Telescope Peak October Hike
12/10/2008I’m a bad blogger. haha, I have so many trips that i haven’t blogged about! like, Thailand, Telescope Peak hiking, Yellowstone, Glacier National Park, The Grand Tetons, Banff NP, Columbia Icefields…. but hey! It’s a sneak peak 
into what will come out of me :). All of these photos are taken by Yohana and Alvaro. I didn’t bring my camera
So here we go Death Valley’s Telescope Peak October Hike:
This weekend two brave soul’s and I ventured into an adventure we had already completed during the summer expecting it to be similar, which it was…. Until we got to Mahogany Flats. Yes, we started seeing small drops of ice, oh yea. SNOW! So as we are getting closer to the top we didn’t expect that much snow! or snow period! aaaaah!
Our descent up the hill towards the trailhead was exiting! The 60 degree hill was rough! covered in 3-6 inches of snow! I’m driving the 4Runner up the hill, then suddenly we get stuck! No problem time to kick in the 4 wheel drive. I started in H4 made good ground then bam! Got stuck again! I let alvaro drive the rest, he popped it into L4 and bam! Stuck again! So we had to do manual road construction 
So after a few minutes of digging through the snow and shoving rocks under the tires we managed to make it up the hill. It was extremely cold, totally not what we expected. It was about 1:30am and it was around 20 Degrees. Yes Very cold, we looked around the sites and alvaro suggested to camp out in the snow, I opposed and we slept in the car.
We woke up around 8 am, freezing of course… Ate breakfast and headed towards the trailhead.
This was Yohanas time to shine, Alvaro and I had already did the Telescope Peak Hike and Yohana was next!
Our hike began pretty good, it’s high elevation climbs for the first 2 hours. The first 10 minutes into the hike you already get an awesome view…
About 2 miles into the hike you start to turn on the other side of the first mountain, exposing the peak. This is great inspiration or high intimidation, why? Because the peak is so far away but the Telescope Peak summit is only 7 miles away. 
Telescope Peak from Francisco on Vimeo.
We broke down the Telescope Peak hike into 3 parts, HARD, EASY, HARDER. Hard being the first one and a half hours, easy being the next 45 minutes, hard being the final push into the top.
There was so much snow, the areas where the sun hit the least the snow was as high as 1 foot! AH! yes, toes were COLD! I was wearing 85% wool socks from REI and they helped so much. I couldn’t imagine my toes without them
These photos are what we considered to be the EASY part.
The easy part wasn’t just easy, it was also beutiful. It seemed like it was an image you’d get from reading a book, the smell of pine trees in the air, snow coming down landing on your face, not too cold but cold enough for you to get the feeling that it’s real. Absolutely gorgeous, one of the most relaxing and peaceful scene’s i’ve been in a while.
Yohana and I
This is Alvaro, His hair was frozen 
These pictures conclude the EASY part: 
Unfortunately we didnt get alot of pictures of the HARDER part due to the weather conditions.
Almost there!
When we arrived at the peak it was 10 Degrees!!!!! Did we mention we couldn’t drink water. Our plattapus hoses were frozen. We stayed at the peak for about 25 minutes boiled some water, prepared a mountain house meal, then began to hike down! Quick! It was freezing. Plus it started snowing really bad…
Visibility at the summit was at 0!
At the summit: Again 0 Visibility at 11,331 feet.
We didn’t get any pictures on the hike down, It was pretty much the same, the sun was hiding behind clouds and eventually down behind Mt. Whitney. The moon came up and supplied us with enough light.
Our Flashlights helped us in the last 30 minutes of the hike. We finished at 7:10. A total of 6 hours and 40 minutes! Round Trip, 14 miles. The highest point in Death Valley National Park!
WOOOHOO! HOME!
Finally! We made it back! We asked a lady to take our photo, she was so cold she could barely push the button on the camera
This year has been great! I’ve traveled so much, Will post more soon!
I’ll be posting this on My Outdoor Adventure profile too!
http://myoutdooradventure.com/members/francisco
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