Mt. Silliman

Last weekend I joined two friends from SMR for an overnight trek up Mt. Silliman, in the national park. We were blessed with fantastic weather- the Valley was hit with the season's first heat wave (95 degrees!), but temps at 11 thousand feet were very mild. It dropped below freezing overnight, but was probably around 60 during the day.

I love playing, hiking, and camping in the snow!

Breakfast was instant oatmeal and cream of wheat. About 6:30 Sunday morning.

The ultraviolet exposure and solar radiation at altitude is reflected (and seemingly magnified) by the snow. I hydrate like crazy, wear a full brimmed hat, sunglasses, and sun-block, and still get chapped lips and burn. And the funny thing is you can burn in odd places, like the undersides of your arms, chin, and nose, from the reflection off the snow.

Mathew in the foreground, Tony following. Knowing how to self-arrest allows you to stop yourself in the event of a fall so the rocks at the bottom of the slope don't =).

Another handy bit of knowledge: approaching an edge like this, you want to be fairly certain that the snow is not actually a cornice- jutting out with nothing supporting it underneath. I've come a long way since my extreme fear of heights as a kid, but I still get queasy around 1000' verticals like this.
I don't know why I keep doing the arm-raise thing. It's like a universal summit pose or something...

We dug a pretty cool snow cave. I'm not sure how deep the snow was where we camped just over 10,000 feet, because we never actually hit bottom.