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As a break from the new van build we decided to take the July 4th holiday and make it into a 4 day weekend. Since I’m taking a bit of a rest from climbing because of some elbow tendinitis, we decided we could do some backpacking in the Winds as an alternative to climbing. The Wind Rivers have been gorgeous in previous visits to Cirque of the Towers (1, 2) and Deep Lake, but that is but one area in a beautiful range.
Eric and I tromped up the South Ridge of Mt. Superior last weekend. We were hoping for some nice soft corn snow for our way down, unlike what happened last time. We got stymied again by the weather and conditions. While we didn’t have to bail early as we did a few years ago, we did have to ski off the north side because the snow on the South Face was icy, and skied out. Making no fall turns on that type of terrain is no fun. Along the way up we had similar conditions as last time of rotten cornices and icy snow. Two points of improvement however. First is our time was 1.5 hours faster than last time. Second I didn’t bring go for mountaineering boots for the climb. I just used my new Scarpa touring boots which worked pretty well.
