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From Virginia Pass,
we immediately left the trail that descends steeply to
Return Creek. Instead, we travelled
cross-country, making a long diagonal traverse the
headwaters of the creek in the uppermost reaches of
Virginia Canyon. Along the way we saw several
deer and tons of gorgeous wildflowers, but still no
other people. That's the way it should be.
From the head of
Virginia Canyon, we paused at the waterfall coming
down from the north side of Virginia Peak, then
started climbing the slabs up towards Twin Peaks Pass.
Two perfect seams in the rock near the waterfall keep
this route to a mellow Class 2. At the top of
the waterfall is a sizable lake with a huge snowfield
above it that calves icebergs into the lake. We
skirted this lake and made the steep climb up to the
pass just as it started to rain and hail on us.
At the pass, the
weather was scarcely better. The hail had
stopped, but the clouds had lowered, reducing
visibility to about 30 feet, with a light drizzle.
The backside of Twin Peaks Pass is reportedly class 2,
but in the fog we could not see an easy route (nor did
we want to stay up on the exposed ridge looking around
for one). So we dropped straight down the other
side, down some steep chutes with extremely loose
rock. At the bottom of the chutes, we traversed
to the right to avoid a band of cliffs dropping into
the Spiller Creek canyon. We angled towards Horse Creek Pass over even more
unstable rock. I was not entirely pleased with
the weather or the tedious descent we were making, but Dave was
downright scared. Not having traveled much on
terrain like this, he was wary of the consequences of
a fall (especially since there was a large cliff band
below us). In the end, we made it down in one
piece and made our way over to the tarn atop Horse
Creek Pass, where we filled up on water and pitched a
tent for the night.
After setting up our
camp, I jumped right into my
sleeping bag. I wasn't feeling well due to the
cumulative effects of altitude and hiking ten miles
over rough terrain on only four hours of sleep.
Although this is a pretty typical Saturday for me in
the mountains, it was hitting me harder than normal on
this particular day. But since
the clouds were still hanging thich at around the 11,000'
level, I saw little reason to stay awake and enjoy the
non-existent views. So I fell asleep at around
6pm without eating dinner.
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Frozen
Lake.
Below the north face of Virginia Peak is a sizable
lake with a permanent snowfield dropping icebergs into
it. Unfortunately, dark clouds obscured the
summit the entire day, making an ascent unwise (and
pointless, for the views would be non-existent).
About 30 seconds after this photo was taken, it began
hailing us. |
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