How to start a new year?

Freezing your ass off in the wilderness… of course. 🙂

I wanted to do some kind of special hike for the new year/new decade. I only had a weekend, so a longer backpacking hike wasn’t possible. So I looked over my options, the current conditions, the weather report, prepped my equipment, and headed to Lake Tahoe.

Mt Rose is a great day hike in Summer, in Winter it’s much tougher. I didn’t necessarily believe I would reach the summit during this trip, but the area was covered with plenty of snow and lots of options.

The only questionable weather was a mild front that was going to move through Friday night. It shouldn’t drop too much snow and would be gone by the time I got on the road. When I woke up, that was still what the weather report was indicating.

Apparently that changed on the way to Tahoe, since it started to rain slightly as I started the accent into the mountains along highway 80. It was still going when I reached Donner Summit, but it was snow at that point. Still nothing heavy, but that’s not a fun place to be driving when it’s snowing.

Even with the snow I had to drive thru, I made it to the Mt Rose Summit Trailhead at around 9am as I expected. Unfortunately, the area was socked in with clouds and a freezing wind was blasting the area. The weather report still said it would change to partly cloudy in the afternoon with mostly sunny skies the next day.

But it’s really hard to get motivated to put 30+ pounds on your back and start a long hike into the wilderness in those conditions.

Just as I was going to switch to a day hike (I had brought my day pack as a backup) and then go to Reno for sushi and to loose some money at the casinos, the skies started to clear and I could see Mt Rose from the parking lot.

So back to the original plan, just about a little over an hour later than I thought. I strapped on my snowshoes and my backpack. I started hiking along the Mt Rose Summit trail, which is a 5 mile trail winding through the local ridges and along the side of Tamarack Peak before reaching the saddle and then climbing steeply up to the summit of Mt Rose.

It had been over a week since there was any significant snowfall, so there were a lot of snowshoe and ski trails made by people who ventured out before me. Probably mostly day hikers, but it was helpful not to have to blaze the trail through the fresh snow myself (which would drastically slow me down).

A few people passed me with skis and snowboards strapped to their back (lighter than my pack, at least). There were a lot of good hills and mountains in the area for back country skiing.

One particular area popular with the skiers was on the slopes of Mt Tamarack, which is where most people using this trail in the Winter headed towards. Which meant the Winter trail brazed by those that preceded me shifted a bit away from the actual trail. It still was in the right direction for me, so I kept on target until the snowshoe and ski marks stopped heading in the direction of the saddle that would lead to the summit of Mt Rose.

With the late start and my finding a great place to camp with a fabulous view of Mt Rose, I decided that was a good place to stop for the night. I had hoped to get at least half way to the summit, so I came up a bit short of that halfway mark. Actually reaching the summit was a long shot anyway, but the early stop made it really hard to envision making a real attempt at the summit.

Anyway, I setup my tent, blew up my air mattress, and crawled into my -20 degree (F) sleeping bag. I pretty much stayed in that bag for the rest of the night. 🙂

Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of places along that trail where you could get a direct view of the sunset or sunrise, but I made sure to setup the tent so I had a panoramic view of Mt Rose as long as I kept the door unzipped. It was cold, but not cold enough to miss the view.

And the sunset did paint the face of Mt Rose and the snow covering it with a nice golden glow. A nice sight to see to start the year.

And I got some nice views (and pictures) of the stars over Mt Rose when I unzipped the door and peaked out into the night a few times. Being Winter, the 14 hours until sunrise was quite a marathon of watching videos on my iPhone, trying to keep warm (I still have all my toes and fingers), and getting some sleep.

It had to get as low as 10 degrees (F)–if not close to zero–during the night. But I had been on enough Winter backpacking treks, that I had a good handle on what I needed to have to survive and even manage to enjoy most of the cold night.

Remarkably, it seemed colder than it was on Kilimanjaro. But that could be that old ‘lack of oxygen’ thing making me mis-remember things. 🙂

Before sunrise, I boiled some water and had my freeze dried breakfast as I waited to see what sunrise would bring. There were some clouds covering the top of Mt Rose, so there might be nothing to see.

I was wrong. The rising sun cast another golden glow across Mt Rose and the clouds, which started to part and revealed the summit to the Sun’s rays.

Another great way to start the year and decade.

Then the decision had to be made: Leave my tent and most of my tent and head towards the summit or call it an enjoyable (but cold) overnight trek and head back to my Jeep and a fancy thing call HEATING.

Having a pretty good view of where the trail was in the Summer and finding very little in the way of tracks of previous people heading in that direction (although there were some ski tracks zig-zagging up and down some of the cliffs along that area), I didn’t think I would be able to make much progress towards the saddle that I would have to reach to have a shot at the summit.

If I had made it further the day before, maybe I could have at least tried some exploratory hiking to see what the snow conditions were like, but with there still close to 3 miles to go to reach the summit I decided what I’d done was still a great and unique way to start the year and decade.

So I packed up my gear and headed back to the trailhead. It was a nice hike, with some clearer views of Lake Tahoe than I had seen the day before.

So while not as far as I could have or hoped to go, the overnight trek was a worthy start to the new year and decade.

I am still planning on doing a 3-4 day Winter trek in Yosemite, when conditions, weather, and my schedule permits. And I’ll be attempting to reach Mt Shasta’s summit through the snow, so I will have plenty of time to see more Winter wonderlands this year.

After all, the last decade of hiking led me to Kilimanjaro, there’s plenty of time to see new things and reach new heights in this decade.