Mt Williamson, California, USA (14,375 ft / 4381 m): via the NE Ridge route

(March 2-5, 2002)

From March 2 thru March 5 2002, I went in this guided climb to attempt
a winter ascent of Mount Williamson in California's Sierra Nevada.  
Mt Williamson is the 2nd highest peak in the state of California at 14,375 ft.

Our route:  the Northeast (NE) Ridge, one of the longest in the
mountain.  First climbed in winter in 1954 by Warren Harding and 
John Ohrenschall.

At approx 1:30pm March 4 2002, I reached Mt Williamson's eastern
summit, known as the "East Horn" at 14,125 ft.  We had been climbing
for 8 hours, since 5:30am that day.  Our guide decided we will not
go any further because in order to reach the true summit we still
had 2 to 3 hours more to go.  In distance, the true summit was
probably 1.5 miles away, however, we still had a class 4 ridge to
climb and it takes time to cross this technical terrain.   If we 
had pushed for the summit, it would have been 4pm by the time we
reached it.  Our guide said "our turn-around time is 2pm, no matter
where we are."  And so even though I got to the East Horn at 1:30pm,
it was practically like saying 2pm.   We began our descent around
2:20pm or so.  Because there were several sections of technical 
class 4 terrain where we had to be protected, it took us just about the
same time to descend.  In fact, the last two hours we climbed technical
sections on the ridge in the dark....well, we had headlamps....even
so, things take twice as long when it's dark.  We finally reached
our high camp (set at ~ 11,000 ft) by 8:30pm.  We hiked out the next
day, March 5, back to ours cars parked at 5,500 ft.

Time was the cause for not summiting.  It just took us a great deal
of time to even reach the "East Horn" and 2:00pm was the turn-around
time.

We were a total of 5 climbers:  1 guide (SP Parker), 1 assistant guide
(Eric) and 3 clients.  The other 2 clients:  Mark from Los Angeles and
Michael from Seattle.

I actually plan to attempt Williamson again but using the regular class 3 
Shepherd Pass route sometime early this summer.

I took pictures of the trip, however, they are in slides.  I used
Kodak EktaChrome film.  Some day I will transfer them to prints.

Thanks for reading.