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The weather for the entire state was looking stormy and a couple of friends wanted to do Lindsey. I was not in the mood for Lindsey so decided to instead go up 'Huerfanito Peak' It's a shame I couldn't get to see all the surrounding peaks from the summit as everything was clouded in. We started a little before 5, here is Huerfanito from the approach. This was the theme of the day, cloudy.
Gloomy
The route pretty much follows the Mt Lindsey trail up to 12,200 before you branch off and take a right and head towards the saddle. I followed the route description for Mt Lindsey gully route till photo #8 of the Mt. Lindsey trail. From here you gain the saddle shown in the upper right corned and pick the path of least resistance to reach it.
Saddle on the right corner of the picture to gain.Looking down on the way upNearing the saddle
As you keep going on for the saddle it is very tempting to gain the slopes on the left of the picture shown here. Avoid the temptation, those slopes are a a loose mess despite how stable they seem. I ended up in them on the way down as the visibility was really low and they were not fun.
This is the line I picked, the soil here was very stable and avoided all the loose slopes on the left side of the picture.
Approximate LineHuerfanito mastiff
Almost to the saddle. Aim for the middle section of the photo below
Saddle
Nice and stable tundra/talus hopping
The joy of 13ers
At the saddle looking at the basin below.
Beautiful
Now staying on ridge proper to go to the summit. Fairly stable class 2 hiking.
Ridge
Almost there, at this point the visibility was very low.
Search for the actual summit
More ridge fun, going up because of the low visibility I missed the summit cairn and kept hopping on to all the false summits.
Summit cairn. There was a small summit register here in the form of a salt shaker bottle, but it was empty , no USGS marker either.
Summit Cairn
Initially I wanted to take the eastern slopes for the way down, but my exit gully still had a lot of snow in it so I decided to take NW ridge route on the way down. Coming down, a break in the clouds looking at the valley below.
WOW
Wildflowers are coming out.
Wildflower fest
Almost back to the saddle.
Back to saddle
Looking back.
I was there?
Overall a very beautiful day considering how the weather conditions were although it's a shame I couldn't scope out Gash ridge. GPX track was way whacked out too.
My GPS Tracks on Google Maps (made from a .GPX file upload):
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
Comments or Questions
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