Comments (0) Best Adventure Hike - 2010
Four Peaks after a snowstorm
Hiking to the top of Brown's Peak, the tallest summit of Four Peaks, can be a challenge for people in the best conditions. Brown's Trail, the typical summit route, is about four miles round-trip and steep in places. Hands-on scrambling is required near the top of the gully close to the summit. After a wet year, like this one, the upper flanks of Four Peaks can be covered with ice and snow. And that changes things for hikers — for the better, if you like adventure. When we hiked Four Peaks with a friend in mid-April, the gully was a long, glacier-like ice chute. The only group of hikers we saw summiting that day, besides us, had used harnesses and a climbing rope to belay each other up. Somewhat unintelligently, we forged our way up the chute using sticks like half-assed ice axes. Wearing crampons, those spikes you can attach to your shoes, would have been preferable for the hike. While crossing the chute seemed to invite a potential death fall, the sketchiest moment of the hike came when hikers above us kicked down a head-size boulder. The boulder rolled down the snowfield straight for us and banged into the stick we were holding. We descended a different way, spidering over the snowless summit blocks, ending up in thigh-high snow before finding the main trail. In other words, this spring outing felt like a day in the Himalayas. We're going back the next time it snows — and we'll be taking better gear.
