Hardwear Sessions

Day 1 consisted of a 12-mile hike to Island Lake at the head of the Titcomb Basin. At 10,300', getting to the lake for a couple of sea level guys was a bit of a chore. I learned another valuable lesson in over-packing. After the first day we bagged a bunch of food and strung it in a tree to pick up on the way out. A week later I'm still snacking on food I took on this trip. Luckily the Trance pack I was using had the room I needed. Brian used all the space in his South Col pack, too. I should also mention that there was a forest fire outside of Pinedale, WY (burned over 11,000 acres) that filled the basin with smoke and ash the first couple of days.

Day 2 was a long hike through the basin to the base of Bonney Pass. From there it is a scramble/climb to the top of the pass at about 12,200'. There really aren't any clear views of Gannett Peak until you arrive at the top of the pass, but once you do crest the pass the view of the mountain is stunning. It's like a punch in the gut after you've just climbed the pass to see the work you have left to do. What's left is a 1200' drop down the other side of the pass on loose talus before you can even start the climb back up Gannett. We made camp behind an existing wind break on the saddle of the pass. The plan was to start the climb the next morning at 2am.

Day 3 we woke up and got ready in the darkest night I've ever seen. There was no moonlight and hardly a star in the sky. I don't know if that was due to smoke or something else, but we decided to go back to bed and wait for some more light. A few hours later under a little better lighting we descended Bonney Pass and got on the Dinwoody Glacier for the first time. The climb itself isn't terribly difficult. There is quite of bit of class 3 and 4 scrambling that at times has a decent amount of exposure. The crux of the climb is a 55-degree snow slope.

From the summit the views of the surrounding peaks and high alpine lakes were spectacular. However, I wasn't too excited about the idea of climbing back up Bonney Pass after descending Gannett. When we finally got back up the pass to our camp we packed up as quickly as possible and made our way back down into the basin for our hike out the following day. We were pretty stubborn about getting back to our first nights camp and ended up hiking by headlamp long after we should have been in bed. Day 3 ended up being a 17.5 hour day.

Day 4 was the long trudge back to the car. We broke it up by spending the midmorning relaxing and swimming on the beach at Island Lake. Yes, there is a beach. The problem is you can only sit for so long before you remember that no one else is going to hike you back to the car. Around 3:30pm we made it back to the car and shortly thereafter we were at the Sugar Shack in Pinedale, WY inhaling burgers.

What a great trip. We had planned to go earlier in the year but we didn't necessarily want to snowshoe the whole thing. The timing, weather, and conditions all came together for a very memorable climb. I would love to go back and do some fly fishing.