Jason and I drove up the Fall River Road Friday night after work. We arrived at the trailhead with just a little daylight left, shouldered our backpacks and made the 3/4 mile trek up to St. Mary's Lake to set up camp. We had already eaten at Wendy's on the road, so we decided not to cook... just snack and bed down.
The next morning, Oakley had to be let outside around 5:10am. A few minutes later, a CMC group with a few of our friends in it headed up the trail - I found out a few days later when I was asked if I own a brown and white dog! This group was destined for the Sky Pilot Couloir, and came prepared with pickets, ice axes, crampons, the works. Jason and I would start much later (not until 8am), with just ice axes, up the standard route.
We didn't roll out of bed until 6:20 or so, and we took our time with breakfast, fetching water, re-packing gear, etc. We hit the glacier about 8am and started up. The snow isn't steep, and as mushy as it was ("mashed potato snow"), we weren't about to slide anywhere. We kicked steps and used our trekking poles. The glacier goes on for a long, long way - you can't see the top from the bottom, because it flattens out as you approach the top. It's nice for learning to ski, but hard to get going if you want to glissade - as we found out later!
A trail peeked out from under the glacier, so we left the snow and marched across a broad meadow on the trail. We stopped for a quick snack partway across the meadow. A lot of old mining roads cover the area, and we could make out glimmers of jeeps and ATV's playing around on the 4WD roads. The trail petered out partway through the meadow, so we "bushwhacked" up to where the snow began again up James Peak.
We could see James from way down in the meadow, and when we approached the slopes, we knew the summit in front of us was false - so we kicked steps up the slopes to a broader part below the ridge off to the left. From there, we could see a high point on the ridge that looked like the summit. We could also see big, nasty storm clouds building up. They seemed to be going mostly south of us, but it was nerve wracking anyway, especially as the clouds started to thunder. We continued stepping up through alternating snow and talus up to the ridge, telling ourselves that whether that was the summit or not, that was our turnaround point because of the storm.
Oh, disappointment - it wasn't the summit. Once we reached the high point, we could see the summit still 300-some feet above and maybe half a mile away from us. I thought the clouds were on a path to miss us, but it was so hard to tell since they were building quickly and booming angrily! Jason and I headed back down. Both of us had slight headaches but were pleased that we held up well with so few high altitude hikes this year. The north side of the ridge was heavily corniced, and I had to keep a close eye on Oakley since the dumb dog has no fear of heights - she'll walk up to the edge of a cornice to look over! We ran into a couple of "extreme" skiers just starting down the Starlight Couloir. It was cool to watch them make the tight turns down the steep, steep gully.
Jason and I walked the ridge to the false summit we had avoided earlier, and then ambled down the talus to where the snow seemed steepest. We put on our snow pants, readied the ice axes, and glissaded down. Oakley chased Jason and barked the whole way, and I just doubled over laughing! We got to the meadow and got a tremendous view of that storm that chased us off. It seemed to be right over I-70, just a little north of Evans and Bierstadt. Long, jagged lightning streaks touched the ground and it rumbled continuously. Wow! We hurried back to the glacier.
The glacier was a big disappointment for a glissade... it wasn't steep enough to slide on. Oh, for a pair of skis! The snow was too mushy. We walked down to almost the very bottom, and finally found a steep section for glissading... what would be suicide if it were hard snow was an easy ride on the "mashed potatoes".
A lot of tourists, dogs, picnickers, etc were milling about the lake, and Jason and I picked our way through them back to camp, to clean up and head back to the car. It was just starting to rain on us as we loaded our gear into the car and took off.