TNAB Trip report for Teneriff, June 12 2003

Date: June 12, 2003
Hike: Teneriff
Route: Logging road to trail, straight up the trail, and then straight back down the trail again, with 2 summersaults in the middle.
Attendees: Larry, Jason, Matt, Gretchen, Dan, Maren, Sherry, Bruce, Mark S and Mark D
Comments: This thing is at least as steep as I remembered. Much MUCH faster coming down the trail rather than the logging road!

Back to the TNAB home page.

Photo Credits: Matt K

Dan's Pics:

Matt's Hike Summary: Riding the Teneriff Escalator

Well, riding isn't quite the way to phrase it. Teneriff, for the unitiated, just puts mailbox to shame for sustained steep climb. If you're scratching your head thinking "long logging road? steep? what??" you missed the trail; it's just before the stream, maybe a mile up the road. The trail does get a little better established every year, but it's still very much a climbers trail, and wastes little energy on those switchback things. At one point the rate of climb on my alti-watch pegged 70 feet/min UP, which was nothing compared to the 140 feet/min DOWN we got later. but I'm getting ahead of myself. We had a small-medium sized group which mostly topped out by 8. Summit was cool and grey, decent views of Glacier, and the base of Rainier. The wind was a tad nippy but kept the mosquitos at bay. For the first time we elected to skip the logging road on descent and just take the knee punishment of going back down the 'trail' we'd come up. This went fine and well until about half way down when I hit a sharp corner, and, for reasons I still don't understand, failed to turn. But suddenly there was no earth for my feet to grab, and no trees for my hands. The mountain slope was rather steep and slightly brushy / rocky; I tucked into a roll to keep from breaking head/arms/legs and the world went by very quickly green!brown!grey!brown!green!branch!leaf!dirt! After a couple revolutions it was apparent that the rotation rate was _not_ slowing down. bad sign, so at the next tree contact I hooked out with a leg and came to a halt, mostly upside down in the brush. nothing broken, just a flesh wound or two. too bad no one got it on film. Rest of the hike out was uneventful and we were at the cars by a little past 9 - saving at *least* an hour of road slogging.