Winter Scramble - Ingalls Peak/South Peak

Left trailhead at around 2pm in sunshine with snow starting to fall around Ingalls Pass and continued to snow on and off the rest of the evening. Lots of people hurrying back down. Set up camp in the basin with others tents and enjoyed the beautiful larches with about 6-12 inches of snow on the slopes.

Left camp at 7am after a beautiful sunrise and headed up to Ingalls Lake.

Good trail and boot path to the lake, then a few boot tracks heading above the lake with bare rock in between snow patches – decent conditions for getting to the saddle. One party on Ingalls beginning to climb on snow free face.

Once we arrived at the saddle, we could see that the north side of Ingalls was buried in snow and ice with fairly deep drifts. We traversed out across the face to get a better look and feel for the conditions but quickly backtracked. We also went down about 100 meters to look around the corner. It was obvious that the snow had covered the scramble route. We decided to eat lunch in the sunshine at the saddle and head back. While we did not get up the summit block, we felt it was a successful winter scramble camping in the basin and making it to the saddle with a brief attempt on the north ridge.

A picture of the north side shown below.