WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Off the Trails: Climbing the Beast of Mt. Williamson on an Empty Stomach

Episode Date: November 1, 2025

Join Nicole Sighiartau and Storm Drexler as they discuss some of their wildest experiences in the great outdoors! This week they chat about Nicole's climbing adventure on Mt. Williamson with minimal food. 

We're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Welcome to Off the Trails. It's me, Storm Drexler. And I'm Nicole Sigiratow and we'll be your adventure buddies every week as we discuss some of our wildest stories from our outdoor endeavors. This week, we're going to talk about my climb on Mount Williamson this past summer. Yeah, but not every week though. Didn't I miss last week? You did miss last week.

It was a solo episode. Let me say, that's my fault. I was extremely busy last week. I had papers and stuff out the wazoo. That's okay. I get it. I'm a medical person. Trying to make new friends.

Yeah. Pretty sad and lonely in general, you know. If you guys know me, I need as many friends as I can get. Strum has no friends. No one to talk to. Matt Williamson. Is that what the Mounts called?

Mount Williamson, yes. Sorry, I thought you said... Nicole just gave me like, what are you talking about? I was like, didn't he two seconds ago? You said that was the topic of today's story? I thought you said Matt Williamson. And I was like, is this a person I should know?

Williamson. Mount Williamson. But before we get into that, trail marker time. Trail markers. My trail marker is yesterday. I was at Bobby's Lake. I was walking around. I was chilling.

And I saw like, I kid you not, like 12 deer in a pack. Oh my gosh, 12? There were a lot of them. It was dusk. It was evening. But there were so many. And they were all trekking along. And I was like, oh.

And they looked over. And they didn't move. And I got pretty close. I was just like, whoa, this is crazy. But they were all together, and then they left all together. They didn't, like, scatter into whatever back to their own existence is. They left in a little herd. They're like, got out of here.

It wasn't like a family or anything. I didn't see any, like, youngans. It was like a whole little, like, friend group. Oh, that's fun. They were like, let's roll out. I have a funny, well, not very funny, but I have a deer story from this week, which I guess can be my trail marker. Andrew scared me to death.

Oh. Yeah, so we were sitting in his car in a parking lot. and you can look out at a field, and oftentimes there's, like, deer that walk by. No kidding. No kidding. And so I see one, like, out of the corner of my eye on the left-hand side, and it's, like, walking around, then it goes around the front of the car, and then goes straight. And so I was like, oh, it's a deer. And then Andrew all of a sudden goes, don't move.

Don't say anything. Don't. And I was like, what? And he's like, it might come closer. And I was like, what do you mean it might come closer? It's a deer. It's afraid of us. And we're in a car.

And he's like, that's not a deer. So, of course, I'm like petrified. And I'm staring at this thing. I was like, you know what? Maybe it's not a deer because it looks kind of big. It looks more like a cow, but almost a horse. And the way it was like moving, it was odd. And then Andrew goes, it only has two legs.

And I was like, no, it doesn't, Andrew. It's a deer. he convinced me it was some sort of other animal so for five minutes I was freaking out and I was like let's leave let's go and we're literally like three minutes away from campus like we're super close I was like I just want to leave oh man the strange creature you go you're about these yeah Like a deer's going to look at you one day Crack his head to the side and then it's going to stand up on its hind legs Yeah And you're not going to live more than the next 30 seconds after that So yeah that wasn't fun

But I guess that could be my trail marker Yeah that's funny It was a very clear night So we looked at some stars which is great But then yeah the deer I was that same time I was on a drive This other person which is where we got to Bobese And I like I was driving

And I stopped the car and I was like, oh no, because I realized something about earlier on Boys Only, there was something we needed to, like, edit out. And I thought we didn't for a second. I was like, oh, but I didn't like, we weren't talking about that at all. I just realized that. And I went, oh, no, and I slam on the brakes. And the person I'm writing was like, oh, my God, what is it? She got so afraid.

And she was like, what's wrong? And I was like, oh, it has nothing to do with our current conversation at all. It just me realized something from earlier. That's funny. But we actually had already edited that out. I was just dumb. Nice. You know, I had a moment like that recently where I thought I didn't edit something out of off the trails. I was like, yikes, snikis. Yikes. Snikis. That could be on the air right now. You're the first person to ever say that.

No, I'm not. I know. I think I know. Maybe I am. Yikes Snikis. Yikes. Yikes Snikis. Okay. Well, let's like yikesnikes get into the story. All right. I'll see y'all next week. I'm out. All right, Wilm Mountainson. Mount William's. So we talked about Mount Williamson before. Briefly.

Briefly. I talked about it in my summer recap, but we're going to do the full story here. Mount Williamson. The entirety of the tale unveiled. So it is 14,380 feet tall. It is the second highest. That's last 80 feet, man. Killer.

