Mt. St. Benedict - June 18th 2022

 After getting my hopes raised and dashed at a Wedge Mountain summit again, I went with my backup of Mt. St. Benedict, a mountain Coen, Sam and I had tried to go up a few months back and had turned around due to snow. I wanted to do the summit, the north summit as well as Murdo Mountain all at once but that didn't exactly happen.

Coen couldn't make it but Sam decided to come and we headed out at ~11:30. We drove out and this time we drove all the way up Murdo Creek FSR to the trailhead, which shaved off a ton of time, elevation and boring logging road slog. We hit the trail around 12:30. It was an overcast, foggy day but below the clouds where we parked it wasn't too bad.

The first kilometer to the lake was super fast. It was very different from last time because there was no snow this time and the lake was completely frozen. After this it slowed down a lot as we started to ascend. Sam hadn't been hiking much and she was having a rough time. We made our way up to the saddle and at that point we hit a ton of snow and fog. We passed a group on their way down and they told us the trail was hard to follow but I assured them I had my GPS. They were right though as the trail was quite difficult to ascertain most of the way through the snow.

The saddle is where I was planning on going up the north summit after coming down from the summit proper but at the speed Sam and I were going as well as the time of day I made the decision internally to not pursue it this day and come back at a later time. We stopped for lunch at the saddle, it was around 1:30, Sam was having a difficult time and she had hoped this would give her more energy.

After the saddle the trail continues generally upward but not as steep. There was a lot of snow so we donned our microspikes. I found myself checking my GPS frequently because of the fog and snow, I didn't want to get off trail. Before too long we made it to the top. There was no views but a full unopened beer! Wow! We cracked it and enjoyed it. Because we already had lunch we didn't loiter too long before descending.

The only eventful thing on the way down is me trying to navigate a tree well and trusting a step that I punched through and stretching my groin painfully. I was worried I was hurt but it turned out alright. As of writing on Monday AM I have a bit of tightness in my left knee but nothing serious. Sam was worried however because of the sounds I made....

We got back to the truck at ~3:45 and drove home. Round trip C2C was ~3.5 hours. Fun times!