I think this makes it all worth it, right?

Date: March 6-7, 2022

Plan: Winter Sunset on the Shoulder of Teebone Ridge and a summit of Little Devil
Parked: Monogram Lake Trailhead
Elevation Gain: ~5,000 ft
Distance: 8 miles roundtrip
Total Time: ~28 hours (7 hours moving)
Sun Horizon Collisions: 1 (Supposedly there was a sunrise, but it was in the midst of a whiteout)
Summary: I’m reminded why I both despise and love winter camping.

Intro

We all have temptations in our life that are perhaps not the healthiest, but are hard to ignore. This may be represented by the depths of our id taking control of our actions for a short moment or the personification of our worst judgments in the “little shoulder devil” who persuades us to do what is not in our best interest. Around this time of year my little devil usually convinces me to go snow camping. At first thought, this would not appear to be a deleterious activity, but if you believe that, you haven’t snow camped enough. Anyone who has spent winter nights on the snow at high elevations knows that there are few experiences more miserable than 14 hours of strong winds, cold temperatures, and limited sleep. In fact, from my privileged perspective I think most of the worst nights of my life have been spent in a tent winter camping. Of course some of the most beautiful moments of my life have been spent on either side of those nights so you can see the push and pull involved in these decisions…

In 2021 I stayed overnight in two fire lookouts (Trip report for Hidden Lake). These are the chalets of the winter camping world. They provide basically all the views of the snow tent, but you’re generally warm(er) and dry(ish). I hadn’t actually camped in a tent on the snow since I climbed Mount Shasta in California in May 2018. Well, okay, last year I spent two nights camping in the snow. One was at Artists Point in May when I forgot my tent in the car and was too lazy to go back to my car to pick it up so I slept on my tarp. It honestly wasn’t as bad as I expected, but that’s a story for another time. The other was Snowking mountain in June and while I think it may have gotten near freezing at night, there was only like two hours of darkness so it’s hard to include that with the woes of winter camping.

As of March 2022 I had yet to immerse myself in the snowy alpenglow of the North Cascades and my photography catalog was certainly lacking. As the first weekend of March approached, a weather window opened up, and even better, it appeared like the snow was going to be relatively stable (meaning my chances of spontaneously dying in an avalanche were lower than normal, something that is always appreciated). After having exhausting all the easy to reach fire lookouts in the North Cascades I decided to head up the shoulder of Little Devil Peak above Monogram Lake in North Cascades National Park. Despite providing somewhat similar views to my most recent winter backpacking trips, it still promised to be a spectacular weekend. High clouds were predicted to move in late on Sunday, perhaps producing an unforgettable sunset (foreshadowing) so I decided to shift my plan one day later as my Monday was free.

On Friday night I packed up all the goodies at home and on Saturday morning I drove upriver to Marblemount to meet with Anthony, a runner/mountain climber I had only met through Strava. My family told me to make sure he didn’t murder me with an axe (generally good advice for most social encounters), but I told them he was married so he was probably all right. On Saturday we went up the Cow Heaven Trail and summited Helen Buttes, a 5,560’ peak on the edge of the Noisy-Diobsud Wilderness (I’ve included a couple photos here). The adventure ended up being 13 miles with 6,300’ gain and about 9 hours which was a good primer for the following day. After pizza in Concrete I headed off to the Monogram Lake Trailhead to sleep in my car and get an early start for the Little Devil Climb.

Evidence that snowshoers and backcountry skiers can live in harmony

My dreams were filled with optimism. After such a wonderful, chill, and easy day hike (well snowshoe), I was ready to replicate the views but with more sunset chances. Of course what had snuck out of mind were all the miseries of snow camping. I guess my “shoulder angel” was on vacation and my little shoulder devil was pumping my thoughts full of the beauty of the winter alpine. What I failed to remember is the winter Rule of Three. Whatever you remember about summer backpacking, multiply it by at least three in the winter. I’m abruptly changing the style of this trip report to a list (oooh, how creative!) so I can demystify the rule of three.

