I’ve never been so ready and prepared for an expedition as I am now. Everything has aligned perfectly including my fitness, the gear, the route I settled on taking... everything except for the weather.
I’ve been monitoring the weather on forecast sites, visiting with other mountaineers and my pilot who knows this area and it's weather patterns like the back of his hand. It appears that there will be at least 2 to 3 extended snow events in the Hunter Mountain area of the range during my proposed climb.
The first half of my trip will be cloud covered most of the time with a projected accumulated snow fall of nearly 6 feet.
This is all dandy but would make for extremely dangerous if not impossible glacial travel with the low visibility for spotting crevasses and more so via the ice falls I plan to navigate through. This also makes me a bit worried about avalanches in two locations of my route.
These winter climbs are so weather dependent and to make a wrong call can be lethal, especially if one’s traveling solo. We are all seeing the outcomes of mountaineers trying to climb Everest and K2 in the winter… there is simply no room for error and it takes forever waiting for the right weather window.
Waiting out the projected bad weather wouldn’t leave me enough days left to climb Hunter before winter is over on March 21st.
My want is to go, but common sense tells me it's not the time.
Disheartened, I’ve decided to postpone Hunter until next winter and focus on another climb we have scheduled for May on Mount Fairweather in British Columbia.
I want to thank my major sponsors PrimaLoft and Granite Gear for believing my endeavors.
~Lonnie
