Mt. Silliman (11188 ft - 3410 m)
(Rudy, Artur & Meri) 


Mount Silliman is usually an easy hike, but we had read many reports talking about bad weather at the last minute. We took all our snow gear, including crampons, snow shoes, shovels, ice ax and beacons and got ready for any possible bad event. 


We arrived at Sequoia National Park in around 4 hours, and a while later we were already at Lodgepole taking our self-issued wilderness permits. There were very few people and way too much snow (more than 1 meter on the parking lot), but the weather seemed really good. Actually, it was warmer than we expected and with so much snow we thought that the avalanche hazard could become significant. 


The snow helped us to walk well with snow shoes for most of the way up, not too soft, not too hard. Except for some dry spots at the begining of the trail, all was packed with snow. We used the GPS to find our way up because there were no tracks that could help us when we started following Silliman creek. Thanks to other trip reports found on the Internet we had the way points well defined and could get to the meadow without much difficulties. We found the way up more strenuous than we expected, maybe because we hadn't been training a lot lately. It took us 4 hours to get to the camp, at the bend  of Silliman creek, just below the slabs. The place is really flat and big, and the snow was perfect for camping. We found a part of the creek that was accessible so we didn't need to melt snow. In front of us we could see the slabs and a nice couloir. Maybe for another year... 


Inside the tent we were below zero Celsius. At night, the sky was clear and the moon was really small, like a melon slice, so the stars were especially bright.

The next day we woke up at 6am, already with daylight. We hiked up to Silliman Lake around 30 meters to the right side of the creek. The snow covering the creek seemed to be ready to fall in form of avalanche at any time, so we made sure to be well to the right and avoid being caught in the worst case scenario. We had our beacons turned on. We walked with snow shoes but changed poles for ice ax. After arriving to the lake, which was completely covered with snow, we saw the peak for the first time. There was still a steep hike in front of us and the snow was becoming harder, so we changed snow shoes for crampons. At this point Rudy started having problems with his crampons. For some strange reason the crampons disassembled themselves when he made a step. As the snow had becomen quite hard and the way became really steep, he decided to go back to camp. Artur and Meri continued for around half an hour until the peak. It was around 10:20am when we arrived. The day was becoming really sunny so we covered ourselves with plenty of sunscreen. There was almost no wind. We made our entry into the peak log and went down quickly to catch up with Rudy. With several nice and long glisades, we arrived at camp in one and a half hours. There was a marmot close to us. It had made its personal snow cave. We had plenty of time to have lunch, dry the tent a little and rest. Then, we changed to snow shoes and poles and made our way back to the parking lot in 2 hours. 

Pictures used by permision from Rudy Ortega