Eisenhower and Pierce

May 19, 2019

Katharina, Isabelle, Marc, and I started from a deserted Edmands Path trailhead on a warm but gray morning. The ascent started right away, but was a gentle and pretty path through the woods. Snow started in earnest at about 3000 feet, and maybe about 500 feet higher we put on spikes. A long traverse in very deep postholed snow brought us onto the ridge, where the exposed terrain above treeline was mercifully snow free. Though Washington and Munroe were poking up above the cloud cover, our objective seemed to be just below the ceiling, so we scampered the last bit of trail to the summit as quickly as we could so we could get a view before it fogged in as well.

Happy hikers.

Still lots of snow.

Does this much snow at end of May count?

Open ridge.

Final ascent.

A windy summit.

Arriving at the summit we left the shelter of the lee side of the mountain and were hit by the full force of the wind. It was not too bad though, so we hunkered down in the shelter of the massive summit cairn as we ate a quick lunch. Several other groups arrived, all coming up from the other side, and all of them French Canadian. Everyone in our mixed anglo-franco-germano group was a go to continue, so we picked our way down out of the windy alpine, southward towards Mt. Pierce. We came across several piles of lumber which appeared ot be heli-lifts of trail maintenance materials, and as we descended lower into the trees, we spiked up again for the slippery but supportive snow spine. The climb up Pierce went easily, and we arrived onto a sheltered summit, with a good lookout towards Eisenhower.

Heading down towards Pierce.

A new trail. Some assembly required.

Approaching Pierce.

The top.

After a few photos we sat down here for second lunch, as a pestering Gray Jay stole a fig that I had acciently dropped and then landed on my hand, looking for more. The steepest trail of the day was down from here, and we changed in and out of spikes continuously as we switched between long stretches of bare rock, intermixed with meter high snowspine. We stopped into the Mizpah Spring hut for coffee and some very tasty baked goods, and finally bare booted all the rest of the way down the Crawford Path. We stopped at a pretty waterfall and briefly contemplated a swim as it was now sunny and quite warm out, but in the end decided to forgo the frigid water.

Enough snow still to ski.

A little further down the trail though, we came across the perfect swimming hole, and after a brief debate, we decided (or at least three of us did), that a dip would be most refreshing. Three of us stripped down to our skivies and jumped in as Kat busily photo documented the evidence. The swim was very brief with a few screams thrown in, but was as refreshing as promised. As we prepared to get dressed again, I spied a spot on Isabelle which after closer inspection turned out to be a firmly embedded tick. I pulled it out and then we preceeded to give each other full body scans just as a large group of hikers passed by, wondering what these half naked people were doing to each other on the side of the trail. They moved along quickly. After properly dressing we scampered the last 500 meters back to the road. Marc and Isabelle volunteered to do the 4 km run for the car, while Kat and I stayed back with the packs and had a nap. A lovely hike over a nine hour day.

Bridge above our swimming hole.

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