Yesterday however, we took the morning and early afternoon to head about 70 miles East into the San Gabriels where we climbed Saint Antonio (aka Mount Baldy). Baldy is the highest mountain in the San Gabriels at 10068 feet. We climbed the standard route to the base of the SW face of the mountain and then went straight up a steep chute on some nice climbing snow to the Summit ridge. The face was probably 40-45% with about 1500 feet of exposure so we had to be careful. It was axe and crampons but we didn't feel the need to rope up.
My legs were still heavy from the race and I have a sore throat (the virus I've been fighting seems to be gaining ground). That said, the climb was a delight. I slowed Anders down a bit but we did the whole climb in about 6.5 hours. It was about 13 miles round trip with just under 4000 feet of vertical. Beautiful weather throughout. Here's a couple of pics:
Anders and i at the start of the climb--about 7 a.m.:
Here we are at the base of the face--you can see Anders up ahead of me and the snow chute up the face we were about to ascend:
Here you can see Anders above me on the lower part of the face:
Here I am nearing the the top of the chute. anders took this picture from the summit ridge, which he attained a few minutes before me:
On the summit shortly before 11 a.m.:
No comments:
Post a Comment