After meeting up with Richard, AsABat, ElMichael, Ranboze, and BeerBrewer at the Portal Friday night, Cori (SnowNymph) and I hit the NF at 3 a.m. I was able to find some good icy patches above LBSL on the slabs, so watch your feets!
Whitney peaks (get it??) up over the ridge east of Iceberg Lake.
Cori and I both tried using iPods for the attack of the scree slope. When mine decided it wanted to work it was great! Nothing like a little pump-me-up music to keep the legs going! While she stayed more to the right on the slabs, I dove headlong up the sand and rock, keeping Mike in my sights most of the way. It's a good place to be when trying to burn off a little steam...
I gained a new appreciation for the steepness of the final chute of the MR:
After waiting at the Russell-Carillon Saddle (well, I scrambled up Carillon, first, after seeing Mike up there; then Cori followed me!), the rest of the gang showed up. Rachel, Tom (TomCat_rc), Jim (SierraGator), and Christine started from the Portal around 5:15-ish. It was Christine's first time up there, and she did AWESOME! After she and Jim summited Carillon, she waited for us at the Saddle. And we started up the East Ridge!
There are a lot of words I would use to describe this: terrifying, exhilarating, exhausting, invigorating, overwhelming, and just plain AWESOME! Between the views, the air quality, and the people, this was perhaps one of the best climbs I've been on. The ridge is tricky, so that each person had to figure out what was best for them. Cori has a shorter reach; I don't do well with edges. But between the others in the group, there had to be close to 20 summits of this peak, so we were in fantastic (and patient!) hands.
The weather was more than perfect, and the wind died down every time we hit a spicy section, as though someone/thing was watching out for us. We celebrated on the summit in my usual fashion:
Jim headed down first to get back to Christine, and the rest of us followed. I did turn to Tom about 2/3 of the way back and said, "You know, I'm ready to get off this ridge. I'm tired of being scared." And with views like this one, can you blame me?
We got back to the Portal at 6:30 pm, and headed down to the Pizza Factory. Sorry we missed most of the group, but at least I got my champagne shower!
We were originally planning on doing something 'light' on Sunday, but the lure of the Portal Store got to all of us, and besides, it was Rick Graham's first breakfast at the Store! So we decided to find routes up Mt. Pancake:
And so, the collection grows. Tom, Cori, Jim, Christine, and Rachel, you guys ROCK! Thanks for letting me come along this weekend, and let's do it again soon!
Pics are here.
