An independence day summit
Hope everyone had a great 4th of July! What did the group do to celebrate? They stood on top of Downs Mountain (13,355ft) after a successful summit attempt! Hooray!
They started with what we call an 'alpine start'....which basically means that they left camp in the middle of the night. Why do they do this? It's because the snow is harder and more stable, and they can summit just after sunrise. It also means that they can head back to camp before the sun starts to warm up the snow and make it harder to navigate. They successfully sumitted at 12:15pm EST, which means that they were on top of Downs at 10am mountain time.
Here are some pictures from yesterday:
See the little line of lights up on the slope? That's one of the rope teams heading on up!
There is nothing quite like an alpine sunrise.
And some pictures from the summit (the cover picture is of the whole group):
The instructor team that got the group to the top!
They started with what we call an 'alpine start'....which basically means that they left camp in the middle of the night. Why do they do this? It's because the snow is harder and more stable, and they can summit just after sunrise. It also means that they can head back to camp before the sun starts to warm up the snow and make it harder to navigate. They successfully sumitted at 12:15pm EST, which means that they were on top of Downs at 10am mountain time.
Here are some pictures from yesterday:
See the little line of lights up on the slope? That's one of the rope teams heading on up!
There is nothing quite like an alpine sunrise.
And some pictures from the summit (the cover picture is of the whole group):
The instructor team that got the group to the top!