Today was my last chance to bag a 14er during the month of April, at least during 2003. I was planning to let the month slip by, as I was pretty sick of snow after the March blizzard (there's still some snow on the north side of my house). After a trip report of Mt Democrat from 4/28 indicated that the Kite Lake Road wasn't in too bad of shape, I decided to make a run for it.

I left home at 7:30 with Jake and Pepper and headed for Alma. Jake has climbed 21 14ers plus a couple repeats, while Pepper has only climbed 1 - but he did climb Bison Peak with me, which is a 12 mile hike. In Alma we turned up the Kite Lake Road, and made it about 4 miles to the active mine before running out of tire ruts. Four-wheel drive is needed to get to this point, or at least high clearance. I parked down the road a couple hundred yards since the parking lot at the mine had plenty of warning signs about parking. At 9:15 I had my gear together and we headed up the road toward Kite Lake.

At the lake I decided to try a snow climb that started just west of the lake and joined Democrat's southeast ridge then continued to the summit. The snow conditions looked pretty good, with the recent warm weather consolidating the snow nicely. However, there was evidence of a slab avalanche below my intended route, which ended on Kite Lake. I stared at the route and the ridge, and determined that I could keep myself on low angle slopes most of the way; the push to get to the lower end of the ridge looked a little steep, but snow slopes always look steeper than they really are until you get on them, it seems.

Exchanging trekking poles for ice axe, and with the dogs in the lead, we made our way up the slope. My first goal was above the bowl of the lake, where I would find shallow slopes above the area where the avalanche had occurred. I made my way across these easy slopes and then to the north to hit the last steeper slope to gain the ridge. The dogs were already halfway up the slope, and I could see that the angle wasn't too high, maybe 30 degrees. The snow still felt good, so up I went. As I neared the ridge the snow was a little harder, but it was easy to kick steps with a couple taps of my boots and I felt no need for my crampons. I made the ridge and soon stood on rock.

We continued up the ridge to the west, then northwest, and eventually reached Democrat's large "sub-summit" plateau. A direct walk on rocks, dirt and the occasional snow patch brought us to the summit at 11:50. It was a little windy on the summit and the dogs were complaining, so after a clothing adjustment for the descent we started down at 12:00. I wanted to descend the standard route, so we headed across the plateau to the east. A fierce wind kicked up just before we dropped off the edge of the east ridge, and I was glad I didn't climb up that way.

I saw numerous glissade tracks, and I followed the best I could. The snow was not quite in the best condition for glissading; while it was soft on the surface, just below the surface were frozen chunks that had formed during the previous runs. Pepper had never experienced a glissade before, and he followed right behind me, almost climbing on top of me at one point. Every time I stopped and turned around, he was right there. Jake had seen all that and wasn't impressed, he just followed his own path, in front of me of course.

Once we were at the bottom of the Kite Lake valley we followed paths of least resistance across the snowfields and bare shoulders of grass, dirt and rock. I was worried that I would regret not bringing snowshoes, but even with the warm weather and post-noon snow I only postholed a couple times. More often I experienced "boot-grabbing" snow and only sunk down a couple inches, but enough to throw off my stride. The numerous snowmobile tracks helped the hiking, and one person had the right idea by skiing down, as evidenced by their tracks. Jake and Pepper chased a couple ptarmigans in their winter plumage, and before long we were back on the road. We passed the mine and reached the Jeep at 13:15. I opened the back to throw in my gear and Pepper immediately climbed in and lay on his blanket.

On the drive out, we passed a couple guys hiking up the road, but they didn't have the look of peak climbers. One guy wore a helmet of sorts, and I surmised that they were involved with that mine I just passed. Good thing I didn't park there, though I would have been gone before they reached the mine. Once home, I had the ritual beers and hot bath, and the dogs were both crashed on the couch by the time I was done.