Sunday June 28, 2009- Mt. Belford & Mt. Oxford

JetBoil Personal Cooking System

SUNDAY morning after a quick oatmeal breakfast and hot tea, thanks to our borrowed shop JetBoil, we headed up the trail with one stream crossing from the melting couloirs on the Northwest facing slope. The trail switchbacks steeply up the Northwest ridge of Mt. Belford, as you can see drawn in below, where it was rather windy and cool until finally reaching the warmth of the morning sun.

This picture is from the previous evening as the sun was setting. It consists of short switchbacks, but really clear-cut and well-maintained. Props to the trail crews!

Here's some carefully positioned steps on the Mt. Belford Trail...very posh.

The last hike to the top, easy snow crossing, you can see the summit of Mt. Belford at the top of the picture-knob like. Toby tried to roll around in the snow like he usually does, but it was too hard still as it was only about 8:20 am.

Brian signing us in at the summit of Mt. Belford at 14,197'. We were on the summit long enough for Brian to sign us in and snap a quick photo. It was 1.2 miles across the southeast ridge over to Mt. Oxford with almost a 700' drop/rise in elevation mid-saddle, so we needed to keep houghing it.

After hiking down the South side summit of Mt. Belford this was our view toward Mt. Oxford and the ridge we'd have to hike to get there. There was only one group of three guys ahead of us and a few small groups or individuals behind us.

Brian pausing to wait for Tobers and I as we scrambled down the rocky ridge on the first half of the saddle.

Mt. Oxford Geological Survey Marker- 14,153'

Toby and I walked across the summit to what looked like a higher point on Mt. Oxford, at least Brian thought, but it was not. I think he was just trying to keep me busy while we waited for him to finish snacking.

It took us about an hour to hike the ridge and summit Mt. Oxford, and we were hauling pretty fast. We crossed paths with the group ahead of us as they were coming down and they said," you guys must have someplace to be...we've been watching you haul up the mountain!" We kind of laughed and we're thinking already that we should have had an earlier morning start, so we were trying to make up time as to not get caught in a storm.

As we were sitting here on the summit of Mt. Oxford, for only about 10 minutes refueling, signing in, and snapping a few photos...we noticed the clouds beginning to accumulate West of us. So, we booked it back down & up the ridge back to the summit of Mt. Belford and back down the steep switchbacks to the comforts of camp.

It rained after we'd been in camp for about 30 minutes or so, so we took advantage of it and took a nice long nap. We then enjoyed an afternoon of sunbathing, card playing, more naps, and a nice freeze-dried chili mac dinner.