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My aimless discourse about plans for Saturday led Ryan to suggest Bald Mountain. I wanted to hack at the Top 100 prominence list, so this was a fitting choice. I managed to set my alarm for P.M. in my typical perfectionism and woke up to a phone ring at 5:15. Things were less problematic after we got going. We started from Boreas Pass around 8:00, with rather blamy temperatures given the surroundings (photo on right shows the southern aspect of Bald from the the north side of the pass). The previous evening's precipitation dusted the peaks pretty well, and promised to do so later today - an odd June. We ascended the lightly powdered slope efficiently and arrived near the South Ridge, easily avoiding the deep sections. The snow was in pretty good shape all things considered. It had been warm enough to require only capilene shirt up to this point, becoming breezy and chilly on the ridge proper.
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It is still a relatively long way to Bald's summit from where we attained the ridge, though not requiring much gain in elevation. The ridge is fraught with false summits, a quality that influenced us enough to forego a somewhat tentative 12er attempt later in the day. The slick snow on the talus was a slight annoyance, though was favorable for the steeper sections of false summit acquisition. I was questioning why I had a predisposition to mentally assign importance to reaching the first of the last two false summits. Views of Mount Guyot were invariably dramatic for the duration of the ascent on the south ridge. Someone else was attending the true summit from the North side and disappeared before we arrived a few minutes later. We snacked a bit before heading south to the saddle of Bald and Boreas. There is a decent view of Quandary Peak from here. The temperature was not picking up as it normally would as the day progressed. We enjoyed a few short glissades and tried to make a longer one work, but it just wasn't steep enough.
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Some minor post-holing just before the saddle was about the extent of the difficulty with snow other than a some shuffling on small talus near the pass on the return to the vehicle. The clouds were building up rapidly, but didn't appear to be doing anything, so we headed up Boreas Mountain without much thought. Sidehilling the scree at a gentle angle eventually gained the ridge to avoid the steep talus slope on that intervenes at the saddle. At 1.3 miles from the saddle, I was expecting the ascent to be tedious, but we were soon underneath the final slopes to the summit (photo on right). The weather did little other than darken the skies, and we continued without haste. Here's a funny perspective of Ryan and Erin finishing up Boreas, appearing to be a 'mini-13er' from just north of the summit. Below, Bald Mountain prefers a clandestine presence as the false summit does its bidding. We made a trip over to Alma to replenish our reserves before heading out. Ryan and Erin later picked up their first '2 top 100 prominence day' by succeeding on Puma Peak.
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