After 1 ‘failed’ attempt to summit Cameron Cone (I ran out of time), I decided to give it another go. This time with my brother Todd.
We hit the trail around 8:30 am and the temperature quickly started rising as the sun began to hit Englemann Canyon?
Shortly after the gully crossing we got off trail and, after bush whacking for a while, found ourselves at the bottom of a huge slab of granite. Hiking around either side looked to be impossible and we weren’t eager to backtrack. Luckily there was a decent crack up the middle so we decided to do some scrambling. Probably somewhere between class 3 and class 4 (a fall wouldn’t have been fatal but it definitely wouldn’t have been any fun – I wouldn’t have done it if I was alone). After successfully navigating the crack, we quickly rejoined the trail.
We made our way to Magog Ridge where the wind was completely ridiculous. We tried to get out of it to rest a bit but that was impossible. Instead we continued on to GOG Rock. The wind here was equally strong but we took shelter behind a rock and fueled up. This is where I turned back on my last attempt as it got too late in the day to continue (especially by myself).
We found the road towards the south east corner of the Gog area and followed that until we reached what we assumed was the ‘trailhead’. That assumption turned out to be correct as we began seeing ribbons on tree branches marking the trail every 20 yards or so (though they weren’t at all easy to spot).
The snow on the ground got much deeper here than I was expecting. We were post holing in 2-3 foot deep drifts at times. Neither of us had gaiters and Todd was wearing jeans and Vans (with ankle socks). Todd struggled pretty well to make progress up the side of the mountain as the trail got steeper but he kept at it.
While we were on the southwest ridge of Cameron, just below the top, some clouds moved in and snow dumped on us for about 20 minutes.
The snow passed just as we reached the summit and we hung out on the top for about 30 minutes. Todd’s feet were freezing (and his shoes were soaked) so he spent some time warming them up and I gave him an extra pair of wool socks I had in my pack (yup, I’m prepared). I walked around and took a time lapse and some pics.
We followed our tracks down for a while before losing them somewhere. We looked at both of our GPSs to try to get a bearing on where the trail might be but Todd’s wasn’t working right (he just got it and hasn’t quite figured it out yet) and mine was indicating that North was the direction that I was 100% sure was South. We put the GPSs away and hiked up to the nearest ridge to try to navigate by terrain. I had no idea where the trail was but I knew which way we needed to head (towards Gog Rock) so we decided to bushwhack in that direction. This involved hiking down a pretty steep slope that was covered in 3 feet of snow but we made it down pretty easily (and Todd was good with the fresh socks).
Once we reached the bottom I checked my GPS and it was acting appropriately again. We followed its advice and rejoined the trail after a few more minutes of bush whacking.
The remainder of the hike down was pretty uneventful as we followed our tracks most of the way and sight-navigating to Gog and Magog is relatively easy.
We were about 1/2 mile from the bottom when I remembered that my Yak Traks were in my pack and would have made Todd’s climb much easier. Whoops.
Overall it was a great day. Even the crazy wind on Magog and Gog and the intense snow storm weren’t bad enough to ruin the outing and just added to the adventure.