1. Packing

3 times the stuff, 3 times the packing time: Everything in the winter is heavier and bulkier. Your sleeping bag? Might as well bring your whole bed because it weighs less and takes up less space. Your tent? If your rainfly doesn’t weigh as much as your regular summer tent, you’re doing something wrong. Your coat? Of course. And don’t forget this coat. And this coat. And this one. And maybe that one if you want to survive the night. Clothes? Well, you might be able to survive on the single pair of underwear in the summer, but in the winter, hmmm…actually a single pair of underwear might be okay, but you’re going to want to bring at least three pairs of everything else (and maybe 4 socks) because absolutely everything will get wet and will freeze solid. Oh, and don’t forget your crampons. Or your poles. Or your ice axe. And your shovel. And probe. And I guess avalanche beacon if you’re with people and don’t want them to die. And water. And food. More food than you think. Lots of food. So yeah, good luck getting that all up the hill. Or organizing it all. I spend more than hour packing it into the car at home. And an hour the night before at the TH preparing it. And also somehow an hour in the morning before hitting the trail repacking it all and making sure it doesn’t pop out of my backpack and slide hundreds of feet off a cliff.

Not too shabby of a camp spot with Snowking on the horizon

2. Travel

Travel—3 times the effort, 3 times the hiking time: Imagine climbing up a mountain. A big effort for most people, but you can get good at it if you do it enough and are in good enough shape. Now imagine climbing up a mountain with 50 added pounds on your back. This is backpacking. Once again a big effort for most people and it certainly slows you down, but it gets easier as time goes on. I think very few people would say the lugging of gear ever becomes an enjoyable experience, but there are always a couple masochists out there. Okay, so now imagine climbing a mountain with 50 pounds and the mountain is made of sand. This is winter backpacking. After I reach the snow line on the Monogram Lake Trail, not only am I lugging half a Wyatt around with me, but every step I take I'm liable to slide part of the way back down the mountain. The climb is so steep my snowshoe heel risers keep failing. The snow is generally hard, but every so often it turns into soft powder and I’m worried that—POOF!—I might just disappear in amongst the snow crystals. For a dozen steps I float above the hard crust, but that final step sends me tumbling into fine powder. So I basically end up climbing the mountain twice. And no matter how long I expect the next mile will take, it takes three times as long. Somehow, a trivial hike of under four miles becomes an all-day affair that leaves me exhausted. The last 500 feet of steep soft snow takes me 2 hours to climb!

This basin is just steep enough in sections to slide although probably would have been safer than the route I took up. Nice to see Monogram Lake and Eldorado in the distance.

3. Risk

3 times the danger: Everything in the winter wants to kill you. Okay, maybe everything is ambivalent about you, but they say that ambivalence is worse than hate so maybe it’s worse nothing cares about you. In the summer I guess you have to worry about falling, storms, and wild animals. Fortunately your winter worries of wild animals should be much lower, but falling and storms are three times as dangerous and fortunately wild avalanches come to take the spot of wild animals. In the summer the ground is generally not that slippery, but in the winter snow is very slippery. In fact there’s a whole sport built solely on the slipperiness of snow (citation needed). This means that the simplest fall in the mellowest terrain can eventually send you over a cliff to your doom. If you survive the fall risk, then you have more frequent and more intense storms to finish you off. Fortunately, your risk of electrocution is quite low in the winter, but freezing to death becomes a constant threat that always needs to be on the back of your mind. If you’re not watching the weather you can go to sleep and wake up buried alive. Or the storms can be so strong they can simply blow you off the mountain. And then you have the avalanches. If you're in the snow, you’re in avalanche land. And unlike bears or wolves, avalanches WILL come for you. Almost every decision I make takes avalanche risks into account. It starts before I leave home, but continues with every twist and turn of the trail. Today the slight risk of sliding snow sends me up a steep and narrow ridge. This is the ridge of cornices and soft snow I wallow along for two hours until I can finally reach my goal destination at 6,200’ on the edge of Teebone Ridge.

4. Exposure

3 times the popsiclization (spell check needed): However cold you get backpacking in the summer, it is nothing compared to the level of bone chilling, hell-freezing-over, absolute zero temps you experience winter camping. Today, the sun is warm and the winds are light. I laze about in camp taking in the glory of a winter wonderland caked in white. However, even in those moments where I think I can let my guard down, such as when I sit down to read a book, the cold tickles my hands and reminds me what’s waiting later that night. Any skin left without multiple layers becomes a target for the heat-seeking cold missiles. And as the sun drops below the horizon the race is on. The first step is the strip tease. In that I strip and cold teases me. My limited layers during the day are replaced with a thickening skin of thermals. It takes just enough time to put these on that any warmth I have radiates off to be absorbed by a cold, unfeeling world. And as darkness falls the vacuum of space sucks out any remaining warmth so that ice crystallizes my water bottles before I can take a sip. Now the problem becomes I’m wearing so many layers my core is toasty, but the extremities are extremely impossible to keep warm. The toes and fingers embrace the cold like a child attracted to a flame and are burned repeatedly throughout the long night.

