Day Hike & Car Camp - Ingalls Lake

The plan was to sleep on the flat near Ingalls Lake, but was soon overturned when we were, to our surprise, standing in 18 inches of snow. Our group wasn’t prepared for deep snow, some of us in shorts. After we reached the top, ate some lunch, and enjoyed the view of Stuart. We made the unanimous decision to turn around and car camp along the road. We hiked down, taking the occasional picture break. The trail was in good condition and well trampled, for the most part, making it helpful to have micro spikes but not necessary. Near the top we postholed a few times, but nothing bad.

We made it to the campsite an hour before sundown, giving us time to set up camp and make dinner before sundown. As soon as the sun was down the temperatures dropped and we went into the tents for a chilly night. The next day we drove to Vantage, stopping on the way for water and some camp fuel. As we drove down to the Columbia the temperatures were on a rise to almost 50 degrees. Just then we drove into a wall of fog. Along with the clear skies went the temperatures, dropping to 31 degrees. We went on a short and flat hike in Frenchman Coulee that led us to a waterfall.

That night Jim Yoder, the famed Washington climber who wrote the Vantage guidebook, invited us to come to his fire. The next day, due to the cold temps, we packed up our stuff and drove to Exit 38 for a day of climbing. This trip was a great opportunity to learn about decision making and bailing or rather a tactical retreat. But it also gave us an opportunity to talk about better packing and checking for yourself what the conditions are like where we were going. Some of us hadn’t checked the weather and brought nothing but shorts, not even long underwear. Some of us had shoes that weren’t waterproof and no rain pants. This could have easily been avoided if everyone had taken it upon themselves to check the weather, to see it would be below freezing at the warmest. People could have checked trip reports to see that there would be intermittent snow up until the pass and deep snow from there on. Even though we would have still encountered things weren’t as we had predicted we would have still been way better off. In the end , though, we all had fun and felt successful.