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Thirty degrees and windy.

There were five people invited to White Mountain, October of ‘07. This was a short lived tradition I had to hit WM every October to celebrate my birthday. It has always been cold up in the highlands in October, but I do personally enjoy the cold so it has always been fine by me. Of the four invitees, two showed up. Of the two who couldn’t make it, one actually let me know ahead of time. The other one just ignored the entire situation, and as a matter of fact on our summit day was fawning over himself, as usual. Of the three of us who were there, none made the peak.

We knew it would be cold, we knew there would be snow on the ground and we knew that Scott had never been higher than Telescope peak at 11,049 feet. This hike would be starting higher than that. Scott’s been training hard for this trip for a while now, while Jared and I are still up at a pretty good level after getting ready for the triathlon last week.

Jared drove us all to Grandview, it was dark and freezing by the time we got there. I started the fire, Jared setup his rarely used 6 man tent and realized that zipper on the door wouldn’t zip closed. Scott, meanwhile was trying to put on more layers than a polar bear. After the three of us were done with our respective tasks we started cooking. Scott had rigged up a nice little contraption made of tape and sticks to roast his food on. At 10pm it was 34 degrees and dropping. The tent door wouldn’t close and we had a long, cold way to go until the sun was up again.

Dawn eventually came, with Scott not sleeping much, but Jared and I putting down some good Z’s with the new cots. After warming up by the fire and a light breakfast we made our way to the trailhead and prepared for the hike.

There are essentially four uphills on the way to the peak. The first one is short and steep, and starts as soon as you get out of the truck and continues for about a mile. The second one is shorter and steeper, the third one is long and slow and the fourth and final one is very steep and sort of short. We ran across our first substantial patches of snow on the second uphill and took a nice long break at the telescope. The temps were in the forties so it didn’t feel too bad when we were hiking, but during breaks we would get cold very quick.

As we continued on the air got thinner and the snow got thicker. Still nothing that would really impede our progress, but it was there. We were above 12,000 feet and Scott’s first time up high was getting tough. Jared was cruising right along and passed us up. Along came another herd of Bighorn sheep and Scott made a very mature decision to turn around. Scott sat down while we waited for Jared to come back.

So, we hiked back; tired, hungry and cold. Scott’s new high point is about 13,100 feet or so. When we got back to the truck, we decided to bypass Scott’s promise of cooking up some steak fajitas in order to get down to town and get some food, as fast as possible. After the food, we also decided to stay in a hotel with a working door.

Good trip, good fun.

Album of pictures from trip

That looks like Jesus.

Well, Gant couldn’t make this one due to a yeast infection I think? I’m not sure, this was a few months ago and my memory isn’t what it used to be. If anyone remembers more accurately why he couldn’t make it, let me know and I’ll be sure to update this ASAP!

So, Jared and I were going to tag a little peak known as University, by going up the Robinson lake trail and then up to University pass and onto University peak. This didn’t prove to be possible and due to a lack of research, we didn’t take advantage of another option that may have lead us to the peak. This was to be a little two day trip, nothing too crazy. So, we drove up after work one day and then slept in the car at the trailhead. Apparently neither of us have learned not to sleep in the car if you want a restful night’s sleep. I am going to go ahead and say it, I hit a fox on the way to the trailhead. Terribly cute little guy just doing the funky chicken on the side of the road after I hit him, I felt bad.

Anyway, we got up early and hit the old dusty trail, though in this case the trail turned out to be quite wet. Up we went a couple thousand feet to Robinson lake, a nice little Sierra jewel to see in a big bowl of mountains. We broke here for a bit and tried to plot out our path as this is where the trail ended. We decided to follow the drainage directly up the bowl to a large patch of snow and skirt that.

Once beyond the snow we would have a clear shot at University pass, which after an abysmally dry snow year should be passable this early in the season without any additional equipment. Unfortunately, it wasn’t passable. There was still a substantial amount of snow there. We looked north, to where University peak itself should be, and tried to see if there was a route straight up the finger we were looking at to the peak but weren’t sure. Jared had some photocopies of Secor’s penultimate guide to the Sierra to reference, but apparently the page we were missing describes the route that we were looking at and it was doable, if only we had gone for it.

