I left Boulder on a Wednesday morning in early August and began the long drive west to the high Sierra of California. I took the route through Death Valley on the way for a little low
elevation desert scenery before I would spend most of the next 2 weeks
in the mountains.
Death Valley is so vast and inhospitable, a good
place to NOT have an epic. :)
What the terrain in Death Valley looks like...
Did I mention that the gas here was expensive?!?!
Interesting visitor center name.
After leaving the Death Valley area it’s not long before the high Sierra
come into view and shortly after that, it was easy to spot the first
objective of the trip – the north ridge of Lone Pine Peak.
Sign indicating the trail that leads to Meysan Lakes. This is the first part of the approach to Lone Pine Peak.
The north ridge of Lone Pine Peak ascends an amazing ridge about 3000’
long that goes right to the summit of the peak at 12,944’. Much of the
route is not technical, but there are several steep sections with
difficulty up to 5.6 that go for a few hundred feet. The exposure and
position on the route are excellent!
There was no one else in the entire area, so I had a huge piece of
Sierra granite all to myself – a fine day out!
The views down the ridge as you get higher and higher are astounding;
the Owens valley lies almost 9000’ below by the time you reach the
summit. The views to the west are fantastic as well with Mt. Whitney
dominating the scenery.
There is quite a bit of
route finding on this climb, so you need to remain attentive much of the
way up the ridge.
The “crux” especially requires some thought to
ensure you get into the proper crack system that leads to the top of the
largest high angle step about 2/3 of the way up the ridge.
Getting near the summit. Mt. Whitney in the background.
Once
on the summit I relaxed and took in the view for a while and also sent
out a “I’m on the summit – yippee!” text via satellite with my new
Delorme In Reach Explorer device which is a combination rescue beacon,
GPS/tracker and two way satellite messaging device. It was cool to have
this along as anyone interested can log into my online map page and see
where I’m going as well as I can stay in touch when out of cell range
and also use the device for GPS stuff – pretty cool! Callie enjoyed
watching my progress on topo maps and satellite views during boring
meetings at work :)
Five frame summit panorama. Mt. Whitney is in the left-of-center area, and the Owens River Valley is on the right side of the photo.
The descent off Lone Pine Peak is “type 2” fun… lots of loose nasty
gullies that eventually lead down to the Meysan Lakes and eventually
back to the trail you start on.
The weather was really solid until
about 2pm, but by that time I was well on my way to camp.
It was a
really fun and pretty long day – almost 10 hours camp to camp.
These arrows show the cross-country of the descent after the nasty gullies. A great
outing!
Shadow selfie! Dirtbag bivy camping at our favorite Eastern Sierra site.
The day after Lone Pine Peak, I drove north to the Rock Creek area to
meet my friend Dave – we were going climbing at the Patricia Bowl.
Patricia Bowl is a really beautiful cirque filled with white granite
cliffs and quality crack climbing at about 10,600’. There are many high
quality climbs here and the hike in is only about 30 minutes. There
were no other people – pretty nice!
There is so much good rock climbing on the east side of the Sierra, only a few of the most popular areas are crowded.
The climbs here tend to be steep clean cracks with the occasional arête or face climb. Really good stuff in a very scenic area!
Dave coming up the second pitch of a really nice 5.10 route.
Team Dave selfie with the lake and much talus in the background.
A shot of me leading a really nice quality 10d steep crack route.
Stay tuned for part 2 - Tenaya Peak and Tuolumne.
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