Oh, yeah. I believe it's the second highest, 14er in California. It's in the Sierra Nevada range, so like where Mount Whitney is, you know, the rest. There's like 14 in the range or so. Anyway, it is a beast. Let me just say. It's a very long approach, a mountain that is not climbed very frequently at all. You can get to the, when you get to the top, there's like a trail log and you can see people who write their names down if they get to the summit. And we were standing on the summit on July, sorry, June 29th of this past year.

And there were only five other people who had climbed it this season before us. Oh, interesting. So it's very difficult to make it to the top. You look like you were going to say something and then you didn't. No, carry on. Okay. Carry on. So. I'm formulating a joke in my head.

You'll hear it in two minutes. Sounds good. So that's just kind of overall context. very difficult mountain and i've wanted to do it probably for the last four or five years my parents have done it several times um and the neighboring peak to mount williamson is mount tindle mount tindle so i had done mount tindle when i was seven no maybe i was eight i was eight um thanks for clarifying it's important for me to to keep them straight so leading up to Williamson my dad and I spent a night up at, or a couple nights up at altitude, we did a little,

we did a little bit of, a little bit of mountain climbing. We did a little day hike the day beforehand up at Cottonwood Lakes, spent the night up there, and then the following night, we spent the night up at the trailhead for Onion Valley. So we were pretty well acclimated, and the next day we start around 6 o'clock in the morning at the trailhead for Williamson. And there was a major flood that ran through the valley at the start of the trail. And so a bunch of the trail was washed out and we were kind of trail finding our way up. That's cool, though.

It is cool, but it's a little inconvenient because you're like, oh, we're going this way. And then you realize that that little path that you were following doesn't go anywhere. So you're like, hey, time to turn around and try a different route. But you go down to this valley and then you switch back up this first really large hill. I would say you probably get like 400, 500, maybe like 600, 700 feet of elevation gain. You top out of the top of this hill. We're like, fantastic. We just covered a lot of elevation.

Maybe it's even more. I'm not good with guesstimating elevation. You really aren't. I really aren't. I really aren't. I really aren't. I can't speak today. I can't speak today.

But so you get to the top of this and you're like, wow, that's awesome. We gain so much elevation. And then the trail goes down. And you're like, well, shoot. So then you drop down about 500 feet. I know that is 500 feet of loss that you get. Sorry. Take down.

What a good movie. Patrick's Girls. Sorry. Anyway, so then you start heading back up this valley. And from here on out, you're going uphill. There's no more downhill. But that decline of 500 feet really takes out of you. No kidding.

Yeah. It's just really depressing. because it's like we came up so far. I would say you go up the first hill of probably like 1,000 to 1,500 feet. You feel triumphant and then you have to give it all back to gravity. Yeah, then you lose 500 and then you keep going up and you top out at Independence Pass. That is the top of the pass before you can start making your way to the left towards like the route up Williamson. Because just getting to Independence Pass is the way that you go to get to Mount Tyndall as well.

well. So it's a very long meandering trail, lots of switchbacks. Going up the pass, we hit some snow, so that was a bit technical because it was kind of early season. And we get to the top of the pass. And my dad was like, well, we should spend the night here. And I was like, no, I want to go a little further because I still feel good. So let's at least drop down to the Williamson bowl. So Mount Williamson is off on the left, tendrils off on the right. The pass is like split in between them sort of. So to get into the Williamson bowl, you go left, you go up a bit more, probably like 300, 400 feet of elevation

gain, and then you drop down into this bowl and it's just like a huge boulder field. But it's filled with moraines though. So when there used to be glaciers over there, the moraines build up rocks. So there's a bunch of... It's the remainder

of... The glacier pushes the rocks into these U-shaped formations. And they create little hibes hills basically. Okay. So to get to Williamson, once you drop down to the bull, you go up and down like three or four of these hills.

No trail. Boley. Basically, basically no trail. But anyway, so we dropped down to the Williamson Bull. We camp there for the night. That was 13 miles of hiking just to get there. To get to the foot. To get to the, not even the base, but like the bull.

Oh, gosh. And we were carrying pretty heavy packs. I believe mine was like 28, 20. 29 pounds. It's in there. Tent. Just one tent. Tents.

Tents. No, one tent. Your sleeping bag. Sleeping pad. Your clothes. Food, which will get into the food of this all. Because that was not fun. We brought crampons because of the snow.

Didn't end up using them. I actually ended up carrying some of my dad's equipment because I was feeling really strong. So I took some of his stuff just to be nice. Good for you. And so anyway. We spent the night there, and we realized we were like, we don't have a whole lot of food. Normally, my dad and I overpack food, but it kind of hit us at the first dinner where we were like, well, there's just isn't a lot because initially we were going to bring up our little camping stove to make dehydrated meals to like boil water and then prepare the food.