So, we decided to head on back. On the way, on the southern ridge there is a very prominent rock. It looks, I swear just like a large statue of Jesus from the side. Wearing a robe and a belt and all. I didn’t take a picture of it, because these are the kinds of things you need to see for yourself. If anyone is interested, I’ll gladly return to University and show you where it is, as long as you climb the peak with me.

Album

I was solo and heading up to Mt. Agassiz through Bishop pass.  Beautiful area, but a failure on the peak.  I was tired from the drive and lack of sleep so didn’t have the gas to get up the mountain.  My truck died it’s final death on the way home.

A most beautiful failure, Day 3

Day 3 was supposed to be the first of a few days off trail. It was kind of a rest day, with only a small amount of mileage and not much elevation gain. There would be time to attempt a peak or just relax and give the feet some time off with the schedule that we had for that day. We didn’t start early or fast. We woke up and listened to Jared talk about how he could climb the Kaweah range with just one hand.

After that inspiring speech from Jared we got started. We were headed north to try to get a closer look at our options to get to where we wanted to go. Basically there were two choices; either pants pass (hard) or lion rock/lion lake pass (longer but easier). So we left the trail, which was headed south to the chagoopa plateau and tried our luck to the north to the land of glory and adventure.

The first obstacle to cross was a large talus field. Next was a large snowfield. Once we got to the top there, it was time for a break. As we looked around, we all came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to drop our packs somewhere and make an attempt on Lawson peak for some reason. I’d never even heard of Lawson before that morning when I noticed it on the map and saw it on the horizon. It’s nothing special, but it looked doable, so we had a new plan for the day. It’s the far left peak in this picture, the center right one is Black Kaweah again.

So, yeah, lets go bag a peak. Either way, it was going to be nice to take 50 pounds off my back and just hike for a while, instead of hauling the weight around. So, we crossed the outlet of lake 10,725, which is just mind-numbingly spectacular both to the north and the south.

We dropped our packs in some random meadowy area and started moving up to Lawson. We should have paid more attention to where we left our packs; but that wouldn’t be a problem until much later in the day. Up we went, cruising without the crushing weight of those packs it was really nice. The route started off pretty easy being just a big boulder hop. It got a bit tricky; we had some sections of easy, but unexpected class 3 climbing, above yet another gorgeous alpine lake. This continued up for quite a bit as we were off trail trying to take a shortcut from what I remember (Later in the day, on the descent I took this overview picture of the route we took. The red line is the general path Jared and I took, Gant was a bit lower and then angled up more steeply at the end).

Looking back to the West, produced the usual spectacular views that after three days you don’t grow accustomed to but you do come to expect. Eventually after all this climbing and straining we stopped in various places and ate some food. Gant did so in the shadow of Black Kaweah(*nice pic, but large). It kind of looks like a Condor, wings spread and warming itself in the afternoon sun from here. Jared seemed more interested in posing for the camera, since he’d already talked trash on the BK and was starting to feel hypoxic.

Feeling refreshed after a lunchbreak, we rushed up what was left of our ascent, but unfortunately I didn’t read the map as well as I could have and… well, to put it bluntly, I lead us up to the wrong peak, which I have named false Lawson. It was Jared’s new personal high point, as in he’d never been to that elevation before and wasn’t feeling any ill effects, so that was a great thing, he was just slightly new to the hypoxic feeling which is the fun part of elevation. For those that’ haven’t experienced it, it’s like a mild buzz. Gant wasn’t that thrilled and I was quite down as well, you can see the real Lawson over my head there.

Since we were already running out of daylight, we began our descent as the moon rose over Pyramid Pinnacle 1 2. Jared was trying to explain to us how to get back, but Gant and I had more faith in the map. What we were trying to do was decide what to do for the rest of the trip, since we had essentially lost a day with this attempt on Lawson that took much longer than expected. We decided to think it about it more, as the shadows were getting long and the air was growing chilly.

