Above the Clouds: A Snowy Summit Hike

Every hiker who's done a winter summit knows the specific kind of gamble it is: the valley forecast and the summit forecast are two different forecasts, and you don't find out which one you're getting until you're already above the tree line.

Reading a mountain forecast for what it doesn't say

A "cloudy" forecast at the trailhead can mean fog at 2,000 meters and clear sky at 3,000 — the cloud layer has an altitude, and a summit hike is really a bet on where that altitude sits relative to the peak. We'd checked three separate models the night before; two disagreed on exactly this.

The break

About forty minutes below the summit, the trail crossed into direct sun without warning — the cloud ceiling was right there, a flat gray floor stretching to the horizon with the peak sitting entirely above it. It's a strange kind of quiet up there: no valley sounds carry through cloud the way they carry through clear air.

What we'd do differently

Start earlier. The break in the clouds held for about ninety minutes before drifting back up to swallow the summit again — we made it down with maybe twenty minutes to spare before we were back in the fog we'd started in.