Freel Peak: Fighting the elements on Tahoe's forgotten summit (slideshow)

It doesn't have the striking contours of Mount Tallac. It doesn't have the granite beauty of Pyramid Peak. It doesn't even have the pretty name of Mount Rose. But in the parlance of Tahoe mountains, Freel Peak does have this redeeming quality - it's the highest peak in the Lake Tahoe Basin.

As Dave Swink, Jonah Kessel, Aaron Schulman and I navigated through unsettled weather last Saturday, we figured that had to count for something.

After all, how else can one justify snowshoeing more than three miles along a road, then ascending another 2,000 feet to a 10,881-foot peak in the middle of winter?

In the summer, Freel is climbed from several locations in the area. One of the more popular routes starts from near Horse Camp, a meadow filled with aspens and conifers at the southern base of the peak.

On www.summitpost.com, an online climbing community, there are 65 comments from people who have summited the peak. All but a handful of them attempt their climbs outside the winter months.

By comparison, Mount Tallac has more than twice that amount of comments, but there are reasons for the discrepancy.

The first reason is accessibility. The two most popular routes in the summer require driving between three to five miles on a road to access a trailhead. In the winter, both roads are closed, meaning snowshoes and cross-country skis become the only suitable modes of travel.

Short days, though, really put the pressure on climbers to cover 13 to 15 miles of challenging terrain.

The second reason is the weather.

The 10,000-foot ridge connecting Freel with Job's Sister gets battered with winds. From South Lake Tahoe, it's obvious that the northerly aspects of the peak are wiped clean of snow, leaving brown patches in a landscape of white.

"I'm sure the wind does play some role in blowing the snow off the mountain," said Tom Cylke, a retired meteorologist who started working for the National Weather Service in 1974.

"But after looking at the topography on Google Earth, I noticed that much of the mountain has a south and west exposure, which would allow more direct solar heating and faster melting than surrounding mountains. I see much more snow on the east and north exposure of the Carson Range from Reno and Minden, where there is more snow deposition from wind and steeper slopes offering more shade in the afternoon."

As our group climbed last Saturday, there wasn't any brown. Other than a few grooves from snowmobiles, the only tracks were our own. The stormy weather, though, didn't exactly result in a warm and fuzzy feeling of serenity.

Spin drift flew over the highest ride, with clouds enveloping the horseshoe of peaks that surrounded us. The clouds fractured just enough to provide glimpses of rocky outcrops and the face we intended to climb.

Visibility, needless to say, was poor, with intermittent snow showers and low clouds hovering above us. It was just one foot in front of the other, a full-on mountaineering experience.

Six hours after leaving Hope Valley, three of us stood on the summit.

Schulman, the only member of the group who was wise enough to carry a snowboard, already had begun his traverse of the ridge in order to rip a line down a prominent gully to the southwest. The silhouette of his body moved in and out of the clouds before he descended.

On the summit, rocks poked above a layer of snow and ice-encrusted branches. The southern edge of Lake Tahoe was visible through a patchwork of cumulus clouds moving over the Sierra crest.

We didn't stay long.

Our group reunited near Horse Camp, leaving us a five-mile hike to Hope Valley. Under a bright moon, we sliced through a fresh blanket of snow.

But the hiss of our motions couldn't drown out the echoes of our final verdict: Freel Peak is a long way back there.