And for some reason that morning, we're like, no, let's not do that. We don't want to carry the camping stove. That's extra weight. We'll just carry like bars and sausages that are like dried sausage and trail mix and dried fruit and some regular fruit as well. But basically we realized that night we're like, we don't have a whole lot of food. You're listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. So we eat a very meager dinner in proportion to the amount of calories we had burned the previous day, walking 13 miles, carrying like, 25, 30 pound packs each.

And the next morning, we woke up at, let me get the time correct. We woke up at 3.30 in the morning and we left our tent at 350 to start heading up towards the mountain. 3.30 in the morning is about when I went to bed last night. Nice. Just for reference. Very, very nice. An alpine star is always wise in the mountains. Yes.

We're going to get up and down before the thunderstorms roll in. But Storm wouldn't even have to go to bed. He would just be like, well. Oh, well, time to go. Time to go. I'm awake. So we start off, and as I mentioned, there's not much of a trail where these moraines are. So we're kind of guessing we can see the general direction of the mountain.

But again, it's very dark. No moon. We're relying on our headlamps, and my dad's headlamp dies about an hour into us hiking. So then we're kind of relying on me to shine the way. and you're shooting for this black stain that's leading up towards Mount Williamson because you have to find the black stain to make sure you go up the proper goalie. If you miss the black stain, you go up the wrong goalie. Not a good situation.

You're not going to be able to make it up. So eventually we find the black stain. The sun is coming up at this point. It was a beautiful sunrise. It wasn't very cold at all. Yeah, great weather. Conditions were awesome. But at this point, we're not eating a whole lot.

of food because my dad's like we have to save it we're running low we don't want to run out we may have to spend another night up here and I could just feel it in my body where I was like I am energy depleted like my legs were shaking we were doing some pretty technical climbing up this goalie and I just felt like I didn't have the strength to perform the moves and that's rather frightening because it's like if you fall then you're sliding down this 300 400 foot goalie which is really steep, covered in large boulders and little rocks of scree that you could just slip down. And then to make things worse, there was a snow field in the middle of the goalie as well. Oh, Lord.

So we were walking on the snow for some parts without crampons or anything because my dad was like, we don't need them. We're not going to use them. And I was like, okay, dad, because it was all frozen. So the crampons wouldn't have really done anything anyway. Makes sense. Just because of how hard the snow was. Was this the right?

Was this the goalie with the black? splotch. Yeah, this was the proper goalie. And was that like a marker that I'm in place there? Was that like actual color of the rock formation? Actual color of the rock. Cool. Yeah, it's just stained from minerals, water.

Yeah, that's really cool. It's a great little feature to point it out. So at the top of the goal, you meet the chimney, which is the final portion that then puts you onto the backside of the ridge. And then from the backside of the ridge, it's really close to the summit. But the chimney was an adventure. because it's really hard to wedge yourself between these rocks. I'm just showing Storm a picture right now.

Holy moly. And it's, you have to take your backpack off. No, picture a chimney. Like you're like climbing up between two things. Probably more pressure on the sides than on what's below you. That's what you're doing. You're having to wedge yourself on the sides to get yourself up. And you have to take your backpack off and put your back up against the rock at one point and your feet up against the other side.

Climbing backwards into the sky. Have you seen, have you read the book Secret Keepers? Oh, I have a long time ago. The first chapter climbing backwards into the sky, he finds an alleyway that's thin enough that he can climb up the sides of the buildings that is back to one and his feet to the other building. Wow. That's kind of what you were doing in the chimney of the top of the ridge.

Yeah, kind of. So it was tough, especially just like not feeling strong. I definitely got a bit scared because it's like, I just don't feel as if I'm able to perform these maneuvers to my full capability. Like, it was so scary that my legs were shaking. I was like, I can't control it. They're just so fatigued from trying to, like, your legs have to be really tight when you're pressed up against this chimney. You can't just have, like, floppy legs.

It's not going to do anything. Eventually, we made it to the summit. It was great. But again, not much food. So normally when we get to the top of the mountain, it's like, oh, let's eat. Let's, you know, fuel up, have a little treat. And my dad was like, no food. No food.

you can have half an orange and I'll have the other half an orange and you can have half a granola bar and I'll have the other half of granola bar and I was like okay so we ate our meager bites I'm like give me that damn granola bar we had our meager bites of food and at this point my dad was like I think we should spend the night down at the camp again before heading out and I was like oh no we're going all we're going all the way down and so we left the summit at approximately 9.20. AM.

A.m. Yeah. We didn't make it down to the car until 9 p.m. 12 hours later. 12 hours later. 12 Elmers. 12 Elmers. Holy smokes.

