Thy, Mike and I tried Mailbox Peak this weekend – 6 miles round trip with an elevation gain of 4,000 feet. We thought about doing Mt Si but had two dogs along and thought it might be too busy.
I started off with 4 gallon jugs of water plus pack weight ~ 45lbs. After about 20 mins I had to drop two jugs, it’s a steep climb. Thy and Mike schlepped up all 4, but it wasn’t working for me that day. Parts are near vertical and it is definitely a quad killer.
About 3/4 of the way up we started getting into snow and were wading through it by the time we got to the rock slide area, two false summits short of the peak. The dogs weren’t doing well in the deep snow on the steep section and weren’t keen on the rock slide so we called it a day there. That took us over 3 hours. It ended up being just shy of 6 hours by the time we got back down.
I think we bit off a bit more than we could chew, but it was a humbling reminder that there’s still work to do to get ready. We also didn’t have gaiters, a must for snow since my boots kept filling up.
It is very muddy right now, personally I think there are other better options so I wouldn’t recommend it unless you want to romp through the mud.
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