Times Burning April 28 Summit Glass Mountain Peak 11,140'
We have been looking at these mountains every day, and last Saturday we said, "Let's go climb over that ridge." So we did, and it was radical.
The geographical region we live in would be considered a caldera, meaning that the top of a volcano erupted and collapsed in on itself creating a high altitude volcanic basin. We live in a community at one edge of this great caldera, and there are mountains that work as our eastern horizon which just needed to be climbed.
We packed up late one morning jumping into early warm weather of seventies, or so we thought, and drove the hour to the Sawmill Meadow Campground trail head. Without reading much more into the instructions we hiked up a decommissioned jeep trail and ventured up a drainage directly at the southern summit route for Glass Mountain.
Weaving uphill through the patches of snow, we made slow progress up the steep hill. Above the treeline we made the first summit and found that we were at the false peak. We made our way along the windy ridgeline all the way to the official peak, at 11,140'.
The composition of the ground was beautiful, glistening all day long with obsidian in many hues and other basaltic gray stones. The view at the peak was a true 360 degree panorama. To the north Mono lake and the snow capped peaks of southern Lake Tahoe. To the east snow capped Boundary and the many ranges of Nevada. To the south the convergence of the Sierra and the Whites at Bishop. To the west Crowley Lake and Mammoth Mountain.
Our descent was through many snow fields and we ended up glacading down to the car for the most part. Overall a great day and we ended up knocking another peak off the list.
Big thanks to Brian and Ariel for a great first summit of the spring!
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