Brooke and I made our first attempt at climbing Mount Williamson the weekend of April 15th. Becasue the mountain is in the Bighorn Sheep Zoological Area, its peak is closed to climbers most of the year. We wanted to take the shorter route up by way of Bair's Creek, and because of this our window was only from April 15th to May 15th. We decided to commit at least 3 weekends during that time to making the climb. Unfortunately there's a good chance of bad weather, so we figured it was best to leave some backup dates. We ran into a combination of bad snow conditions and bad weather and unfortunately didn't make it to the top. We made it up to the top of the headwall at the top of the Bair's Creek drainage (about 13,000 ft) before the clouds rolled in and we lost site of the summit. So we headed down with plans to come back the following weekend. This is the view of Mt. Williamson from the spot where we turned off of Hwy 395 to make our way to the trail head. Making our way up to the "notch" (the dip in the rocks in the center of the picture) in the drainage took longer than we expected. We had been told to stay high, but it turns out we were too high. We eventually made our way back onto the use trail and up to the notch. Brooke making her way up and over the Notch. At this point, there's a short class 3 climb up some ledges and a chimney to get to the top. After getting up the Notch, we stopped for a snack break with a nice veiw back into the Owen's Valley behind Brooke. A short ways after leaving the top of the Notch, we made our way out of the trees and had a nice view up Bair's Creek towards the headwall. Our destination for the night is the patch of trees in the center of the picture. After a long struggle in the soft snow in the trees, we finally made it onto some slightly harder snow as we made our way up a long gulley to camp. Even with our snowshoes on though, we still managed to posthole up to our waists at times. That wasn't much fun... After a long day of struggling through the bushes below the Notch and the soft snow above the Notch, we finally made it to camp. We dug out a flat spot in the snow and set up the tent. This is around 10,000 ft. The next morning we had intended to get an early start, but as usuall, we slempt in longer than we planned. When we got started, the weather looked nice with just some light clouds. The clouds look cool, but probably not a good sign of the weather to come. Brooke stopping for a quick look back to see what's taking me so long. I guess I should stop taking pictures and start climbing... Still climbing... Looks like a long way back down to Owen's Valley. We stopped for a quick snack break just below the headwall. We climbed up the chute in the center of the picture. When we got to the top of the headwall (around 13,000 ft) the weather had turned pretty bad. The visability was bad and a cold wind had picked up. We couldn't see the summit at all. We decided we'd better leave it for another day and just head back. After all, we still had 4 available weekends before May 15th...