And again. More like eight Elmers and Virgie Millards. So we didn't want to rush because that's how people get hurt. But at the same time, we're like, like we want to make it down. We need to be moving at a pretty fast pace. So we took it fairly slow going down the goalie and over the moraines because that's where you could really get hurt. Once we got to the tent, we packed it up so fast. Lightning speed. Problem is, when you're down in this goalie, you have to go up this steep hill to get back to the trail that takes you down

Independence Pass. And like we were both so wiped at this point. It was 12 o'clock in the afternoon. probably 1230 in the afternoon. And my dad was like, I just, we should just spend the night. This is like before we packed the 10 up. And I- It's noon, and he's like, let's spend the night? Yeah, because we had 13 miles to go downhill. Golly.

So a round trip, this mountain is 32 miles. It's 16 miles from the trailhead to the summit. So we- Truly a warrior princess, you are. A warrior princess. I could not. That day, we hiked up. three and a half miles and gained about

3,000 feet in elevation. And then we went down 16.5 miles. I probably went up maybe one or two flocks of stairs that day. So three and a half plus 16 and a half. That's the joke I was going to make earlier. I'd been saving it. That's a good joke.

Thank you. It's a good joke storm. I'm trying to do math and my brain isn't working. Three and a half plus 16 and a half equals 21 miles, right? Nope. Okay. 16 plus three is 19. Oh, yeah,

20. This is why I'm dating Andrew. Yeah, yeah, there you go. You see a math major? Yeah. It's all over. Because I don't know anything. Yeah, so 20,000 feet?

No, no, no. 20 miles. 20 miles. The, the, I forgot to mention this. The trailhead starts at 4,000 feet. So you're gaining 10,000 feet of elevation and get to the summit, which is 4, 4,000. thousand. It's like four or five thousand feet at the trailhead. So yeah, when we left the tent, I took a picture of the food we had left. We had about half a cup of trail mix. We had five

pieces of beef jerky. We had maybe like an inch of sausage left. And we had one granola bar, two little fruit leather things, and then like these breakfast biscuits. That was it. For the... I'm not crazy with those little fruit leather things. For the 13 miles of walking that we still had, after eating very little food for the past 24 hours. No, we didn't, because my dad rationed it too well,

so we got down to the car and we still had a granola bar left. One? That's actually pretty good rationing. I was like, are you kidding, Dad? Well, then car ride. You get a granola bar right then? Oh, yeah. In the car ride, we ate quite a bit.

But actually, no, we didn't. Because at that point... I think you were too exhausted. We were so tired. And so to make things worse, we got down to the car at 9 p.m. and we drove home the four and a half hour drive to our house the same night. So we had been awake from 3.30 in the morning until... Midnight, pretty much.

After midnight. One. 1.30, 1 a.m. So that's a, that's 22 hours straight of being awake. And like physical activity, very little food. When we got back down to the car, our body. I guess had gotten used to not eating, so we weren't even really that hungry. Yeah.

Like, we snacked on some peanuts and then my dad stopped to get a coffee and I got a little ice cream sandwich. You have to, like, gigahydrate yourself after your body goes from like the, I'm hungry to like, like, you haven't eaten too long. Don't worry, I'm not hungry anymore. That's like when it gets concerning. Yeah. Oh, wait, wait, wait.

I need like pump water into my body like re- Yeah. And make me hungry again. So he had his coffee and I had my ice cream sandwich. And after that, I was like, oh, I'm stuffed, which like I definitely wasn't, but my body was so used to not eating. Your body's eating your fat muscle reserves. Well, it goes for your muscle first. So, yeah, that was our near starvation experience.

I wouldn't say starvation, but it was close, and I've never really experienced that level of, like, exertion on a mountain before without refueling. One time, I missed lunch. Wow. You know what? I felt like I was starving that day. I missed lunch today, and so on the way here I had went to the splachs.

and got some yogurt. Okay. So that's what me after this. Yeah, you've been, your Chobani key lime yogurt has been flip yogurt. If it has been sitting here the whole episode, guys, I told Nicole the beginning of she was like, I'll eat it. I feel like if I left yogurt out of the fridge for 20 minutes, I wouldn't want to eat it. I feel like yogurt's only good cold.

I agree, but I eat yogurt all the time and so sometimes it gets warm. If you had had one Chobani flip up on that mountain, you would have been energized for years. Oh, yeah, it would have been on top of the world. Especially the key lime flavor. Definitely. I haven't tried it. So we'll see. We are not sponsored by Chabani Flip.

No, we are not. No. All right. Well, thank you for listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. We hope you have a great week and make time to go outside and enjoy the great outdoors. We'll see you out there. Happy trails. Flip!

Bye, guys.