You melt snow to save weight in your pack. A hike like this one requires good hydration. That doesn’t mean you have to be drinking water all the time, but something like this shouldn’t be done without having at least a liter per day. In my experience, I always end up drinking a little over a liter of water per day. I start from the parking lot with 3 bottles of ¾ liters of water (or Gatorade). I typically use two of those bottles on the hike to where I setup the tent. When I get there, I still have a full bottle of water. On summit day, the need for water is greater; but it isn’t good to do the hike from the car with all the water necessary for the entire trip because the weight would be too much. Hence, it is highly advisable to go up with just whatever’s needed to melt snow once you get there.
Two weeks ago, I had a bad experience with the little hiking stove that I have. The thing almost didn’t start in this same mountain. I decided to invest a little money buying a better one, and I chose one of the lightest ones in the market. This thing produces a lot of heat with the same flame. I was able to verify this first hand, since it melted snow much faster than when I did it with my other stoves.
Ready to fill the empty bottles with the water from the freshly melted snow.
The cell phone signal was quite poor where I pitched my tent. In order to be able to call my house, I had to walk a little bit to get signal. I did call home to let them know that everything was fine.
I went back to the tent, but it was very early. I have always questioned why people don’t use snowshoes to hike the next section going up, which is the hardest of all. It is a hill that, is so steep that if you can, you climb it more efficiently doing a zigzag. That’s what I’m talking about right now. I’ve always thought that doing this section with snowshoes ought to be less difficult.
It was like 4 in the afternoon. I decided to get on the snowshoes and hike up a little, just to try and see how it went.
I walked about 600 meters (according to the GPS of my watch), and it was enough to understand why people do not climb that section with those things: The grip is not optimal, there are spots where the snowshoes don’t really do anything, and also, you have to carry them back down. I went back to my tent with my curiosity satisfied.
A person had gotten where I was camping. I greeted him and he told me that he was a snowboarder, and that wanted to go up to a certain point to do his thing from that place, but that he also wanted to try to reach the summit. The only thing was that he didn’t plan to start as early as I did. Anyway, the fact that that person got there, gave the green light to my excursion. The last time I aborted because I was alone on that route. This time someone would be somewhere where they could see me or hear my whistle (I always carry one with me, just in case).
On to the tent to prepare my “dinner”. To save weight, you bring dehydrated food, which only requires boiling water, wait a few minutes, and that’s it. The biggest problem with this type of food is its taste. The vast majority of the ones I’ve tried don’t taste very good, the consistency is ‘here and there’; you bring those things anyway, because they weigh next to nothing, and one of the main goals in things like this is to try to carry as little weight as possible on your back.
Well, it was still a good story, because the dry food I had brought seemed excellent to me. I had never eaten any dry food that tasted this good. What I brought was “spaghetti with ground beef”.
Done with melting snow and with eating, it was now time to get the gear ready for the early morning hike, and then to try to fall asleep. It was like 6 in the evening.
The next thing I did was put the crampons in my boots. Then I prepared the small pack in which I would carry the water. Then I put on my thermal clothes, which are pants and a long-sleeved shirt, which I would have to wear even to sleep, since the temperature was supposed to drop to about 5 degrees. The lowest temperature I have experienced on this mountain is -5 F.
I heard other people that got to where the other man was. They spoke with accents as if they were Russian, or from somewhere in Eastern Europe. The only thing relevant to this story is that I wouldn’t be alone like last time.
It wasn’t really difficult to fall asleep; what did happen, is that it got very cold. I ended up fully dressed inside of my sleeping bag, with my thick hiking jacket and all!
I survived (chuckles…). All these clothes protected me very well, and did not make me sweat.
Inside the sleeping bag, I put the 3 bottles of water. The last time, one that I had left outside had frozen a bit. I also put in whatever clothes I would use the next day (bandanas and gloves), the cell phone, my headphones, the batteries.
I had set my alarm clock for 2 in the morning. When it rang, I snoozed for 15 minutes. Then I woke up and got ready to start. I put two bottles of water in my small backpack, and left the third in the tent to use on the return to the parking lot. 25 minutes later, I was out of my tent, ready to go. In the next tent, there were two people that seemed to be getting ready, a man and a woman. I greeted them and asked if they were going to attack the top and the guy answered yes, that’s what they intended to do.
That made me feel good, because not only would there be someone at that camp, but I would also have two people very close.
I started my attack at 2:50 in the morning, the earliest I’ve ever done it.
The night was dark, there was no moon; there were exactly twelve million four hundred and seventy-five thousand stars in one of those magical and wonderful nights you can see only in mountains, in nights like this.
Crónicas de Mao 