1/26, Saturday. Ungodly meeting time at 4:30am! Thankfully the organizer picked me up from home. Total 15 people (2 with skis), 1 dog, 4 cars. Very foggy. We arrived at Cougar store before 6am, when the store opens. Need to purchase sno-park pass. It was clear now. The stars were quite nice. Sunrise was ~7:45am.
Marble Mount Sno-park was already half full. Many people were taking advantage of the good weather. Trailhead has climbing passes, but each one has to fill his/her own, unlike previous years, one form per group. Simple enough, just name and date. Tie the permit on your pack. Plenty pens. I forgot to note down the time when we started hiking, in headlamps. Not cold. No snow in the parking lot. Packed, well trodden snow starting from the trailhead.
The first couple of miles are flat. A few gravel patches, mostly covered with snow. Saw the sun rose behind trees, never had a good look at it. When we reached Chocolate Falls, the mountain had a warm glow in the early morning light. We regrouped, and I took a few group photos. The post here says climbing permit required above 4800'. I put on crampons. Not a good idea: made my legs heavier. This winter has not been cold. The snow was soft enough. Only the top few hundred feet, the surface was more chunky. With many footsteps made by previous hikers, it's feasible to walk all the way to the rim without any traction device.
Winter is still winter. Very pretty. The frozen snow looks like shiny coral reef. The temperature was warm, spring like, except for some wind when I was ~6-8000' (I had to put my hat in my pack so it doesn't get blown away). The rim was calm. We spent over an hour here waiting for everyone to catch up. I wanted to go to the true summit (would have taken ~30 minutes), but was told no. So, this is the only climb (out of 5) that I didn't go to the true summit. Eventually we hiked down. Met up with two who gave up: one had a dizzy spell, one had muscle cramp. Oddly, I got cramp on my inner thigh once. Not sure why. I thought I was re-hydrated consistently. Maybe my running nose was losing too much water.Once we got down to soft-ish snow, I packed up my crampons, and started to glissade. Half walked and half slid. Didn't put back on crampons. Fun as always. However, unbeknownst to me (until much later), I lost my phone (credit card and driver's license in the phone case), my keys, and god knows what else. Once the fun was over, I looked for my phone so to listen to podcast. Oops... I started going back up, asking everyone I met on the way, until the last person in my group, when I had to come back down. One lady informed me that she heard a snowboarder (on her way up) found a phone.
Back at the trailhead, I left a note on the board where we fill permits. I put down my email address, and the phone number of the driver. Nothing, ..., until ~10pm, I received a meetup message from another hike leader (not in today's outing), said a woman named Sarah found my phone and ID, and her phone#. So, I called her using Google Voice. We arranged to meet the next day at a coffee house near her home. -- happy ending.