We had decided earlier in the day to take the longer, more circuitous route back, because none of us wanted to climb down what we had climbed up in the light, let alone now that the sun was down. This longer route went well for the most part, except when we came to one lake’s outlet and couldn’t find any way across it. It was too cold and dark to cross in the running water, we needed some sort of bridge or path, but there was none. So, we built a rock bridge. This took the three of us about fifteen minutes, picking up big rocks, throwing them into the cold running water, splashing the others when possible with the rocks and then eventually getting across and moving on to where we thought we had left our packs. By now we needed to turn on our headlamps and don all of our layers of clothing, 11,000 feet is cold at night.

This was a terrifically long day, time wise, mileage wise, elevation gain/loss, the disappointment of expending all that effort and getting to the wrong peak. I was beat and we couldn’t find our packs. I was done mentally and physically and this day just kept on going. It was around 9:40 pm when Jared finally started whistling and flashing his strobe light like he was at a gay German disco. We setup our tents and I passed out solid.

Thus ended day three, so far every day had been more beautiful than the last.

Has anyone seen my shoes?

So, the triple digit crew was off on it’s last adventure before the High Sierra Trail trip. This was a final shakedown, a high altitude gear and personal test for all of us. We planned to go up to the Cottonwood lakes area and bag Mt Langley and Cirque peak, spend three days and two nights on trail and then be done. It was going to be a good trip, but something happened.

When Gant showed up (late), we found out that he hadn’t slept in 24 hours. No problem, a tired Gant can usually outpace Jared and me anyway. So we got in the car and started driving while Gant slept in the back seat. When we reached the beautiful trailhead, we were all suiting up when Jared asked, “Has anyone seen my shoes” The trip went downhill from here. We looked around trying to find them, but had no luck. Jared realized he must have left them in his truck so that he could wear his cool as hell crocs and impress us. He almost went full metal jacket on us when he couldn’t find his shoes, which was kinda scary since he has a striking resemblance to Pvt. Pyle from certain angles.

With no shoes, we couldn’t go up to Langley, we couldn’t do much at all really. So Jared said he’d buy a cheap pair of shoes in Bishop and then since we would be that far north, we could just hit up White Mt and tool around at high elevation for the rest of the trip. So, that’s what we did. We got in the car and drove a few more hours, stopped in the Mountain Light gallery which is always inspiring and got Jared a 90 dollar pair of cheap shoes elsewhere in Bishop. Then we started driving more to get to the gate on White Mt Rd where we would setup camp and get an alpine start in the morning.

So, in the morning we didn’t quite get an alpine start, more like a Ventura start, as in we didn’t step off until about 9:30 or so. Jared realized that he forgot his sunglasses too, I let him borrow my spares. Beautiful weather to start the hike. A few clouds, we knew the thunderstorms were on the way in, hopefully in the afternoon, but at the moment it was beautiful. We made great time, full packs, high elevation, almost 3 mile an hour pace. It was going so well, but something happened.

When we got to the telescope, we took a break. We were there for no more than 15 minutes when the skies started to fall. It started off slow, I didn’t even plan on putting my jacket on. Then the rain started getting cold, when it hit your skin it would actually burn. So, I got my jacket out while the others were getting their wet weather gear on as well. Then it started to hail. Then it started to thunder. Then we started to run.

I swear, I heard thunder and looked up, straight up and saw nothing but light above me in the clouds. I started to run faster. We were on something of an exposed high point with a very steep downhill between us and safety of the lower elevation it represented. Once we cleared the downhill and were (relatively) safer we stopped running and just hiked, while it continued to rain. From our perspective, it looked like the Sierra crest was getting hammered too, so even if we had attempted Langley, it looks like we would have had very similar results.

So, our final shakedown hike went well and poorly all at once. It was fun though, and everyone came back without injury so it was sucsessful. We also all realized that we had to re-treat our waterproof gear and make some changes to the way our gear was packed to allow easier/quicker access to certain items (raingear), as well as making sure we remember to bring certain items (boots).

When we got back to the car, we got a long, georgous look at the mountains we’ll be in during the next trip.

A quick, unrelated question for the readers, who will Search and Rescue find first in this picture?

Next is the big trip, where we can’t run back when the skies open up will be quite interesting indeed.

Gant, Stan, Jared and I went up on Split.  We all held back Gant, so no one made it to the top.

PS. I broke my finger here.