Mt Dana

Anyone been up Mt Dana recently? Was supposed to climb it with a few friends a couple of weeks ago on the way back from Mt Russell, but weather was bad. Thought I'd make a quick trip down there tomorrow before the weather gets bad again; which is what's forecast for the week. Wondering if there's any snow up there. Just thinking about doing the class 2 route.

Thanks

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from_mars
Anyone been up Mt Dana recently? Was supposed to climb it with a few friends a couple of weeks ago on the way back from Mt Russell, but weather was bad. Thought I'd make a quick trip down there tomorrow before the weather gets bad again; which is what's forecast for the week. Wondering if there's any snow up there. Just thinking about doing the class 2 route.

Thanks

Last I heard there should still be some some on Mt. Dana from the storm that came through recently. And there will be more snow coming this week:

SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY - HANFORD CA
239 PM PDT SAT OCT 10 2009

CAZ089>099-111100-
WEST CENTRAL SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY-EAST CENTRAL SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY-
SOUTHWESTERN SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY-SOUTHEASTERN SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY-
MARIPOSA MADERA AND FRESNO COUNTY FOOTHILLS-
TULARE COUNTY FOOTHILLS-KERN COUNTY MOUNTAINS-
SIERRA NEVADA FROM YOSEMITE TO KINGS CANYON-
TULARE COUNTY MOUNTAINS-INDIAN WELLS VALLEY-
SOUTHEASTERN KERN COUNTY DESERT-
239 PM PDT SAT OCT 10 2009

...WET WEATHER OVER THE AREA MONDAY NIGHT THROUGH WEDNESDAY...

THE CENTRAL CALIFORNIA INTERIOR WILL SEE A SIGNIFICANT CHANGE TO A
WET WEATHER PATTERN NEXT WEEK. A LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM WILL APPROACH
THE WEST COAST ON MONDAY. THIS SYSTEM IS EXPECTED TO BRING COOLER
TEMPERATURES AND THE POTENTIAL FOR SIGNIFICANT PRECIPITATION DUE
TO EMBEDDED MOISTURE FROM THE REMNANTS OF RECENT SUPER TYPHOON
MELOR.

HEAVIEST PRECIPITATION WILL BE OVER THE NORTHERN HALF OF THE FORECAST
AREA...INCLUDING THE CENTRAL SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY...THE SOUTHERN SIERRA
NEVADA...AND THE SURROUNDING FOOTHILLS MAINLY NORTH OF KINGS
CANYON. THE BULK OF THE PRECIPITATION WILL OCCUR TUESDAY AND TUESDAY
NIGHT WITH LINGERING SHOWERS ON WEDNESDAY.

CURRENTLY...RAINFALL TOTALS ARE ESTIMATED TO RANGE FROM AROUND 1
INCH OVER THE CENTRAL SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY...2 TO 3 INCHES OVER THE
FOOTHILLS OF THE SOUTHERN SIERRA NEVADA...AND FROM 3 TO 5 INCHES
OVER THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS OF THE SOUTHERN SIERRA NEVADA. IMPACTS
FROM THIS RAINFALL COULD INCLUDE URBAN AND SMALL STREAM
FLOODING...AND DEBRIS FLOWS ON RECENT WILDFIRE BURN SCARS WHERE
HEAVIEST AMOUNTS OCCUR.

THIS SYSTEM WILL BE FAIRLY WARM WITH SNOW LEVELS EXPECTED TO
REMAIN HIGH...MAINLY ABOVE 9000 FEET. WINDS FOR MONDAY THROUGH
WEDNESDAY ARE EXPECTED TO BE BREEZY WITH THIS SYSTEM...WITH STRONG
WINDS POSSIBLE OVER THE SIERRA NEVADA CREST. TREES WEAKENED FROM
RECENT FIRES COULD ALSO BE DOWNED BY THESE WINDS.

OUTDOOR ENTHUSIASTS...ESPECIALLY CLIMBERS AND PEOPLE IN THE BACK
COUNTRY...SHOULD BE PREPARED FOR THE CHANGE TO WET AND BREEZY
CONDITIONS NEXT WEEK. MOTORISTS SHOULD CHECK ROAD
CONDITIONS...ESPECIALLY OVER HIGHER PASSES NEXT WEEK.

$$

DS

Went up yesterday and climbed Mt Dana. There is some snow up there. Not much, but what there is, seems to be sitting right on parts of the trail, making for slippery footing in some spots, and in others, obscuring the the thin trail altogether. A good exercise in route finding. It was a beautiful day though, and the views up there are well worth the climb, though coming from SF (sea level) the same morning, made it a bit of an adventure. The view of Mono Lake is awesome, as is the Lyell Glacier and all the rest of the Yosemite wilderness you can see from up there.

It was about 1 degree C in the parking lot by the east entrance at 9am (drove from SF). It got windier as the day wore on, and a couple of guys on top who were testing stoves for a backpacking company, said there was likely to be quite a bit of new snow over the course of this week. I got the impression from a ranger that if they get a good dumping of snow they'll probably close 120. Some friends of mine have been wanting to climb Mt Dana, but by the time they could went to this one's birthday or that one's anniversary, the earliest was next week. Fortunately, I checked the weather, and said it's now, or wait till next year. A long drive up, and a long drive back, but much better than going all the way to Lone Pine for Whitney or Russell.

