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.
Dang, I've always salivated over this objective, and never mustered the chops to do it as it's hard to gauge what/where is safe on this silly mountain. Strong work!
I'll 2nd Pavel on this one. Nice work. I've always had it on my list but never made it up there. Nice to hear of others making it happen.
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