We wanted to take advantage of the Labor day holiday weekend to do this. Unfortunately the weather forecast wasn't pretty. But since we planned to do this finally, we didn't want to stop it and instead chose to do it as if we had no other choice. Of course the results were mixed.
We planned to start earlier to go and get the permit as soon as it opens up for the day and start the hike soon after that. Things got a delayed start and we started the hike only after 10:30 AM. Our goal was to reach Lunch Counter and then come back.
We couldn't even see the mountain at all anywhere from the Trail head. We could see it from the road in the morning, but as we got closer to the mountain, the cloud cover totally blanketed the mountain, and we just went with trail assuming (correctly) that the mountain was in a particular direction.
One thing that we expected was some fresh snow which would have fallen in the 24 to 48 hrs prior to that day. But, what we didn't forecast was the distance that we had to walk on the glacier. We weren't prepared for it, but went ahead with the plan that we will turn back if things are not comfortable.
After walking on the ridge for sometime, we had to walk on the glacier. I had a micro spike, and my friends didn't have anything. One guy didn't even have a hiking pole. Micro spike didn't help much either.We chose to walk carefully and slowly, following some foot marks of people using crampons etc. We managed to go quite a bit, about 500 ft of elevation from Lunch counter. This whole time, we couldn't see the mountain.
A couple of FS people were walking on the trail, checking on permits and were giving tips to people. We met them earlier in the hike and again on the glacier when it was almost like a whiteout with clouds all over and almost zero visibility. They were still going up and I checked the GPS and we were at 8800 ft. Since it was getting closer to our cut off time to turn back and there couldn't have been much of a view from Lunch counter even if we made it, we decided to turn back.
While it was a bit disappointing to turn back without reaching Lunch counter, we felt good in going closer to it and to make it back safely as we didn't have proper gear for such a hike. The consolation was that we could start seeing the mountain, at least partially as we were coming down. But, we could see that only after couple of hours. That gave us a good feeling that we made the right decision to turn back when we did.
