Garfield and Applegate Peaks in the Snow

So Monday of last week was the only day of my Spring Break that was going to have half-decent weather. "Fortuitously," I also really only had time to take one day off. I had plans to try one of a few pretty serious mountain snow climbs that day, but it had snowed at or near Klamath Falls elevation each of the three previous nights, and so I was pretty strongly doubting my ability to actually drive to any trailheads deep in the woods. So instead I decided to go to Crater Lake and snowshoe/climb. Again.

I say that like it's a bad thing.

It's not.

Having snowshoed about as far as I reasonably could snowshoe in one day around the West Rim Road and climbed all the peaks on that side within my range, I figured this time I would take the East Rim Road, and revisit an old friend (Garfield Peak) while trying to make a new one (Applegate Peak).

The drive up to Park HQ this time was amazing. Despite the dusting of snow we'd had the night before, the road was completely dry by 930am or so, and it was by far the safest-feeling drive I've had to HQ since winter started. Though there were definitely clouds, the sun was out, and warm enough that I was able to drive in basically just my base layer without the heat on in the car.

One immediate upside to hiking the East Rim Road is that you don't have to drive the final four windy miles of road up to Rim Village - in winter the East Rim Road begins right across the street from HQ.

Right here, actually.

My plan was to hike approximately 1.5 miles along the road until, according to random guy on a random website, I would be able to see Applegate Peak in the distance. Then I would cut off the trail and head due north to the summit through a huge snowfield. Remembering the fun times I had tromping around the bases of Tipsoo Peak and Howlock Mountain late last fall, I was especially excited for the snowfield.

Well, I can vouch for the fact that the first 1.5 miles of the East Rim Road in winter are not nearly as cool as the first 1.5 miles of the West Rim Road. The lake itself is nowhere to be seen (in fact, I wouldn't see it until I was very near the summit of Applegate, a few hours later), and the road is basically just a slightly uphill, straight line through some very same-looking trees. Very rarely am I on a hike anywhere outside that I would describe as mind-numbing, but this was a little bit that.

After I'd covered about a mile, I busted out the GPS and started scanning for the location of this mysterious snowfield. So far all I'd seen was thick pine forest on both sides of me with no openings in sight. The topo map reinforced what I was seeing: there was no sign of any opening/snowfield anywhere up ahead. Already a little beat from snowshoeing on too-powdery snow, I was getting a little annoyed. I could certainly bushwhack to the north, but from what I could tell I'd be heading through some thick trees up a really steep incline, which was not my idea of fun. Otherwise, I'd have to give up the summits entirely and just try to enjoy a hike along the Rim Road for a few more miles. Or just go home.

I continued on for another half mile or so, trying to decide what to do before finally taking my chances with the forest. I watched the GPS until what looked like the thinnest part of the forest was directly north of me, then put the thing away, took a bearing on my compass, and headed uphill. I was almost immediately rewarded when, after about five minutes (if that) of walking, I burst out of the trees into the promised snowfield. A few minutes after that, Applegate and Garfield loomed into sight in front of me.

The snowfield.

Garfield Peak.

Applegate Peak.

 I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out which peak to visit first and whether or not I should conceive of some convoluted route that would allow me to cache extra gear midway between the summits and reclaim it at some point before just deciding to tough it out with a full pack. After all, how tough could these two small summits be?

Pretty damn, as it turned out. The hike across the snowfield was maybe the best part of the day. It was almost entirely beautifully pristine, sun-sparkled snow except for a single other set of snowshoe tracks and one set of ski tracks, the kind of snow you feel bad about walking on. The mountains got more and more haughty-looking as I moved toward them, and as Vidae Ridge dropped away below me, it revealed McLoughlin, Union Peak, and the other mountains that ranged to the south. The sun was a bit too hot and I wasn't drinking nearly enough water, but I didn't think much of it until I was at the foot of Applegate. There, I had the choice to either go right and try to wend up to the summit in between a series of sharp, rocky cliffs that protruded out of the snow, or to go left, a bit further out of my way, and ascend an easy ridge to the top. Because I never learn anything and am dumb, I tried going right. This got really hard really quickly and soon after that it became obvious that there was no way up the mountain between the cliff faces, unless I wanted to risk falling a thousand feet into Crater Lake. So I got to spend about forty-five minutes traversing across the south face of the mountain on powdery snow in snowshoes. Twice I feel completely on my face, soaking my clothes. It was gross, and dumb. 

