Winter gear evaluation for Presidential traverse

[sethd513]

Good call guys. We went out Friday with a newbie and I had big plans of doing a ridgeline. I chuckled when we passed the parking lot for valley way looked pretty snowed in. We were much lower then you still breaking knee to waiste deep snow. We only climbed 1200 feet but that’s ok with the amount of work needed to break trail in those conditions. Hopefully your next attempt will be better views! We had given up and turned around and about 30 minutes later the sun came out and we had blue skies for about 20. That’s how it goes.


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[peakbagger]

Sunday was the day I was out and the trails were broken out to the point where they could be barebooted. Of course step off to the side and sink 12 to 18 inches. Blue sky no winds and 100 mile visibility.

[Slo-go'en]

Sunday was the day I was out and the trails were broken out to the point where they could be barebooted. Of course step off to the side and sink 12 to 18 inches. Blue sky no winds and 100 mile visibility.

Yesterday was the day to be up there, I stayed inside all day. I went out Saturday and broke trail in my backyard. That was enough exercise. We may not have Sierra Nevada levels of snow, but for around here it's pretty good. BTW, it's snowing again.

[T.S.Kobzol]

Good job. Too bad you did not have nsherry61 in front of You he would have just run through the deep snow in his trailrunners and packed it out for ya ;-)

Quick follow up...
We got to Valley Way trailhead yesterday about 630 am. Took about an hour to shovel our way into the parking lot so we could start. Got to walking around 745 with snow shoes. Not too bad at first but it got progressively worse. As the trail gets steeper we also ran into significantly more fresh deep powder, to the point that we were basically swimming in it to break trail. It ultimately took seven hours to make the three miles to Valley Way tent site. By that time we were all worn out and there was no chance of making it to Gray Knob until long past dark.
We set up a solid base camp there and set off this morning with lighter packs (still carrying emergency supplies plus snowshoes /micro spikes /ice axe /crampons). Deep snow all the way to Madison Hut. From there we switched to micro spikes and trail crampons. The other three had purchased trail crampons for the trip. My micro spikes were no match for the Hillsounds. I stopped to switch over to full crampons in the first few minutes. It took a while but we were able to summit Madison around noon. Made it back to camp around 2pm and packed up for the trip out. The new snow that came in mid day while we were out to Madison obliterated the previous days efforts, so it still took us about three hours for the trip out.
Not the full traverse that we'd hoped for, but under the conditions we were very pleased with how things went.