Funny, for a mountain 13,000ft+, it gets climbed as an up and back (churn and burn) quite often. It is the same way that I did it in August. We also did it in June when there was plenty enough snow to glissade. It's a great mountain with or without snow (it is a much quicker return when there is snow, I have to say -- twice as fast when you don't have to slog down the face in scree)

B

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Bee
Funny, for a mountain 13,000ft+, it gets climbed as an up and back (churn and burn) quite often.

It's a 3 mile hike. Why wouldn't it get a lot of hikers?

It looks horrific.

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Old Dude

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mrcondron
It looks horrific.

It does?

Yes it does.

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Old Dude

It's really not too bad a climb, if you are ready for the elevation. I could not start at sea level and go up in one day. I assume snow would make it tougher.

Bill-e-g and I did it a few years ago. Drove up from San Jose (elevation about 1') jumped out of the car, hit the peak, and drove back to SJ. We don't look at all happy in the pictures.
It is an easy hike except for the elevation.

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Old Dude

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bpnjensen
I assume snow would make it tougher.

I did it with snow. In some ways the snow made it easier. But by afternoon the snow was getting soft and that didn't help.

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bpnjensen
It's really not too bad a climb, if you are ready for the elevation. I could not start at sea level and go up in one day. I assume snow would make it tougher.

To a zeroth-order approximation, one experiences a 3% drop in air pressure (also, air density and oxygen intake per breath) for every 1k (ft) elevation change up to15k:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-altitude-pressure-d_462.html
Therefore, at 10k, one is inhaling only about 70% as much oxygen per ‘standard breath’ (actually, per unit volume) as one does at sea level.

Of course, this is not the whole story as one still needs to transfer the oxygen into the blood stream. Below are some useful discussions of altitude sickness and the physiological response of the body to high altitudes:
http://www.princeton.edu/~oa/safety/altitude.html
http://www.sportsci.org/encyc/altitaccl/altitaccl.html
http://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/acclimatization-to-altitude.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2009 10:56AM by szalkowski.

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Bee
Funny, for a mountain 13,000ft+, it gets climbed as an up and back (churn and burn) quite often. It is the same way that I did it in August. We also did it in June when there was plenty enough snow to glissade. It's a great mountain with or without snow (it is a much quicker return when there is snow, I have to say -- twice as fast when you don't have to slog down the face in scree)

B

Would crampons be worth the weight on the climb up?

Tell me about glissading-- do you use an ice axe? should one get instruction on this technique? do you use your pack as pad or something else?
I have done something similar years ago coming down Mt. Shasta but it seems that we sort of "skied" down in a crouch, which in retrospect seems like a good way to damage an ankle.

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan

Dana looks like a great "training hike" for a beginning mountain walker. Probably good training for Whitney.
I have searched this forum for "Dana" back 6 years and surprised to find only a few discusions. Did I miss some?

<http://yosemitenews.info/forum/read.php?1,14075,14075#msg-14075>;

<http://yosemitenews.info/forum/read.php?1,5547,5551#msg-5551>;



Of course, SummitPost has some info:
http://www.summitpost.org/view_object.php?object_id=150284

Interestingly, Google ranks the following above SummitPost if you search "Mt. Dana hike" :
A detailed (beginner) trip report from 1998

http://kevingong.com/Hiking/MountDana.html

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan

Quote
Frank Furter

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Bee
Funny, for a mountain 13,000ft+, it gets climbed as an up and back (churn and burn) quite often. It is the same way that I did it in August. We also did it in June when there was plenty enough snow to glissade. It's a great mountain with or without snow (it is a much quicker return when there is snow, I have to say -- twice as fast when you don't have to slog down the face in scree)

B

Would crampons be worth the weight on the climb up?

Tell me about glissading-- do you use an ice axe? should one get instruction on this technique? do you use your pack as pad or something else?
I have done something similar years ago coming down Mt. Shasta but it seems that we sort of "skied" down in a crouch, which in retrospect seems like a good way to damage an ankle.

We were lucky that the snow was just perfect when we went up 21 June, I believe -- soft enough to plant a step, firm enough to not post hole, so no crampons needed. EEEK has gone up earlier and I believe that he had an ice axe, but did not need crampons(?) To generalize, one would normally use an ice axe (with prior instruction) when glissasding, but my experience was that Dana has a gentle enough slope AND the snow was soft enough that there was never a threat of reaching terminal velocity on our trip. For Shasta, I used the crouch method, because the area I was climbing was steep enough to keep the momentum going, but for Dana, I brought glissade pants and just slid down as if riding on a tobbagan or snow disk (sooo much fun!)

B

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brought glissade pants

Are these substantially different from insulated ski shells??? A whole new outfit to glissage?

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2009 03:08PM by Frank Furter.

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Frank Furter

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brought glissade pants

Are these substantially different from insulated ski shells??? A whole new outfit to glissage?

No, no -- they are OLD shell pants that drop down the food chain to "glissade" status, meaning that I don't care if they get ruined.

B

Looks like there are actually "new" glissade pants marketed at REI and other sources.

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan

Possibly useful ice axe instructional video:

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan

The stats are a bit daunting: 3,000ft in three miles -- a thousand feet per mile, same as the Mountaineer's Route.

It is not an "official" trail, so it is almost never mentioned in the guide books; people just don't know that it exists. (I had it all to myself after about the first mile, when the others turned back)

B