This is a bit of an epic tale….
I can’t really remember the names of the people I was out there with. This was the first time I ever climbed with them. That in itself should have been a bit of a warning. The day began very well actually. We got an early start and made excellent time up the trail to Williamson Lake. Under 3 hours if I recall correctly. We set up camp and started talking. It was so early in the day and the weather was flawless. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Our plan was to climb Mt. Welch the following morning, descend, hike out and drive home. Some bright spark (probably me) made a suggestion. With so much daylight left, why not climb Welch today and maybe we could try Mt Foley on Sunday. Unfortunately everyone agreed with this idea. I think that there were five of us altogether. The south ridge route is pretty easy. It is pretty solid third class with some fourth class thrown in here and there for good measure, especially if you keep strictly on the ridge crest. So we had at least one rope and a small bit of hardware if needed.
The ridge consists of really nice blocky granite. We continued to make pretty decent time on the lower portion but as we rapidly gained altitude the difficulties increased and our speed correspondingly decreased. One of the guys was a good rock climber, and the other had some experience in the mountains, but the other two were kind of inexperienced so naturally they were slower. Also as the day wore on the weather took a bit of a turn and we could see a front moving in from the west. We kept on going nonetheless and eventually made the south summit of the peak. The North Summit is a fair bit higher and by now was enshrouded in cloud and mist. It was also early evening and was getting noticeably darker. I told the group that we should probably turn around and start back down. All but one were incredulous. Then I dropped the next bombshell. I mentioned that even if we turn around now we might get caught out in the dark and descending the trickier parts in the dark would be dangerous and foolhardy, and that on our descent we should also keep our eyes open for potential bivi sites. Well that was a shocker to the group. Except of course to the one other alpine guy in the group.
The descent was as I expected much slower and before long we become engulfed in darkness. It also turns out that we had only one working headlamp. Mine. We needed to find a suitable bivi site. We would have been in for a world of hurt if we tried to descend much further with the group we had. If it had of been only me, I would have kept on descending. Eventually we found a series of sloping ledges that would have to do. This is where it started to get even more interesting. No one had really noticed before because the day had been so nice but one of the people was climbing in shorts. She didn’t have pants or any spare clothing in her pack. This was going to be a long cold night. I had a nice pair of Gore-Tex pants I was going to wear over my climbing pants, but of course under the circumstances they went to her. For some reason one of the guys had a spare shell that she wore as well. We all had our harnesses on so we were able to sling some blocks and place some gear in order to tie ourselves in. Our ledges were fairly secure but sliding off of them would not have had a good outcome at all.
As can be expected it was a long night. No one slept. I think I exhausted every joke and off colour story in my (at that time) considerable repertoire. It threatened to rain or snow off and on throughout, but thankfully that never materialized. Finally after an interminably long time the sky began to lighten in the east. At the first hint of warmth we slowly creaked into action and continued our descent. Even though we reached our camp very early, for some reason no one had the heart to try Foley or anything else that day, so we packed up and headed down the trail.