I recently went with a friend up to an 11k foot tall peak to

I would have kept on...slush is not gonna kill you??? The idea is to beat Mother Nature...not let a drizzle stop you.

>>1056789
Her worry was that we'd slip, and to be fair that would be pretty bad in this situation. The few steps I did take out onto it ( and I think this scared her more than anything) I punched right through the snow and fell about 20 inches or so with one leg. I mean, I would have continued, but at what point is it too dangerous in this situation? The final slope started a little ahead of there and went straight up to the summit.

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The mountain will be there another day.
Your goal is to get home safely, but you'd like to make a stop at the summit.
Make good decisions so you can reach that waypoint another day when the conditions are right.

>pic unrelated

>>1056793
>I punched right through the snow and fell about 20 inches or so with one leg. I mean, I would have continued

You're one of those fucking senseless idiots that is going to get your friends seriously hurt or injured.

I seriously hope your friend finds somebody trustworthy to hike with... or you break your back and stop endangering others.

>>1056784
>she
There's your problem

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>>1056809
>/out/ing with girls and potentially having /out/ sex is bad
Faggot pls.

>>1056806

I have a few show off buddies that always try shit way out of their skill level and end up with a broken something...

and they're all fucking proud as fuck they have a broken leg, like they battled some epic mountain or something, when in reality they fucking fell off a hillside.

>>1056806
Despite this being rude, I need to hear things like this so I don't feel bad about agreeing with her that it probably was too dangerous. Thanks bud.

>>1056816
>>1056809

/out/ing with women is awesome, you jealous?

>600'
>1/2 mile
>slushy snow
>unstable weather
that's at least an hour. if one of you's uncomfortable you turn around. you did the right thing.

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>>1056784
You can hike right through that kind of stuff. I prefer to find a route around it without going too far out of the way, if I can, because usually my boots will get soaked if I'm hiking in slushy snow. If you're traversing a slope, you can usually kick steps into the snow and it's not a big deal. Pic related is not the most stunning example of hiking across a snowfield, but maybe it gives you an idea of how this terrain is usually treated.

Only time I'd turn around due to early season snow on a summit or saddle is if it's REALLY steep and there's just no way around it. It's hard to tell if the terrain in your picture is that steep, but it's still early in the season. You can go back in a few weeks and it will be much nicer.

>>1057039
Yeah it's a straight slope up to the summit, 600 foot climb over 1/3 to 1/2 of a mile. The snow was too slushy to dig foot steps into - stepping onto it made puddles. Every 20 steps or so I'd punch right through what looked like 2-3 feet of snow, but in reality snowmelt was carving underneath the snow so you'd go through some snow then hit the rocks below. It wasn't too bad, but if you started slipping you'd definitely have not stopped I'm assuming. I just don't know, and that's what made me turn around.

>>1056793
>I punched right through the snow and fell about 20 inches or so with one leg.

Maybe a dumb question, but do you know how to hike on snow? Have you done it before?

>>1056809
This, women are garbage /out/

>>1057136
I have, but never this slushy with this much meltwater underneath. Snowshoes would have been preferable here I'm sure.

>>1056809
>>1057145
You boys need to meet a Montana girl

>>1056784
Without a doubt you are completely out of your league here. Fortunately you had some sense talked into you. There are genuine hazards here that do not care whether you know about them or not.

There are large voids under the snowpack, as you can kind of see here, especially this late into the melt. You stand a very strong chance of falling through... could be 2 feet, could be 8 feet onto jagged rocks and rushing water underneath. Dark, cold, wet, injured, etc... Lots of this stuff melts just as much from underneath as it does from the top, who knows whats under it, jumbles of avalanche debris, rocks, willow thicket, manzanita, whitethorn, etc...

Almost certainly there was a better way up. Looks like the remaining cornice on the ridge is coming towards you, so the opposite side of the ridge is likely snow free. You can often find a route up the margin between the receding snowpack rocks/trees. The established trails are often the 100% incorrect ways to go in early season when they're significantly buried.

