Last month I decided to try my first winter ascent of a 14er. Dave Koeing, his brother, Allen Welch and I set out to snowshoe up Mount Quandary and then ski down.
At the trailhead we had blue skies and what appeared to be smooth sailing.
After snowshoeing for a while I began to realize that it wasn't quite as easy as hiking with a light pack. The skis and boots added some serious weight!
As we neared the timberline the clouds rolled in and we started getting some snow. The high winds made hiking that much harder.
We plodded along, but the wind got worse and worse. There wasn't much visibility at all and I was getting completely worn out. We made it to about 13,000 feet but at that point I was exhausted and couldn't really go any further. We were never able to see the top of the peak . At that point we decided it wasn't our day to make the summit and we would turn back.
High winds, snow and cold temperatures didn't make it any easier to get into our boots and skis, but we managed and started heading down. We had planned on skiing down the trail, as we wanted to avoid avalanche danger.
Not surprisingly down was much, much easier than up.
As we went down the skies cleared up and we again had some nice weather. I think it took us about 20 minutes to get all the way down. Could it really have taken us that long to hike up???
Allen had a blow-up hiking sled that he pulled out near the bottom.
After all was said and done it was a fun trip. We didn't make it to the top but I got some good snowshoeing experience and some motivation to get into ever better shape. Next year I will conquer a winter summit!
