Murdock Mountain Summit

This was a good idea for a second hike of the day after Bald Mountain Peak since it is the other side of the pass and is very high. The only problem was the weather, scattered thunder storms and at this altitude, snow.

The weather was so bad when we finished Bald Mountain Peak (we got sprinkled with rain and snow on the way down) I decided to skip this hike altogether. I did want to explore a bit and take pictures so I left my day pack in the car and took only my camera and a water bottle to walk around the Bald Mountain Peak trailhead area.

We explored around the pass for a bit, I wanted to take a nice panorama of Bald Mountain so we ventured to the south near Murdock Mountain. We climbed up the talus enough to get above the trees at the pass but thunder and precipitation kept us from going very far up. As we skirted the trees to the west the weather started clearing up and the mountain looked trivial. We started for the summit near the west end picking our way up the not too steep talus mountain side. The talus varied greatly from small boulders to grassy spots with some soil. Nutmeg had a bit of trouble getting across the uneven surface in the rougher spots. There were a few patches of low trees here and there but nothing to provide any real shelter.

As is usually the case, the improving weather started turning worse as we got close to the summit. There were a few cairns at the high spot but it was hard to tell which one was the highest. Just as I was judging the piles thunder started in the distance. I unleashed Nutmeg and we hurried off the Mountain. Nutmeg had a hard time keeping up with me and we started getting a significant amount of snow falling on us. A few times the talus got wet from rain and snow and became very slippery. Luckily it dried out as fast as it got we and we were able to get down to the the tall trees fairly quickly. I was quite nervous about lightning and felt very exposed on the talus mountainside.

As you can see from the map above, we looped around and saw a lot of the mountain and pass area. The pass has a lot of interesting but hikable terrain with many low rock ledges around the trees. BY the time we got back to the track at the Bald Mountain Peak trail head we were fairly wet and cold.

GPS Tracks: kml gpx