>>1056809
(you)

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This >>1057577 (checked) makes me glad you asked >>1056784 and glad we have each other and >>>/out/ to learn this>>1057577 (checked again)

>>1057577
You're being overly dramatic. It's seasonal snow, not a glacier. Most of the time, there is NOT going to be a void underneath late season snow, much less "rushing water" underneath, and you can even see in the OP's image that the void between the snow and the *trickling* water was only about 10-14 inches, but the streams only form in obvious drainages. I'm guessing that OP was standing on a trail, which would have formed a natural drainage for water to flow into. Now granted, late season snow can be slippery and also generally more tiring to hike through, but you're really overblowing the dangers if you think he was "completely out of his league." Again, it's snow, not a glacier.

>>1057655
No shit Dick Tracy. That seasonal snow is melting out quickly and in every minor drainage is melting out underneath. People punch through this shit all the time. Break legs, get impaled, drown, etc...

Hike your own hike but you are rolling the dice with that sort of stuff especially considering at this stage in the melt there is absolutely a better, faster way to go than idiotically following a completely buried trail.

>>1057791
No other options actually, thus why we turned around. That ridge you see in the distance is straight down on the other side and did not lead to the summit. On the right was a cliff.

Looking at Google earth, when it's snow free it's a talus field.

>>1056806
>You're one of those fucking senseless idiots that is going to get your friends seriously hurt or injured.

We usually have a "captain macho" in our climbing party.

They're usually 4'10" and insecure as fuck. And they're usually the first to get injured and need the rest of us to carry him down. kek

>>1057796
Is that in the Sierra? I am heading up tomorrow. I tend to only operate in early and late season so am no stranger to lengthy snow slogs. Your best bet on that sort of stuff is to ascend to the spine of the ridge before you hit 100% snow coverage on trail and try to punch through to the windward side. Easier said than done for sure.

September should be great

>>1057807
Yeah I'm betting this will all be gone in 2 weeks. I'm going to re-attempt with her at that point.

Yes, this is Sequoia NP. I've been 16+ times in the last year, this has been the first I've really been up this high. Only other snow I've dealt with has been shit in Kansas (all flat) or the Giant's Forest doing snowshoeing over last winter.

I'm going to probably do some south fork kaweah river stuff on Thursday, then might go backpacking to Pear Lake on Sunday-Monday.

>>1057807
Also, there was no ascent possible from the north or east. Sheer cliffs. South is less bad cliff faces, you walk along that face going west until you hit the point in the picture. What you see there is the only way up - all snow at that point. That's the highest you could get before perma-snow.

Goddamn it you fuckers , this is a male space and I am sick of every thread being about women.
Fucking stop

>>1057840
>>>/b/
>>>/r9k/
>>>/mlp/
i go /out/ with my wife (and our kid!) every week. deal with it.

>>1057841
Right on dude, it's funny seeing these lonely losers get outraged about women

Thing is I see more women in the parks than men these days, and it's a beautiful thing. They're almost always fit and sexy too!

>>1057857
>fit
lol, tell me about it. last fall we backpacked across the sierra and, macho dumbass that i am, i told her to set the pace, thinking that it'd be easy on me. she kicked my ass up and down the trail. i pulled my fucking hamstring trying to keep up. and she's 5'1" and i'm 6'.

>>1057857
>>1057921
>>1057841
SameRoastie

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>>1057957

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>>1057791
>That seasonal snow is melting out quickly and in every minor drainage is melting out underneath. People punch through this shit all the time. Break legs, get impaled, drown, etc...
You're STILL being way too dramatic. I don't think you have any experience with early season hiking above treeline. What in the fuck are you even on about, "get impaled and drown"?? It's like 12-18 inches of snow on a slope. Even punching through that kind of snow is way less of an issue than you're making it out to be. The streams will be mostly obvious and well-defined, and as long as you avoid walking directly into one of those, then you won't punch through at all. This isn't a glacier on Denali where you need to watch for crevasses. I honestly think you've watched too many movies and are letting them influence the little bit of knowledge that you may or may not have about the topic. Next time you want to give out advice on /out/, try to stay within the limits of your own experience and don't bring your imagination into the conversation.

