my monocular - I couldn't, although I did see 2 other people walking down the trail off the summit. All turned out fine, but I highly recommend having at least a couple radios on a trip like this.

Next full moon will be Cameron's first winter camping trip - Yosemite!!”

“I know everyone's been dying of anticipation: well I finally added a map of this trip to the webshots album here.”

“Marty:

Think about getting the longest collapsible shovel you can find. Your back will thank you. Lifelink makes a pretty nice one. There are some others as well. Also make sure if has an aluminum head.”

“Thanks, rosey - I've heard the same advice from others....”