Katie in Gardner Meadows
Gardner Mountain (8,898 ft) and North Gardner Mountain (8,956 ft)
Eric and Katie
June 10-11, 2017
After climbing Reynolds Peak on Friday and eating dinner in Winthrop, we drove up to the Wolf Creek trailhead to spend the night. On Saturday we hiked up the easy, mostly-flat trail to Gardner Meadows, and we surprisingly encountered almost no snow. I was testing out a new pair of mountaineering boots for an upcoming trip to northern Canada, and they didn’t even give me any blisters.
As expected, we found an awesome packers campsite in the meadows, with a big fire ring and benches. It was only 2pm, but we decided to take a relaxing afternoon instead of pushing on to the summit. We gathered lots of firewood and had a big old fire for a few hours.
The next morning Katie decided to work on a book in camp while I went and tagged the summits. I beelined directly up to Gardner Mountain, occasionally climbing up icy snowslopes in crampons, and summitted just in time to get socked in with clouds.
From the summit I scrambled along the ridge over to North Gardner, then returned to camp. We packed up and hiked out, then drove back to Seattle for dinner.
© 2017, egilbert@alum.mit.edu. All rights reserved.
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