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Alpine Scramble - Tamanos Mountain

Very nice snow scramble, but too cloudy for ideal views.

Placeholder Contact Profile Fritz Klein
May 30, 2018
  • Road suitable for all vehicles

  • Tamanos should be a good snow scramble for another week or two.  No need for either snowshoes or traction, although there were areas of moderately hard snow near the top.

    Shortly before the lakes, there is a bridge across the stream that is awkward to get down to and up from fairly deep snow on either side.  The side toward the lakes is trickiest; good self-belays were needed to protect it.  On the way back, though, we realized that a short distance above the bridge, the stream was easy to cross on snow.  It's hard to say, though, how much longer a snow crossing will be safe.

This was originally planned to be a scramble of Mt. Ruth, but a couple of trip reports from earlier in the weekend suggested that most of the usual glissade was either too icy to be safe, or else slushy enough to be slow.  In addition, the crossing of the Inter Fork can no longer be done on snow, and the forecast was calling for freezing levels below the crossing.  So, it seemed like a trip up Ruth would best be saved for another day.

Tamanos turned out to be a good alternative.  It was cloudy all day(the forecast had been "partly sunny"), but we at least got occasional good views of Governor's Ridge and there was never any precipitation.  Snow was continuous from before the lakes to the rocky area a few hundred yards from the summit; there was plenty of T3 scrambling at the end.