Today was a blast! We woke up to a blue bird and had a fairly leisurely morning in camp. It's hard to do anything quickly when winter camping. After leaving the lake around 11, we skinned northeast up a wooded valley. We were aiming for Berna Lake and hoping not to head too far to climber's left. We wound up making a pretty long traverse toward climber's right after getting a little off track to avoid losing elevation. We encountered some tight trees and obnoxious skinning but eventually broke into the open where we could see a fairly straightforward route up to a shelf near Berna Lake, or so we thought.
We were mindful of wet slides, as we were climbing a south facing slope toward the lake, but we weren't even getting many roller balls. Stability seemed really good. I took the lead and broke trail up a fairly steep rib to more gradual terrain above. The scenery was beautiful and we were gaining views of huge peaks and glaciers all around.
We found a lake on top of the shelf, but our GPS informed us that we were at Peggy Lake instead of Berna Lake. In fact, we could see Berna Lake off to our right and could have made our way over to it without much difficulty. However, we quickly realized we didn't need to. Instead, it appeared that we could make our way up to a saddle in the distance and drop down the other side to the Weart Glacier, our ultimate goal for the day. We would essentially parallel our intended route but be on the opposite side of a steep ridge.
The revised route couldn't have gone more smoothly. Perhaps we would have been exposed to more avy risk in other conditions, but stability was bomber and of very little concern. Topping out at the saddle was by far the best part of the day. There was no wind and the view was gorgeous. Words can't do it justice, so I'm not going to try.
From the saddle, we made a fun, gradual descent down to the massive Weart Glacier. I've never been on such a huge glacier. It was super mellow, more a gentle glide than a ski descent. Shortly after hitting the glacier, we ran into our first signs of human life since early yesterday: a skin track coming from the opposite direction and a gear cache. No sign of the owners though.
We're currently camped on the glacier. There are mountains all around. I've never seen such big terrain before.... I think it tops even my beloved North Cascades. Cold night tonight. Off to bed!
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