Mt. Stone 08/07/2011

Seeger Fisher picked me up an hour later because he slept in. We then picked up Jennifer our assistant leader. She is very involved with the Mazamas, and is the President of the Foundation.

We then were at Purvin trail, the beginning of our trek to Mt. Stone. Putvin Trail is a real killer. In under 4 miles it gains 4,000 plus feet. It's like 2 or 3 Murna Points or Rock of Ages.

Both Lake of Angles and Lake of the Prophets were snowed in. We camped around Lake of the Angels. I slept on the snow with my Eureka Solitaire, I wasn't sure how it would hold up...it did fine with no precipitation.

We woke up at 5:30 to leave for Mt. Stone at 6:30. We went up to Lake of Angels, so far so good. We crossed some large rocks and then back into the snow and up the ridge. There were suncups there on the hill

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Then came a part that was a little sketchy, there was a rock gully with a snow covered left side that was 35 degrees. We were unprotected and we then had to do some 3rd or 4th class climbing up two gullys. This was actually the toughest part of the climb because we had no rope and if we fell we would fall like 200 yards.

We did a bit more rock climbing and another snow push and then we were at the summit block. The guide book was right take the less obvious route to the right. Bob then used a rope and we tied prussics on to it. We were at the summit in no time, but we were a bit late like 12-1 PM.

We then down climbing using pussics. When we then rappelled down to gulley's, with only one tree as an anchor. Seeger didn't have a harness with him, so David hooked up a munter hitch one time and made a webbing out of webbing. The snow ridge that formed a basin, a glissaded down. It was the longest glissade I have done yet, maybe 150 yards.

Then came some steep snow down climbing. I used the French technique of down climbing, but the snow was somewhat melted and I fell and self arrested, but I could get back up on my feet so I fell again. We were the almost to Lake of Angels and when we got to our camp we had 15 minutes to break camp before we head out to capture the remaining sun. We made down in under three hours, at 9:00, 4 hours behind schedule. Seerger drove all the way home and we stopped by McDonalds to have a bit to eat. I made it home by 2 AM and put my thing away.

Some of these photos are taken from my team and are copyrighted.