The mountains called again - Agassiz, Isosceles, Columbine, and Goode

The mountains called again, I think they have me on speed-dial. So I went. This time I hiked in from South Lake - looking pretty empty for some dam work. It wasn't long before I was on snow and I was skinning to go up Bishop Pass. From there I dropped the pack and skis and went up Mt Agassiz - this is the 3rd Mt Agassiz I know I have climbed. I presume they are named for Louis Agassiz - a geologist among other things who proposed that the earth had an ice age. This peak is 13,891 and overlooks the North Palisades. My first experience with these was the Thunderbolt to Sill traverse I did w/ Kim a few years ago - a most excellent adventure.

By the time I got back down to the gear it was getting late. I traversed and skied down a bit into the Dusy Basin and found a nice dry mostly flat spot with a wind break to set up camp.

The next day I headed up on the most excellent styrofoam snow to the Thunderbolt col into the Palisade basin. There I realized my mistake as the ridge west from there was very ridgey instead of easy walking on the south side that I expected. I scrambled and traversed along this ridge for the rest of the morning. Then I climbed up to the summit of Isosceles Peak. It had a rather exciting and technical bit to get up to the 12321 ft diving board summit. I celebrated with some grease sticks (cheese and pseudo meat).

grease stick celebration on the summit of Isosceles

Columbine Peak from Isosceles

Then back down to the south and up the N ridge of Columbine Peak. This was more of a pain than I expected because by now the snow was getting soft and treacherous (as far as post-holing was concerned). The 12652 ft summit of columbine peak was a spike of rock jutting up at an angle - something you would expect from a movie, not reality. I set up the camera with the remote control but it was too far away to trigger from the summit, so I set the timer and ran. The first time I didn't get there, but the second time I made it up. I took a slightly better descent route back to the pack and water.

running for the summit of Columbine

this time I made it (and managed to stop in time too)

panorama of the Palisade Basin from Columbine

There I switched into ski gear and dropped into Dusy Basin. It was pretty soft and forgiving. From the lake I was able to boot it back up to my camp. I saw 4 people,  mostly on snowshoes heading over the Thunderbolt Col I had gone to that morning - these were the only people I saw on this trip except within 4 or so  miles of the trailhead.

super blue melting lake edge in Dusy Basin

That night it wasn't very windy and I had to actually remove layers to keep from sweating. Amazing. The stars were also very nice. I took some pics.

Sagittarius, Scorpio, and the Milky Way over Isosceles and Columbine peaks

For my last day I headed north up over some peak (12,916 ') and along the ridge (with treacherous snow that tweaked my knee when I post-holed) to the 13085 ft summit. I was able to ski from almost the summit with the usual scary steep start (although it was pretty soft at this hour). I had to walk one little bit where the snow was all melted out and then was able to ski the rest of the way down to Saddlerock Lake. I did have one exciting wipe-out when something grabbed the back of one ski, turned me around and ripped the ski off. Luckily it was relatively low angle here, so I mostly just went down.

Long Lake with Mt Goode behind it (I went down the side behind to the left)

For a while after the lake I was able to combine walking and skiing, but by Long Lake I gave up and switched back into the comfy boots and footed it the rest of the way back to the truck. I spent a little time walking around on the bottom of S Lake (lots of fishing trash). Then back towards town to camp by McGee Creek which afforded me a cold but refreshing and cleansing wallow.

I just want to add that I am completely annoyed with how blogger deals w/ pics, especially moving them around, or not as the case may be. Who designed this mess? I had to go into the HTML and tell it what was up.

Here is a link to a slightly more complete Dusy Basin area trip report