Shelokum and Lamont Mountains

Shelokum Mountain (8,069ft) and Lamont Mountain (8,082ft)

At camp in Gardner Meadows

May 23-25, 2020

Eric and Katie

Saturday morning we drove over the recently-opened highway 20 to Winthrop and started up the Wolf Creek trailhead in late afternoon. The parking lot was surprisingly overflowing with cars!

The trail was essentially snow-free all the way to Gardner Meadows. Tents were everywhere, but we managed to backtrack down the trail and find a good spot. Interestingly a baby rabbit wandered into camp and decided to spend the night there as we were cooking dinner.

Hiking in to Gardner Meadows

Sunday morning we slept in then I went for a hike while Katie went bird watching. I hiked up to the North Gardner – Lamont Col, then descended to the north and traversed below the northeast buttress of Lamont before kicking steps up to the Lamont – Shelokum col. I had read from multiple reports that the north ridge of Lamont was nontrivial, so was trying to avoid it in the snowy conditions.

I followed the class 2 south ridge to near the summit of Shelokum, and then the ridge got narrow and exposed. So I traversed left on the southwest face and climbed snow and rock up a 3rd class route to the summit. I think the south ridge direct would have been 4th class. I wasn’t being too ambitious with the day, so lounged around for a half hour before retracing my route all the way back to the Lamont-North Gardner col. On the way I noticed many groups summitting North Gardner, their silhouettes prominent on the skyline.

The view from Shelokum

From the col I scrambled up the 3rd class ridge to the Lamont summit, and hung out for another half hour. I admired Gilbert and Silver Moon peaks across the valley and wondered if Fred was on one of them (it turns out he was on Gilbert that day). I eventually downclimbed and glissaded down to the edge of snowline then hiked back to camp by late afternoon.

That night we had a nice campfire, then hiked out after the rain ended Monday morning.