It was 4th of July weekend and we decided to brave our way through a very crowded tent-to-RV, fully occupied campground known as Annett's Mono Village in Bridgeport, CA. This is a heavily trafficked area for day hikers, backpackers, mountaineers and fishermen, so throw in a summer holiday weekend advertising free margaritas and live music and don't exactly hold your breath for easy to come by, overnight accommodations. We knew we had slim to no chance of finding an actual campsite, but at the very least we wanted to take a peak at the trailhead before a dreadful 3:00am alpine start to the summit of Matterhorn Peak. So, we parked in the day-use area and wandered over to the camp host's booth and paid for our next day's permit. Much to our surprise, the camp host encouraged us to take a lap around the very back 'open wilderness' loop of the campground to scour for an open site. And boy, did we get lucky! We found a perfectly tucked away site just about 200 yards from the trailhead. Matterhorn Peak would be the first of 15 Sierra Peak Section (SPS) Emblem Peaks we planned to climb together. At 12,212 feet, this peak is the highest peak in the Sawtooth Range and northernmost 12,000-foot peak in the Sierra Nevada. We setup camp and prepped our gear to ready for an early morning start before settling into our tent around 8:00pm. Aaron fell asleep almost instantly. Jessie, however, took the typical two hours of frantic overthinking before finally "resting." After what felt like a ~not~ solid 37 minutes of sleep, our entire tent vibrated at exactly 2:30am to the horribly frenetic cadence of Aaron's alarm. Somehow wide-eyed and still half asleep, we slipped into our gear. Embellished with heavy mountaineering boots, ice axes, harnesses, crampons, helmets, headlamps and plenty of water, we took to the trailhead just before 3:00am. The first two miles were a steady incline of switchbacks, with every other turn seemingly within arm's reach of a loud rushing waterfall. We were surrounded by dark silhouettes of bushes and towering trees only slightly and eerily lit by moonlight. Our headlamps illuminated the two feet directly ahead of our faces, spotlighting every other bug darting straight between the eyes. Somehow the inability to see ahead made the first leg of this 12.2 mile trek go relatively quickly.

After about 3 miles we finally hit snow, and a LOT of it. The Sierras saw a record-breaking amount of snowfall over the past winter, so winter mountaineering gear was a must, even in July. This is where we lost all sight of any sort of trail and the route-finding really began. Mind you, it was still quite dark outside with morning twilight barely peaking over the mountains. After a deceivingly long mile of traversing through snow, the sun finally began to illuminate the Sawtooth range and we got our first glimpse of the peak just shy of 5:00am. From here we took on two more large snow fields before we ditched the crampons and scrambled up (hands and feet) about 900 feet of rock. Alas, we arrived at, you guessed it, more snow. However, this next span of snow would be a snow-cup riddled ascent. Snow cups look a lot like enormous egg cartons and range in width and depth. The larger the sun cup, the harder it is to navigate quickly. It wasn't until around 9:00am that we finally reached the base of the summit. The east couloir (a narrow gully with a steep gradient) would be the last major stretch before the final scramble to the summit. The couloir was icy, rocky, and steep. We we're nearing about 5,000 feet of elevation gain through all types of terrain and there was no doubting that we were tired as hell. We got about a quarter way up the couloir and had to put our crampons back on, moving in even slower strides. Just past 10:30am we were finally, FINALLY, out of the snow and we only had a short but manageable rock scramble to the summit. We had the most incredible views overlooking as far out as Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, past Hoover Wilderness to Yosemite National Park and beyond. There is nothing quite like the expansiveness from a single mountain top view to humble you. After 8 exhausting hours, it was 11:02 am and we had just summited our first emblem peak. Aaron is generally the one to manage the GoPro on any of our treks, big or small, but he loves to get a good clip of his summit entrance. So, thinking nothing of it after snagging the quintessential 'YEAAA!' film clip upon arrival, Aaron had Jessie set up the camera for the hard-earned summit selfie only to turn around to Aaron on one knee with a ring in hand.