But eventually there was a break in the rock wall above me and I heaved myself up to what passed for the summit. By this point, the wind was howling (and the snow - underfoot, at least - was outrageous) so I didn't spend much time up there other than to touch one snowshoe tread onto the summit platform, which was about the size of one man laying down with a thousand foot drop on the other side of it and very well might have been the top of a cornice.

The view back down the hill from the cornice deathtrap.

Thus began the rest of the day's ridiculous gear-switching and self-doubting adventure.

First, I strapped my snowshoes and poles to my bag and switched over to descending the mountain in just boots and an ice ax. I had crampons in my bag just in case but they didn't seem necessary. This worked great, as I sunk down into the powdery snow but just plowed through it with my downhill momentum. Eventually I struck the ridge that joined Applegate and Garfield and headed toward my next target.

Garfield Peak 

Dyer's Rock

At this point it really started to hit me, though, that I hadn't eaten or drank much all day. For a bit, I just considered calling it a day and heading home, especially since I'd already summited the only new peak I had planned for the day. But Garfield looming ahead egged me on and I quickly dropped down into a little snow-cradle along the lake's rim and scarfed lunch #1.

Shortly thereafter, I found myself grinding up Garfield Peak. This time, faced with a short-but-dirty route and a safe-but-long route, I forced myself to hike out around to the west a bit and latch on to the less inclined part of the ridge...maybe I can be taught!

Whether it was the sun, the powder snow, or something else, by this point I was absolutely beat. We're talking seriously lay-down-and-take-a-nap-right-there tired, the way I've only ever been before on a few of my longest hikes (and my first half marathon). But since any nap would involve a bed made entirely of fucking snow, I stopped to catch my breath, strapped my snowshoes and poles back on again, and headed the rest of the way up.

The summit of Garfield is also very flat, but there's a lot of space to move around, and so I spent a fair amount of time up there, taking pictures and forcing the camera to take pictures of me...

Like this.

...before finally finding a low, tree-enclosed spot to eat the rest of my food in and just be out of the howling wind for a few minutes. I should clarify, I guess, that the wind was only about 20-25mph, tops, but it was so insistent that after a few hours it was starting to drive me nuts. Huddling in the middle of a little stand of trees at the summit restored my sanity somewhat.

From there, I switched back to my ice ax and boots combination to glissade (in a few 100 foot sections) down the face of the mountain and then used my compass to guess how to most efficiently descend back to the Rim Road without having to unnecessarily retrace my steps.

It seemed, at first, that I had guessed wrong. After tromping downhill to the south for about twenty minutes, I ran out of room to walk, but could see the maintenance sheds near Park HQ right below me (okay, about 600 feet below me). There seemed to be some decent glissading runs here, and I very nearly cliffed myself out through sheer stupidity before remembering what had happened to me and Dale on Trapper Peak and forcing myself to just follow the cliffline until it started to descend toward the road in a more sane manner. I got in a few more decent glissades while doing this, until I started hearing an under-snow stream somewhere nearby and started choosing my steps more carefully as a result, but eventually I emerged onto the road, only .42 miles from the parking lot. I'd actually managed to shave almost a mile off my walking distance.

I was happy but also zapped, so I sat in the shade on the Rim Road, directly in the damn snow, and ate the rest of my food...then continued to just sit for about another 20 minutes, until the idea of walking that last .42 miles became palatable to me. Then it was back up the super-boring stretch of road to the car.

All in all, it was a great hike for the views, the snowfield, and the moderate routefinding challenge. It ended up being a little harder than I expected, but I think I'm still bad at estimate the effort involved in a snowshoe mile versus a "normal" walking mile.

It did not snow on the way back down, but Google added this to my account automatically and it sort of freaks me out. So have it.