Mineral King Winter Trip 3 - 2/23/2011

Our third trip to Mineral King in the winter turned out to be quite an adventure.

This album contains photos taken by myself, John and Ed. John and Ed's photos have their name in the filename.

2/23/2011
Wednesday we started off our trip bright and early at our Aunt Linda and Uncle Bob's house in the wee hours of the morning. Ed drove his pickup to about mile 16 on the MK road. John and Jeff pulled pulks while Ed carried his 65 lb pack on his back. There was a larger amount of snow on the road than previous two times, which meant for some very difficult snowshoeing. We arrived at our first camp site at the base of our approach around 5:30 pm.

2/24/2011
On Thursday morning we practiced searching techniques with our avalanche beacons. They worked surprisingly well to quickly hone in on the location. We had very good weather for our ascent up to Timber Gap and the snow pack felt very stable. There were sections that tested all three of our endurance abilities, however we got there without roping up or setting protection points. We got to Timber Gap pass about 4pm and started our descent down the North slope. The first section of the slope was very steep and we very quickly were traveling down a gully on route to the creek. We finally made it to a relatively safe spot in the gully and setup camp while it was starting to snow.

2/25/2011

From around 6pm the previous night, it snowed all night, depositing around 12 - 18 inches of fresh powder. Even though it was still snowing, we started out positive that our original route might still be possible, however 100-200 ft of traveling in the fresh powder resulted in a re-evaluation of our goal. Traveling in fresh, dry powder was 10 times harder than we would have ever thought. Plus the gully offered new dangers with accumulation of powder. Our new goal was to make it back to the Mineral King valley starting with ascending back up to Timber Gap. Due to the possibility of hidden dangers covered by fresh powder in the gully, we climbed out of the gully and started towards our new goal. Hiking was extremely slow and arduous and we switched leaders as often as we could. During one section, Ed was leading across a side slope with some steeper sections in the middle. Jeff waited for Ed to make it to the safety of some trees rather than have two people on the steep section at the same time. Right when it was about time to cross, a small avalanche occurred, bringing a large cloud of powder towards Jeff and John. Thankfully the avalanche was a small one and only covered the snowshoe trail and partially covered Jeff's feet. This was a trigger point for us. We'll always think of it as God's way of telling us that our route was not safe that day. We used our rope to tie each other together and started our first belay traveling technique back down to the safety of a relatively large flat area down slope a few hundred yards.

2/26/2011

Saturday brought with it some very cold temperatures around -4 F in the early morning. While the main storm had passed, it was still snowing off and on for a good part of the morning. Our tents had accumulated a large amount of snow during the night, requiring us to dig out our entrance into the tyvek covered section between our two tents. At least we had easy access to snow to melt for water. After calling Johns wife, Holly, to update our status and get an updated weather report, we decided to make Sat a rest day hoping that the snow pack would settle some and make another attempt on Sun to exit the area. Most of the morning and day was spent keeping warm and before we knew it the day had passed.

2/27/2011

Even with the best intentions it is still difficult to make it out of a winter camp early in the morning. The sun provides more than just light to cold travelers, it also provides heat and motivation to getting moving. After breaking camp down and packing up, we finally started hiking in the direction of Timber Gap. Comically, thinking of the colder early morning temperatures, we started with too many layers and had to stop after only 200 feet to take off a few under layers. Probably the 36+ inches of snow didn't help any. at around 8:30 pm, with Ed practically pulling us up the mountain, we made it to Timber Gap or actually a little higher and to the east of Timber Gap. A combination of our late start and the extreme difficulty of hiking resulted in approximately 1 mile and 1200 feet taking 9 hours to hike!! We arrived at our camp site slightly incoherent from all the exertion. Setting up camp was truly a chore and we were extremely happy to finally make it into our sleeping bags with dinner on the stove.

