From Bakerville Exit up North Ridge

Kelso Mountain is over one thousand feet lower than it’s fourteener neighbors, Grays and Torreys. Ken and I decided to hike a mountain that didn’t require too much. This is certainly true in summer, but Kelso was much more difficult than Grays or Torreys in the conditions we had. The snow finally came to the mountains and even though this was technically before the winter solstice, these conditions were quite wintery. In fact, these fall conditions were more difficult than the winter conditions that I experienced in early 1999.
 
We drove up the Bakerville exit and decided to see how high we could drive. It turned out that, even though the road was snowpacked, we were able to make it up very high. Instead of parking at the turnoff to Grizzly Gulch, we decided to park at a bend in the road. We did want SOME distance to hike. We began hiking up the road. Our route was going to be the prominent north ridge on Kelso. We decided to hike up the Stevens Gulch road as past the first mine, and look for the clearing that lead to the ridge. It was very easy to find. We left the road and began bushwacking through the drainage and up the mountains shoulder to the ridge. This was by far the most difficult part of the hike. The snow was very powdery and slippery. Once we broke out of treeline, the climbing was much easier, but it got really cold. Ken’s thermometer read 4 degrees at the coldest. It very windy on the ridge too. We were wearing all of our gear at this point.
 
The ridge was really picturesque at this point. It looked really extreme. Speaking of extreme, the view of Torreys from here is amazing. This ridge is definitely the best spot to view Torreys. It looks like a totally different mountain from this angle. There were very strong winds on Torreys as evidenced by the plumes of snow blowing off the summit. Actually, there were really nasty clouds at the head of Grizzly Gulch around Grizzly Peak. Torreys was periodically surrounded by the clouds as well, but they seemed to burn up before arriving at Kelso, thankfully.
 
We continued up the long ridge and finally crested the summit, expecting the winds to be really hard but, to our surprise, it was very calm on the top. It felt really nice in the warm sun. We explored around on the summit for 45 minutes or so. We wandered down to the other side of the summit, horseplayed, and even took a short nap. We bundled up for the hike down. On the way up, I had realized that my ice axe popped out and was laying somewhere along the route. We headed back down looking for the axe. Along the way, I slipped and fell and bashed my leg. It really hurt, but left no permanent damage. Once we got back into the trees, we plunge-stepped quickly down the mountain in the thick snow. I found the ice axe almost completely buried just above the drainage. I’m glad I didn’t have to replace it! Because of the close call, I sewed ice axe loops into my pack the following week. We were glad to get back to the road, surprised at how difficult the peak actually was.