The day started with a 3:55AM wake-up to meet-up with the rest of the crew. I met up with Siva at 4:45AM and we headed off to the University to meet up with another. Unfortunately he was unable to make it, in fact, neither of the other 5 were able to make it, leaving just Siva and I to do this mountain. If I had thought to check my e-mail before heading out, we would have known just after 5:00AM that we were to be flying solo and likely could have started at 7:15AM instead of 8:10AM - LESSON LEARNED! The good thing is that we were provided a great vivid alpine sunrise.
The hike itself was very uneventful and not the most inspiring. The trail was quite circuitous wrapping around and back over itself through a pine forest slowly approaching the treeline. We pretty much knew the 'fun' was to begin once out of the trees, and again we were not let down. As we approached the false summit, the wind started whipping around - we estimate that it was around 40kph - not enough to physically move us, but enough to turn the snow crystals into eye hurting projectiles. Sive noticed a small herd of Mountain Sheep hunkering down behind some trees below us. As we crested the false summit we noticed a higher summit further off, we decided to grab a quick shot at he false summit before moving to the true summit.
As we began our approach to the true summit, the wind decided to throw up even more force. This time we were actually pushed by the wind and could hardly hear each other talking (even at close distances). We forced ourselves along the rock spine to the summit where the sun decided to greet us and the wind died down slightly. So without the wind and subsequent high-windchill, the trip was pretty straightforward.
The total elevation gain was 706m, distance was approximately 14km and total trip time was 5 hours.
