I had every intention of writing the lyrics of this report to the rhyme and rhythm of Vanilla Ice’s –Ice Ice Baby… maybe, but lately I been busy and in the end I got tied up trying to rotate and upload pictures instead.

With the end of winter hibernation upon us, (I know, I know, what winter), Patrick(redbeard) and I set our sights on chasing the potential sun somewhere in the valley. As there isn’t much Patrick hasn’t done out that way, looking for a place to play, for that day, we decided on Williams peak as a destination as we both have degrees in underestimation. A slight miscommunication saw me waking Patrick up with a text at 5 AM, managing to avoid any more mayhem, we jumped into my car and headed out east with the splashes on my windshield on the increase I was a little disappointed to say the least.

You'll have to tilt your head to the side for this one as I've tried everything in the arsenal and nothing is working.




The weather improved a bit by the time we reached the trailhead. Thank goodness as I wasn’t looking forward to pounding upward in downward drizzling dread. Instead the fog enveloped us as we steadily rose higher. Our spirits didn’t diminish though as things were supposed to get better so, we continued along the ridge, heads high, pace slow.

A cairn here, a flag there, lead us through the soupy air. We overshot the part of the ridge recommended to drop down by about 300 meters and half a k, a bit of dismay when the clouds broke for about five seconds - yay - and we got a glimpse of the peak looming directly in front of us. And so reversed our way back the direction we’d come, consulted the GPS, realized I was dumb. But hey my excuse was we couldn’t see anything.

It kind of reminded me of the time I couldn’t see anything. Oh wait, that was like two seconds ago. I didn't take too many pix through this part. Another head tilter...funny cuz when I turn the tablet to look at the right way, the picture autorotates....ah technology!



Once we somehow managed to find our way correctly through some snow patches and up onto the South ridgeline, however we were privy to an amzing spectacle that literally took our breath away...which might explain why it took so long to get up the final few hundred meters.



Heading out onto snow at the base of the gully.


It was worth the fog slog.


The snow cover in the gully was spotty, at times thiun and I found myself being lured onto the rock rib on my left, whereas Patrick found himself on the right side. I eventually got a little stuck and ended up crossing over to his side.



At on epoint we zigged when we should have zagged and ended up well ouit onto the east face. It wasn't terrible, maybe a little on the bushy side but still plenty of good rock. With a bit of routefinding, we soon found ourselves next to the summit cairn soaking in the sun and discussing how Rexford looks a lot sexier than Slesse.





We were yet again fortunate that the clouds dispersed and we were able to see our whole route up before us. The ridge did't look like I'd imagined, as I've been meaning to get up here for several years. Unfortunately my camera ran out of juice and I only had enough for one more pic.

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Getting a stiff neck looking at those rotated pictures lol! but aside from that looks like a wicked trip especially above the clouds. Having snow in the gully is a bonus too, good choice.

Well done! That is a long day out that one. Look forward to 'the words'.

I can't figure out how to rotate the pix, they aren't that way on my computer and then when uploaded they rotate???

What type of computer? Mac or PC. And what program are you viewing them with on your computer?

Its a PC Surface Pro. (not my usual computer) and I think I'm viewing them in windows viewer.

We were socked-in down here in the valley all day Saturday. Any trouble route-finding? Some great photo's in this report, love the above the clouds effect.

Can you try rotating them in that? Or open them in a photo editor, like Paint, and see how they are oriented when you do that? I suspect the problem is that your photo viewer is autorotating them but not saving the rotation. CT photo uploader won't rotate them.

The clouds effect are real neat; favourite pic in your set. you can rotate your photos so they show vertical in either windwos fax viewer or microsoft photo editor. I do that as well. Photos looking vertical in PMS Sony Software, are out of rotation when I post to CT.

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I tried rotating them so they look sideways in two of the programs on my computer and then uploaded them but they still come out rotated on CT. It's only the ones that I've taken as vertical pictures.

They're 16:9 ratio pictures that are nearly always viewed in landscape mode. If you want to view correctly you need to SAVE them after rotating in your picture viewer.



Nice views above the clouds.

Thanks for the trip report!

I'm considering this trip for this weekend, thinking about camping in the basin. Is there any decent water sources that you saw after you headed off the ridge?

If I were you, I'd camp high, just before you drop down. There's a couple decent spots up there and there's some snow just a bit higher up. While there is snow above, I didn't see any flowing sources until you are in the gully.

Thanks for the details!

Thanks for the write-up, Cody! Nicely done.

Here are a few of my pictures:

This is where we should have dropped off the ridge, however, as you can see, the thick fog made this less apparent.



Above the clouds!



Assessing how to tackle the gully.



The incredible view from the summit!





Clouds starting to clear from Williams Ridge.





Looking back.



Williams Ridge eventually did clear up, but the clouds in the valley never melted off and by the time we were down at the vehicle, it was once again grey and damp.



(A small rant: the photo uploading process is painful! I have one picture in my "Attached Thumbnails" that is upside down when you left-click on it, but right side up when you open it in a new tab. I tried to insert the image into this post, but it shows upside down, so I just left it in the Attached Thumbnails. I now completely understand Cody's frustration of trying to get incorrectly-oriented pictures to display correctly. The thumbnails are also in a jumbled order, despite the fact that they're labelled numerically in chronological order. Is there any plan in the works to fix this whole process? The ability to insert full images directly into the report is nice, but it sure is a clumsy system.)

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