Preparations:
1-By Quang’s suggestion; the previous week we hiked to the San Antonio Ridge and dropped off water and supplies.
2-We were to get plenty of sleep on Thursday night and Friday afternoon. On Saturday we were to arrive at Jack’s house around 5PM to sleep until 11PM for our departure.
3-On Saturday morning, I was to go with Jack to drop off his car at the trailhead on Baldy so that we would have a ride when we finished the loop.
4-Shen was our designated driver who will drop us off at East Fork Trailhead and we were to start hiking at midnight.

Result:
1-We dropped off water the week before and made our markings to make sure we could find it. It was chilly but a good day for training.
2-We rested very well during the week. But we were exited and nervous on Saturday afternoon to get much sleep.
3-Jack’s car was dropped off and we stopped by the ranger station to see if there was any new information. She recommended that we bring our crampons and said that there was a chance of rain/snow.
4-Shen picked us up promptly at 21:00 and when he dropped us off at midnight said: “Last chance! This is your last chance of turning back! I’m heading home now…”
We thanked him for the ride and found his last call rather amusing.

We started our hike at 00:10 and we moved at a fierce pace. Even though it was a cold night; we started to sweat due to the hard hike. We were determined to peak Iron Mountain before dawn, so we hiked non-stop for 3 hours before our first break at Allison Trail saddle. We reached Iron Mountain peak pre-dawn in 6 hours and saw clouds moving above and under us.

We moved east to the San Antonio ridge where there was plenty of route finding. This proved to be much harder than we expected. There were half a dozen class 3 sections. Luckily there was sunlight through the clouds, and we were wearing plenty of layers to fight the cold wind. At the end of a big class 3 drop, I found a map in a zip-lock bag that contained the information of 3 other hikers attempting I2B last year. I wondered if they made it to Baldy. (http://www.ax2groin.com/iron_baldy.html)

After many ups and downs, peaks after peaks, we wondered when West Baldy was going to be visible. There were clouds that blocked our view to the east.
We passed both Notches and though Baldy should be close by. At around 11:00 we counted our time and though we were doing great. Then Quang told us we were about 3 and 1/2 hours from West Baldy.

My energy level had been slowly decreasing for the last 5 hours and I was starting to feel beat to exhaustion. Due to the cold weather, I was running out of food though we still had 2 liters of water left. Jack gave me a power-bar and I rested while I eagerly chewed the frozen brick.

Just when we expected to see West Baldy and the supplies we left last week; we saw another peak. This destroyed our morality. I was driven to think: “there is no way to figure out where we were or how far it was going to take. So I’m going to move at my best sluggish rate possible. Hopefully, I will have sufficient energy reserves to reach West Baldy today.”

When we finally saw a huge uphill; I said: “West Baldy!!!”, but again it was too low to be the right peak. We pushed our way through thorny bushes, around low pine trees, and walked in and out of snow patches. Our quads were burning, so we moved very slowly and took frequent breaks. Very slowly we overcame this hill, and on the next hill we became much exited to see our supplies marked by a stick, even though I still had over a liter of water. When we finally reached our supplies; we found out that the water from last week was frozen hard and we were thankful that we still had liquid water.

We made it to West Baldy, and then to Old Baldy. The wind there was brutal, but we were content on finishing all that uphill that we sat down to eat our frozen bars.
On our way down, the temperature became warmer and the sun actually came out. Quang spotted 4 bighorns chewing on the vegetation close by, and we stood there watching them while they stared back. I guess they knew we were harmless. Besides, we didn’t have the strength to hike uphill after them. We finished the hike in record time of 15:30 with only the casualty of Quang’s sunglasses.

I2B marked the end of the 2005 season, it also made me scared of future hikes. I hope we do not have to suffer through a hike like this ever again.

So when do we go skiing?