Quick Stats: 5.9 Miles & 3,071′ gain via Owens Peak Trail for a White Christmas.
This year Christmas would be different than normal due to personal reasons, so I decided that I wanted a White Christmas; preferably alone. I had recently completed my AIARE 1 course, so I felt like I had the knowledge to start to venture out in the winter for some fun mountaineering adventures. A week out from Christmas, I started looking at weather forecasts and was disappointed to learn that a lot of the places I was considering for a White Christmas would be getting snowstorms ranging from light to severe.
I also started to think about my original idea for a White Christmas, which was to camp somewhere overnight on Christmas Eve so that I could wake up in the snow. I’ve never camped in the winter / snow, so while I knew how to in theory, this didn’t seem like the wisest decision of my life. . . so I registered for a winter mountaineering course with SMC, and decided my Christmas adventure would have to be a day trip. I spotted an area in the South Sierra that looked like it could be promising: Owens Peak, which boasted a 3rd class route that I figured would probably be buried in snow. As it got closer to the day the weather window was looking less than ideal. On the morning of Christmas Eve it became clear that this wouldn’t be an option for Christmas Day as the weather window had shut, which now meant no trip to the mountains for me.
I monitored the weather throughout the day, had dinner and a movie with my favorite Truncle, and then there it was: The weather window reopened, and it looked like I was “GO” for my White Christmas. I got into Alyx early the next morning planning to get to the trailhead before sunrise, and began my journey. The drive in is a rough road that really requires 4-wheel drive. I’m sure there are people that would say otherwise and chance it, but I really don’t think that road can be done on anything else.
I started in the dark on a dried out trail leading me toward Owens Peak. Approaching from the East, I finally started trudging through light snow before I found myself at the base of the mountain ready to snow climb. It was a pretty moderate ascent in the snow; the quality was solid, and it only took a few minutes for me to remember my crampon training (it had been months since I’d used them after all). The complete route was not buried as I had anticipated, which meant there were some brief sections that were rocky; there were also some brief sections that were iced over making for some strange moments of attempting to front point my way up some pretty gnarly terrain. These sections were brief and isolated to the lower portion of the climb– as I got further up the climb was sustained through snow, and eventually through a nice powder layer that made the inexperienced mountaineer in me question if this was safe. Looking at the slope, the trees, the temperature, and checking for a slab, I determined it was still safe enough for me to continue up toward the summit.
I was met with gorgeous views of the South Sierra, but decided I needed to act fast if I was going to wear a dress.
“Wear a dress,” you’re asking yourself? Yes. I was supposed to go to a holiday party but that got canceled, so I had this simple red sparkly dress now that needed to be worn somewhere.
. . . What better place than the summit of a mountain in the Sierra Nevada? Knowing that my body heat was high from the final climb to the summit, I wanted to act fast to take my photo in my dress while I was still nice and warm. I started by taking off my upper layers to put the dress on and putting my puffy over it. Then I undid my crampons and boots, keeping them ready to put back on. Then the lower layers came off as I stepped on my hard shell on the snow. Even though my feet were only on the hard shell for about 10 seconds before going back in the boots, that was enough to sap a lot of the heat out of my toes. I did my boots and crampons enough to be able to move around, grabbed my ice axe, hit the timer on my phone, and snapped this photo:
It came out well enough that I didn’t need more, but got one more for safety before I changed back into my kit. My toes were frozen at this point; enough that I was concerned about a slight case of frost nip as I’ve never experienced that level of cold in my toes. Even though I was loving my time on the summit, I felt like it was time to get moving and back down the mountain.
I retraced my steps the entire way down easily, and only had any difficult in the icy portion. I opted to face into the mountain and retrace my steps down in almost the same way– front pointing, but also the most simple of mixed climbing as I poked my points into a couple little cracks in a boulder on my way down. Soon there after I was back to the snow, then to the trail where my snow gear could be stowed for the rest of my journey. When I got to Alyx I felt so good; so happy; so relaxed. I opened up the back, put on some Ventures Radio, and just hung out thinking about how I spent my Christmas compared to everyone else. Enjoy this little video of my adventure: