We have realized a common and re-occuring problem here in the Sierra's. Bears truly do eat cars. As said before, this creates a huge problem for us. We feel that leaving the van at the trailhead during the day with a hundred other people milling around will probably keep the bears at bay. Night proposes a completely different situation. When all have gone home and the van sits there alone, luring in the big monster-like creatures, it seems all to natural for it to be mauled. If this situation were to come to a reality, our trip in the snap of a finger would take a drastic turn. As for now, the only way we can avoid this outcome is by doing climbs in a day. For some routes this is reasonable, and others it would be far too committing and exhausting to do this. Fortunately, this time Bear Creek Spire is an attainable peak for a day climb.
We park at the trailhead so when our early morning alarms go off we are as close as possible. All packed up (with insanely heavy packs for just a day..maybe it's the 3 pairs of shoes that we each needed:boots, approach shoes, and rock shoes), we hit the hay to get some quick shut eye before the alarms go off at 3 AM. It's way too early but we manage to pry ourselves out of the warm sleeping bags to make coffee and eat some peanutbutter bagels before we head off on our pre-dawn hike in. We end up having a nice leisurely start and don't actually get hiking until right before 5. It's a really chilly start, 10,200 ft in the dark doesn't play nice with us. Hustling down the trail, we get to see the sun rise on the peak granting us some cool photo opportunities.
The first 3.5 miles are on a really nice trail and then the last 2.5 miles took us cross country over lots of snow and boulder fields. We timed it just perfectly as the sun had just hit the snow, slightly warming it for good footing (different story on the way out!)
We got to the base of the route around 9 with the sun up in full force. We couldn't have picked a better day, no wind, hot hot sun, and no clouds. The Sierra's are known for their stable weather conditions and we are quite happy with it. The route is a ridge that goes up the Northeast side, we did the lower half un-roped as it was mostly a 3rd/4th class scramble. As we neared the top we harnessed up and pitched out the steeper sections.
This will be the earliest we have summited on any peak yet this trip. 12:15 and we were proudly taking pictures at the top! ( only about 5 hours earlier than most of our summit times. yahoo!..we must be getting faster ;) We also got smart with food and ate like kings with peanutbutter/nutella roll-ups, and PIZZA. yes, we carried pizza to the top and enjoyed every single bite!
Time to descend but first we stopped to make some more water from the snow fields.
The descent was not nearly as forgiving as the approach was. With the sun beating down on the snow all day it was an ugly post-holing nightmare for 2.5 miles. Next to the couliour that we came down from was the aftermath of a big avalanche. Very cool to see but also a little intimidating walking right next to it.
We made it back to the van right around 5pm and were both very thankful that it did not get eaten by bears and we could continue our trip for another day :)
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