We hiked along the trail for a while. Shortly after crossing the just below MacIntyre Falls, about 2.5 miles in, Jeff decided to turn back, since he was feeling poorly, with a headache and lightheadedness. He ensured us that he was fine and that he’d be okay returning on his own. I felt badly for Jeff, but also found it ironic that he was the one I knew best, who’d invited me on these hikes, and he had to bail on both this one and last year’s. We continued at a steady pace, stopping occasionally for a snack and a breather. At around 3 miles in, shortly before the trail starts heading south, I saw a mountain in the fog to the right. I asked what mountain it was, only to see moments later that it was an illusion and was just a very big rock face, about 100 feet off the trail and about 100 feet high. It certainly stood out.

Jonathan taking a break, and not enjoying having his photo taken

After the junction with the trail to Wright Peak, the trail became much steeper and more bare rock than a dirt trail. The entire trail was very wet, and we had occasional light rain showers. At times it felt more like walking up a small stream then a trail. Unfortunately, the entire climb offered up no views at all, as the area was socked-in with fog. It was evident that on a nice day, there would have been numerous views behind us to the north. There was one particularly long, steep slab of rock that was tricky to navigate. My friend Kuei had warned me about this section. Unfortunately, it was not only wet, but a bit icy, so it was slow-going as we carefully traversed it, assisted by the tree trunks, branches, and roots along the right side.

As we neared the summit, after passing through a birch forest, then conifers, we passed above tree line and entered areas covered with small scrub bushes and lichen—alpine tundra. Here, the path became marked with rock cairns and yellow paint marks on the rock faces. As we got within about 1000’ of the summit, the winds became very strong (we estimated about 60 mph), and very cold. At the summit, there was a survey marker and rock outlines, blocking off the protected tundra areas. We had no views, with very thick cloud cover all around. We stayed about half an hour, finding a sheltered spot to eat and had occasional small glimpses of views of Wright Peak and areas to the north, as clouds would very quickly thin, then thicken again.

On our descent, we had a decent view of the bare, rocky, western shoulder of Wright Peak. Joe and John wanted to take a detour, and head over to quickly bag that peak too. They did this while the other three of us headed straight back. The last mile of our hike was through a steady rain. We arrived back at the HPIC at 2:30 p.m. Joe and John had made quick work with their detour and weren’t too far behind us. Not great views today, and pretty wet, but it was a great outing with the guys.

Heading down