Saltydog wrote:
> ...but the first HST hikers to push Kaweah Gap (except for two experienced winter climbers) 10,500 were about 2 weeks later.
Salty, could someone negotiate those areas if he were ok using crampons and ice axe?
Depends: "OK"" I don't know. "Highly competent" would be better, Look at Laura's photos below and imagine snow cover. Two hairy stretches if snow covered: the headwalls above Hamilton and just below Precipice lakes. Lots of exposed traverses. Above Precipice, where snow is most likely, slope and exposure is less than on the MWMT chute, but route finding is tougher. Last year, even though it was basically clear to somewhere below Precipice, about fifty feet to the right of the tunnel, in Laura's middle shot, there was a huge , thick slab over the trail, giving the choice of crawling 50 feet under it, with 2-3 foot clearance and ice water dripping, and collapse imminent (it happened a couple days later) and traversing over it at the point of greatest exposure on the wall. Not a choice I wanted to make with my family. So the answer is technically yes, it not that hard going, but between exposure above Hamilton and route-finding above precipice, its not one you want to take lightly. This was built as a recreational trail, and intentionally took on the engineering challenge of carving it out of the wall most of the way from Crescent Meadow to KG: not one established by long use, like other HS trails.
