McClellan Butte East Face

Given generally mediocre conditions, Thomas and I decided to try East Face of McClellan Butte.  Started skinning from road closure, about 100 yards from car.   Following directions in Volken book, we found a glide path with view straight to summit, headed up it.  Mistakenly decided to try to ascend upper steep slopes directly, rather than take meandering summer trail, leading to miserable and extremely slow postholing.  Finally made it to saddle on summit ridge, but had to skip short walk to summit because of time constraints.  Some sloughing (felt like June) on descent of steep upper slopes.  But reasonably fun spring-like skiing all the way back down to 2,500ft.  Skiing down, we realized we'd ascended a more inefficient way than necessary -- descent path would have been much more efficient than ascent path.  GPS track attached.  Skied back to within 100 yards of car.