10/16/2022 Route: From 13,342, Beartown trail descent Posted On: 10/17/2022, By: supranihilest Info: From 13,342 I scree skied to the saddle with 13,308. Super fast and easy, even with an inch or so of wet snow. I scoped the Beartown trail around the corner since I had about 5 minutes of twilight left, so I knew where to go, then made my way up 13,308 in the dark. Instead of going straight up it I contoured to climber's left to avoid some junky, featureless slabs, then went up steep kitty litter slopes covered in snow. When I reached the summit block I contoured left again, finding a break in the cliffs and blocks at the summit and scrambled up to the top at Class 2+. There's a couple of summit candidates and since I couldn't tell which was highest in the dark I tagged them all. I'm sure the highest was the one with the register on top but it was still hard to tell. I then descended to the saddle and took the trail down. The upper thousand feet or more of the trail are covered in snow and I was VERY glad to have microspikes since the trail crosses rather steep slopes. The very upper part has two sets of human tracks, I took the upper one and they eventually meet lower down. Had there been no tracks up there I would have been in trouble since it was so dark and snowy. I still needed downloaded topo maps, which follow the actual trail quite well - even with tracks on the trail there were some sections that were damn near impossible to follow visually as everything looked the same. Once in the forest where things had melted the trail was a lot easier to follow. Microspikes were helpful due to snow but I'd recommend them even when dry on this and 13,342, the kitty litter is a lot easier with some traction. For snow southern aspects will probably dry out quickly but others will take a while, and northern aspects will remain snowy for the season. The Beartown trail will not melt out this season, be prepared for intense route finding and trail breaking and dangerous avalanche slopes. |