>especially considering at this stage in the melt there is absolutely a better, faster way to go than idiotically following a completely buried trail.
Given what he's said in the thread, it seems that the trail up to the point in the photo must have been clear, so I have no idea what you're on about here, either. Stop making shit up and talking out of your ass. You're actually making /out/ a worse place by giving inaccurate information and misinformed advice to newbies.

>>1058157
The trail was completely covered in snow from that point up, just to be clear. I wish it looked like your picture! That would have been easy peasy. That's what the trail looked like for 2 miles below the peak.

>>1058157
top-tier rebuke

snow doesn't usually melt out from underneath
it's very difficult to posthole deeper than your crotch
I've never heard of anyone getting impaled or falling in too deep to crawl out

Some Dungeons&Dragons level fantasy going on in that anon's head.

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>>1058197
>I wish it looked like your picture! That would have been easy peasy.
I didn't take that picture to specifically show that the trail was covered in snow, so it's not super clear, but the trail headed off to the left in that photo, which was steep and snowy (the route continues up past the shoulder of the hill in the foreground and then for another quarter mile or so). The rocks on the right were steep and loose, though, so what I ended up doing was kicking steps into the snow and I got up and over that section, and then across a larger snow field on top, with some difficulty. The real problem was on the other side of the saddle (no photo of that) where it was much steeper and the switchbacks were totally covered in tall, but isolated, snowdrifts. I was able to get down the hill by dropping in between the frozen snow drift and the side of the hill and bushwacking a new route down the slope on rocks, although it was pretty challenging hiking.

Point is, the only way to know if some snow-covered route is do-able is to try doing it. The hazards aren't THAT serious, since the snow is getting pretty shallow by June/July, as long as you keep in mind the risk of sliding when it gets too steep. People go straight up snowy/icy slopes with crampons and an ice axe, but if the snow field is more limited in extent, you can "fake it" by just going slow and kicking steps with your hiking boots. The whole falling through into a stream risk has been very overblown in this thread. Although melting water does have to go somewhere, and that's typically down, the big streams will all have cut clear banks into snowfields by early summer. If you do punch through the crust, it's not going to be into anything big or dangerous, usually no more than 12 inches down or so into a puddle. Big deal.

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>>1058225
Here's a pic from an old video someone posted. That's the final climb to the summit. Now, imagine it's all slush and you can't really dig into too well because it's just all partially melted. Thoughts?

>>1056809
>I hate having uninhibited outdoor sex with an enthusiastic woman who shares your interests
We know

>>1058283
>Here's a pic from an old video someone posted. That's the final climb to the summit.
It would be a good idea to have an ice axe for such a hike, so as to arrest a slide if you take a fall (as the person in the photo is using).
>Now, imagine it's all slush and you can't really dig into too well because it's just all partially melted. Thoughts?
Get started in the early morning and there won't be any slush.

>>1058283
kickstep
not hard

>>1058283
Person you're replying to here. That's about what it looked like when I did Rainier. No one used crampons for the first day because we went up in the afternoon (this was early August, so it was plenty warm outside). The snow was already soft when we got on the trail, but we didn't have any issues hiking right up it. Another benefit of the snow being soft was that slipping on ice was a non-issue.
>imagine it's all slush and you can't really dig into too well
Snow on a mountain isn't like a Slurpee you get from 7-11. Even melting snow on a mountain will still be pretty firm, crusty and support steps that you an kick into it.

>>1058283
>Now, imagine it's all slush
snow doesn't melt like that.

you might have slush on the surface but it's not going to be slush all the way through.

>>1056816
>>1056826
>>1057506
>>1058363
Go on a weekend camping trip to fuck your woman. Bring them on serious /out/ings and enjoy bitching and bears.