The wind picked up as we looked out from the ridge and up at Gothics. The snow looked very deep heading up the ridge. We both commented that we thought it was going to be miserable. A chopper ominously hovered overhead (we learned later that a man suffered a heart attack while hiking up and died).

James and I headed down from Armstrong's summit, toward a small rise on the ridge just before the Armstong/Gothics col proper, pictured at left in this photo. The snow was getting thigh-high, but the terrain still wasn't skiable. We began to talk very practically about how to salvage a situation whose eventual outcome was becoming patently obvious: we weren't going to be able to get the thing done with the gear we had.

I wanted to climb Gothics at least, mostly to scope the North Face for a future climb, and we both agreed that heading down the last human-established bailing point - the Ore Bed Trail - before heading into the oblivion of the Gothics descent to Saddleback and Basin, was the thing to do. We would need to climb Gothics, head over its summit to a col, then take Ore Bed steeply down and back to the JBL trail. We'd try to ski out, or we'd camp another night. Didn't matter much.