Even from the summit of 6708 the weather was more pleasant than I expected

5. The Night

3 times the failed attempts to sleep: The most miserable nights of my life have been winter camping. I’m extremely privileged to be able to say that, but that doesn’t make them any less excruciating. No matter how many nighttime long exposure photos I want to take, at some point I must head into the tent to sleep and that’s when the real cold sets in. During the summer there’s only a couple hours from sunrise to sunset to pretend you’re getting good rest, but in the winter that time doubles. You may eat dinner at 6 and find activities to keep you busy until 8, but then what are you supposed to do for the next 12 hours? Sure, if you could sleep during that time it would pass in just the blink of an eye, but in cold conditions I’ve never been able to sleep through the night. After a couple hours under the stars, at 10 p.m. I wiggle into my sleeping bag at and surprisingly quickly fall deeply asleep. I wake up feeling rested like I’ve gone the whole night and look at my watch to see it’s barely midnight. My toes are cold and my face is ice covered so I cocoon deeper into my bag. Every thirty minutes I wake up as the wind rattling the tent changes it’s timbre or an extra icicle sprouts from my toes. 1:30, 2:15, 2:23, 3:07, 3:30. The night is interminable. For me the college all-nighters were fine, but the all-night failures to sleep are truly harrowing. This is one of the few times in life where time seems to slow down as the stars inch overhead and everyone in the world sleeps save one.

6. The Morning

3 times the reluctance to extricate from bed: Sometimes the mornings are the most beautiful part of snow camping, but even when the sunrise lights up the distant heavens, you still have to deal with getting out of bed. In one sense you’re free from pretending to sleep. In another you’re about to emerge into the coldest part of the day with extremely limited warmth stocks. I try to make a plan for how I’m going to pack up my gear. I think of every step and revise it dozens of times as I procrastinate emergence. Today my tent is submerged in clouds and rime ice so I won’t even get a sunrise. Everything moves in fits and starts. Even my second pair of socks don’t come on easily as they have frozen into boards during the night. I have to gently slide my feet into them one notch at a time, slowly getting colder and colder as any stored heat drains away. The next step is the boots. They’ve also turned into rocks, and are even more difficult to get on. It takes me ten minutes to worm my feet inside as they scream when faced with the cold. Each millimeter is a blessing and a curse as my feet get colder, yet my hope increases that I’ll be able to get my shoes on at all. Eventually with a frozen thud each foot slips in and I’m up running circles around the tent. One lap, two laps, twenty laps, one hundred laps. I slowly descend into the snow as feeling comes back. Each toe is a screaming baby, crying out for warmth and crying out in pain when it receives finally receives it.

I took a lot of photos in and around sunset

7. Repacking

3 times the wet stuff: Everything in the winter gets wet. Perhaps you can hope it’s really cold and none of the frozen water around you melts, but almost always everything is soaked. My socks that I didn’t even wear yesterday somehow got wet and froze. The tent is wet and the hot chocolate I spilled inside has turned into a fudgesicle. The tent pole junctions are frozen together and when they finally unstick, they will not get into their bag. Tent stakes are frozen in chunks of ice. My coat is wet. My water is frozen. Rime ice coats everything and my hand warmers are wet and useless before I can even start using them. As I heft my backpack on and struggle to do up my snowshoes, I think I’ll never winter camp again. It’s too uncomfortable and too unpleasant. Except, as I cruise down the steep and stable snow slopes and drop below the clouds, my body warms. Pretty soon I’m in a meditative state as I reach snow line and continue my plunge down the mountain. I think about the stunning sunset last night and the hours of photographing my tent in the beautiful scenery. I think of the sun on my face and the unending peaks and the silence of true wilderness isolation. And before I’ve even gotten back to my car I’m planning for the next overnight snow camping adventure.

The Little Devil of Snow Camping