Message posted by JB737 on May 12, 2007 at 12:55:53 PST:

Skepticism is welcome regarding a winter Hancock-Tikaboo hike, but I'm not joking. I really enjoyed my adventure last month, and will definitely try another, bigger one sometime. I don't advise anyone inexperienced to try it alone, but I would still welcome someone of moderate or better experience to join me with adequate preparation.

Now that you've triggered a bit (or a lot?) of egomania in me, by your apparent disbelief, I'll explain why I think a winter climb of Tikaboo, including possibly approaching it from Hancock Summit, is a reasonable thing for ME to try.

Tikaboo is not a trivial climb, and can potentially strand/kill someone who is unprepared or lacks good mountaineering judgment that comes from experience and self discipline. But Tikaboo from either approach, simply doesn't compare to ANY of the climbs I will mention below, which I learned a lot from.

I have summited Mt. Whitney (22 miles roundtrip; the vintage USGS marker said 14,496.811 ft, but I think it has been revised above 14,500 via GPS geodesy) and almost summited Mt. Shasta, both times solo in November snow. I have also soloed Mauna Loa to the rim, although I didn't bother cimcumnavigating it to the very highest point. All 3 of those were done as very long dayhikes. Well sort of....Whitney was summited at sunset and descended at night!! The other two, are just chock full of loose scree/shale/mini-boulder fields, including some really incredible ones on Shasta. I descended one on Shasta for hours, that was as steep and dangerous as anything in NV, but was almost never-ending, and had the added benefit that many of the sliding rocks were large enough that it would only take 1 of them to break your leg or chop off your fingers if it caught up to you as you slid with it while holding onto its neighboring rock. While there were some big ones mixed in near Tikaboo, most of those were already fixed in place by the trees they ran into, and the overwhelming majority were only "scrape, bruise, and blood blister" size rather than "limb crushing" size.

I used to annually climb Mt. Washington (with the highest winds, and some of the worst weather, in the world) in March/April via Huntington Ravine, then descended glissading on my butt at 30mph in the hard-crusted snowfields above the skiers in Tuckerman ravine. Usually I had a friend or two with me, but not always.

From my 11 mile roundtrip hike from Hancock on Easter weekend, I am familiar with the type of terrain that I will run into, whether I do the approach from Hancock or from the road to Badger Spring.

Most importantly, I have the judgment to make the unpleasant decision to turn around, rather than get in trouble from summit fever. If you can't make that decision when your situation regarding fatigue, weather, water, food, shelter, technical-climbing obstacles, or anything else gets marginal, you'll eventually get into a really bad situation.

That is why I stopped 0.4 miles and 600 vertical feet shy of my 7795-foot peak goal on Easter, and why I turned around on Shasta and Mauna Loa after putting in huge effort to get almost to the top.

My bad decision on Mt. Whitney to press on to the top behind schedule, almost cost me some toes (and did cost me 7 toenails, for a year) to frostbite, but further good decisions after getting lost later that night saved my life. So now you know why I am never afraid to turn around, admit full or partial mission failure, and still be able to say I enjoyed the experience, knowing that I can try again another day.

JB737

In Reply to: Re: Tikaboo winter conditions posted by Gordon on May 11, 2007 at 9:08:12 PST:

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