January 15 & 16, 2011
The Snow Is Gone Again.
Partly Cloudy, Cold 25-30 degrees F.
Saturday
On Saturday Anita and I went up to the second White Oak Canyon waterfall and watched some ice climbers on the canyon walls for awhile then went up Berryhollow fire road and explored a number of old cabin sites in Weakley Hollow.
Sunday
Here is the classic shot from near the winery on your approach to Old Rag parking. The big change this week was that the snow was all gone.
Here is the shot looking up the Ridge Trail which was devoid of any ice or snow. You could still find some old ice and snow tucked away deep in shady crevases but the trail was clear. There were probably about 50-70 hikers on Old Rag.
We hung out on the summit for about forty minutes. The winds were unusually calm which made it easier to keep from getting chilled while we watched the sunset.
The following sunset photo is stitched from three photos. You can already notice that the spot the sun goes below the horizon is moving northwestward each day. If you check the July 11, 2010 blog post you can see where the sun went below the horizon to the right side of Hawksbill.
There was a three quarter waxing full moon this weekend and we were able to walk out with our headlamps off. Full moon Wednesday January 19, 2011
If only I had crampons and ice axes...
ReplyDeleteBen,
ReplyDeleteMy equipment budget is being directed to refreshing my rock climbing lead gear but I hope to have budget to but high speed low drag ice gear in order to try some easy technical ice next year.
In my opinion the ice on the waterfall in the post was way to thin to climb but there was lots of good climbable ice on the canyon walls and in fact we saw one party ice climbing on top rope about 300 yards up the trail on the right canyon wall from the lowest water fall (posted picture)
Bob