Mount Wilson, 7,070' - December 2, 2012

We started out at 6:15 a.m., just before dawn.  The morning light on Mount Wilson (on the right) was outstanding.  The first bit was on a trail, but that ended at the mouth of the canyon, seen approximately in the middle of the picture.  From there on the approach looked like this:

The wind was strong here.  I'm shown cresting a sandstone "beehive" along the route upwards.

Here we begin the ascent of the Hidden Bowl by climbing steep slabs of sandstone.  We'll gain over 2000' vertical feet here.

Hugging the rock while traversing a narrow crack.

The summit was completely covered with clouds.  The wind was blowing in excess of 20 mph, with gusts well into the 30 mph range.  Fortunately, the only precipitation was just the dripping of the cloud, which didn't make the sandstone as slippery as it could have if it were actually raining.

The layer of clouds can be seen clearly here once we dropped down off the summit for a descent off the backside of the peak.

Back down we go through the rocky canyon.  The canyon is quite narrow, with sandstone boulders, some as big as a house, which have to be climbed (or down climbed) to make it through.

We exited the canyon and made it back to our cars by 1:50 p.m., which made for a fast day on the mountain.  The trip was just shy of ten miles total, with over 5100' of elevation gain.  Mount Wilson is one of the Triple Crown peaks of Red Rock Canyon, with the Rainbow Wall and Bridge Mountain being the other two.  People from all over the world come here to climb.

Photos courtesy of me, Kay, and possibly HWS.