Hi, Steve
I was completely wrong about being on the Eastern side, I will explain the whole thing.
We went up the main trail. None of us really had mountaineering experience. Only three of us made it to the crest. The others gave up because of the snow. For me, the snowed area did not feel dangerous, just slow, but for people who never lived in a place that has winter it might seem scary. I had the
Hillsound traction devices which are very similar to micro-spikes, an ice axe and gaiters.
None of the people who were in my usual hiking mini-group for training hikes made it to the crest. So I was with two people who were more focused on accomplishing the summit, whereas I am more of the kind who sticks to a team. Most of the time, on the crest, each hiked on his own, since we had different speeds.
But the three of us were together at the summit and took a few pictures. On the way down, I was initially just following them. I did not have enough confidence in my experience with GPS (but I got better as the day progressed). The other two were convinced we were going the right away, but they did not agree on which way to go. I was more and more convinced that we were not on the same side we came, because the crest looked different and the rocks below looked different. I think
this is the part of the crest we were seeing.
Here is my
GPS track of that day. (Please ignore the big spike, it was probably a software error, we did not go to Thor Peak.) As you can see, we were too far West. We could see a trail in the distance, but it did not look like the trail we came on. We could see some lakes down below, probably Arctic Lake or Guitar Lake. At some point, I lost track of Marv, but I was still able to go to the third hiker, who was the fastest of us three. After we realized we cannot find Marv anymore, she started to panic and it took me a while to calm her and to convince her to go back up the mountain. We did not need to go very far, because we met two large groups of hikers who were also looking for the trail. They figured out a way to get to the trail which was visible in the distance, we followed them, and after a while that trail merged back into the main trail, which took us back to the Chute.
It would be nice to have some trail signs going from the main trail up to the summit and down back, at least for people who are not familiar with the mountain. I was told there is usually a visible trail there, but parts of it are now covered by snow.