2/28/2011

Monday was supposed to be our last day of this trip and we had high hopes of at least making it down to the Mineral King Valley for a nice night in our relatives cabin (at least it would be a pretty constant 32 F). As we ascended down through the trees of Timber Gap, Jeff was constantly on the lookout for avalanche factors. The slope was steep and primed for an avalanche with the heavy snow deposit. Another observation was a lot of heavy wind loading on the slope from the previous day. Being in the front, Jeff would occasionally hear the snow pack settling and see cracks forming out from the snowshoe tracks. The snow also did not have a firm feeling to it and resulted in very careful slow travel trying to discern a way down the mountain. After considering our options, we decided to try hiking straight down Timber Gap and see if a section looked safe below the trees. The last section we did, Ed hiked down to a lone tree while Jeff belayed him. Jeff and John joined ed down by the lone tree with the plan of traveling further down the slope while roped in to another lone tree on the pack. However, while discussing our options, we noticed several long horizontal cracks that had formed in the snow pack just from our walking. Further exploration would put someone in danger directly below the cracked area. In addition, the further down we went, the more dangerous our travels would become as a 10500 ft peak rose east of us with an active avalanche gully all the way to the road. We would have to cross this gully on our way to safety. At this point we decided to turn around and go back up to the safety of the pass. We called Holly and asked her to find the local Ranger Office phone number in an attempt to get some information and let the know we were having issues. She found the number for the District Ranger and John discussed our various options with him. We decided to give a different route a try the next day early in the morning when the slope had less sun exposure.

2/29/2011

To maximize our chances of getting out of camp we only set up one tent and started our early morning wake up at 4 am! We were on the trail by around 6:30 and felt very positive of making it out and possibly all the way to the car with hard push down the road. Our snowshoe tracks had hardened from multiple uses and we did feel a little better about how the snow felt in early am. Our plan was to attempt to side slope out approximately 300 feet to a ridge which would take us all the way to the valley floor. The ridge was still steep (~35+ deg), however it did offer tree protection for belay ropes. Jeff setup a belay station on a tree for rope protection for Ed as he started out across the slope. Ed made about 20 feet on the slope and suddenly a low, loud whoomp sound occurred. A whoomp sound on snow slopes indicates that a layer of the snow pack collapsed internally. This is an indication of instability within the slope and is one of the many danger signs to a potential avalanche. There were no surface cracks, however that did not preclude internal cracks. Luckily the slope did not avalanche, however we knew that our attempt to exit the area on our own two feet was at an end. We moved to the relative safety of the trees, hiked back up the slope to the pass and called the District Ranger to help coordinate the helicopter rescue. Luckily, we caught the helicopter early in the morning prior to its scheduled flight to assist in snow surveying the area. They diverted resources and after an hour or two, a helicopter was scouting the area for a spot to land. The area is slightly below timber line, so large open areas fit for a helicopter landing are extremely hard to find. Eventually they found a spot, went back to base and told us approximately where the pickup point would be, about a 1/2 mile down the North facing slope that we had fought hard to conquer two nights prior. After about a 1/2 hour of hiking, the helicopter came back to the area and landed off in the distance. Due to the multitude of trees, we saw the initial landing, however the exact location was really hard to figure out. After snowshoeing off trail for a while, we finally found a steep hill leading up to an area that appeared to be clear of trees. We weren't out of the woods yet, as the slope appeared to be well over 35 deg. It was well covered with trees and luckily was not South facing. The slope held for us as we tromped our way up to the helicopter. We actually had no idea if the helicopter was at the top of the slope until we had hiked the main steepness, thankfully we were right in our assumption. We'll never be happier to see a man made object than when we saw the helicopter. All three of us with gear fit into the 4 seat A Star helicopter and we made a quick exit down to Ash Mountain, headquarters for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. After giving our statements of the trip both verbally and written, a Ranger gave us a ride down to the Ash Mountain visitors center where we waited for Aunt Linda and Uncle Bob to save the day by picking us up and taking us back to there house and a scrumptious meal.