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Base Camp
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- Statistics:
- Date Hiked: May 25, 2009
- Miles Hiked: 6.0
- Elevation Gain: 2,609'
- Hiking Partner(s): Brian Kooienga
- Description:
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Brian and I had never been to the Never Summer
Mountain Range, so we decided to check it out over Memorial Day.
The drive from Denver (CO) took a while, but we were hiking by 6:30 am.
The first part of the hike is along the Michigan Ditch road which was
very easy. Once we left the road, we used snowshoes to stay afloat
in the basin to the northeast of the Nokhu Crags. As we approached
the Grand Central Couloir and Nokhuloir, it was obvious that they had
already slid with a significant amount of avalanche debris at the base
of the climbs. It took about 2 hours and 15 minutes to reach the
apron of the couloirs where we took 30 minutes to gear up, eat, hydrate,
and take in the views. The clouds had finally lifted to the point
where we could see the top of the routes which didn't seem very far
away. Both these couloirs are relatively short and do not take
long to climb.
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We made short work of the Grand Central Couloir
taking turns kicking steps. Once in the notch between the Nokhu
Crags, the wind from the west was noticeably chilly. We scrambled
around towards the southern crag but weren't too interested in trying to
summit from this side. Not only is the rock completely rotten,
there was a nice layer of rhyme ice covering much of the mountain on the
west side. I mentioned to Brian since we were there, we might as
well descend the Grand Central and also climb Nokhuloir. He agreed,
so that's what we did. Before entering Nokhuloir, we did notice a
brief shower of rock fall, but other than this the day was relatively
uneventful.
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After reaching the notch to the south of the
southern Nokhu Crag, we snapped a few photos and I started to prepare
for the descent. Brian peeked around the corner and said he
thought we could top out. I honestly wasn't even thinking about
the summit when he said this. We left our packs at the top of the
couloir, and after I grabbed my jacket we were on the summit after 5
minutes of scrambling/swimming up loose rock and talus. We took a
couple of photos and returned to the top of Nokhuloir. Brian sat
down at the top of the snow and started his glissade. I followed
in his path and actually yelled a warning because of the amount of snow
building in the runnel. We were quickly back at our snowshoes and
hiking back to the trailhead.. The road seemed to take forever to hike
out on, but we finished the trip after 6 hours and 20 minutes.
- Maps:
-
Click
here to view a
map of the area where this hike is located.
- Photographs:
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