I had been planning to do this trip to bag my 9th Fourteener with mi amigo BOB, but that didn’t work out this time. I had already contacted my nephew Mat about going on the trip with BOB and me, so Mat and I went off on our own. Mat had also signed up to go to Utah with Carol and me afterward for some canyoneering, hiking and sightseeing. Mat had never been to southern Utah, so we knew he was in for a treat…
0914 Friday Packing and Traveling to Mono Lake I HATE PACKING!!!– mostly because I know I’ll forget something important. This time, because we were planning on backpacking, mountaineering, rock climbing and canyoneering over a three-week period, I pretty much just relaxed into it, saying to myself there’s no way I can remember everything so just go with it.
The main thing I forgot was my carefully prepared homemade energy bars.
Picked up Mat at home, usual fun drive through Yosemite to Mono (“Mow-no”, does not rhyme with the disease, “Mah-no”) Lake for the night. Along the way, stopped in Oakdale for a few supplies; while having a nosh in the parking lot, Mat says “That ladder to the top of that building looks interesting.” Rick replies “Sure, and I bet the inside of the Oakdale Police Station is fascinating, too!”
Tomorrow we’re planning to climb Mount Dana (13,053′) to get some acclimatization going.
0915 Saturday Mount Dana Up at a relatively leisurely hour, off to the Mt Dana trailhead. Two out of three times now that I’ve climbed Mt Dana before attempting a Fourteener, I’ve manage to avoid altitude sickness. The one time this technique failed me was this last summer when I got overenthusiastic and didn’t have a rest day after Mt Dana. Plus, the view from the top is stunning.
Not long into the hike, the excuses start flying: “I haven’t been hiking much for a long time.” “I haven’t been hiking at all, only doing lots of squats.” We passed a group on the trail; they asked how far the peak is. “Depends.” “Well, how long do you plan to take?” Apparently already hypoxic, I said “Oh, about 3 hours to the top” – with a straight face and everything. It is, after all, a 3000′ climb all above 10,000 feet – and apparently no one in my group has been getting any conditioning.
Much to my surprise, we arrive at the peak 3 hours after we started hiking. As usual, Mat totally whips me at the hero pose thing. Sigh. It seems twice as far down as it was up, but back at the truck we (I) destroy a lot of food and fluids of various kinds.
0916 Sunday Rest Day / Gear / Packing Up at a leisurely hour, as today’s goals were modest – resting, last minute shopping and finalizing packing for Thunderbolt Peak. While making coffee and waking up, I noticed some strange, large tracks around our campsite which I did’t think too hard about, apparently, as later in the morning, a deer hunter walked up and asked if we saw the bear that made those tracks. Uh, nope, I was sealed in the truck (with all the yummy, smelly food) and Mat, who was sleeping outside under the stars, didn’t hear or see either. For some reason, I didn’t take any pictures of the tracks, nor did Mat. They were easily as big as my palm. Yikes. It’s not like we were in danger, but I would like to think that I’m alert enough to notice a large animal padding through camp – plus it’s a treat to see a bear in the wild.
Interestingly, later when I got home, our Mono Lake Committee newsletter specifically mentions that “It’s been quite a year for bears in the Mono Basin.” Wow. Another interesting thing in the same newsletter – they mention “the Mono Basin filled with smoke” and tracked it down to the Zaca Fire near Santa Barbara – interesting because Carol and I were there at the same time looking for Perseids and came to the same conclusion about the source of the smoke.
Poring over the climbing gear, we narrowed down what we were taking to “essentials” – harnesses, helmets, nuts, hexes, slings, 120′ rope, lots of ‘biners. No cams, too heavy. The gear list was short as we’re also spending 2 or 3 nights in the backcountry, so we’ll have all our backpacking gear as well. We split the load – Mat had all the climbing gear; I carried all the food, bear canister, tent. I’m sure Mat had the bigger load, but hey, he’s twentysomething – and I’m not – actually, I’ve had over thirty twentieth birthdays…
Picked up our permit at the Mono Basin Ranger Station and Visitor Center; made our way south and stopped at 150 Beers in Mammoth Lakes to pick up some medicinal liquids. We had the bright idea of bringing some hard liquor to Thunderbolt to tipple after successfully peaking – or as a consolation prize, if need be – also peak day will be a special milestone for me, so clearly booze is in order. Mat chose whiskey (“It’s what climbers drink!”); I choose takillya (if I have to drink whiskey to be a climber, the game is over…).
Additionally, and possibly more importantly, it appears it’s going to be cold, and I had made sure to leave my hi-tech balaclava at home (remember the whole packing thing?), so we went on a quest for a scarf or something in Bishop. I found a $4.99 balaclava at K-Mart that turned out to be a lifesaver.
We had a discussion about whether it’s better to sleep high tonight (for acclimatization) or to sleep low (to let our bodies heal). Somehow, a decision was made and up we went toward the Bishop Pass trailhead; I think we stayed at Four Jeffrey CG at about 8,100’.
0917 Monday Bishop Pass Inbound Up early, breakfast, final packing, and off to the trailhead. We were on the trail by 9:30; today’s mantra was energy conservation – slow and steady – to maximize energy available for tomorrow, peak day. Beautiful fall colors, the lakes and mountains along the trail are as stunning as ever. Bishop Pass is one of my favorites; it’s relatively easy (2000′ climb from the trailhead) and there’s a stunning sight around every corner. We were above the pass by 1:30 and we started looking for where to traverse to the south. We got some good info on the easiest traverse from a couple returning from dayhiking in the area. The idea was to stay as high as we could while avoiding big talus traverses.
Mat targeted an overhanging rock he remembered from our Mount Sill trip. We scoped it out, but there wasn’t a lot of room for us, so we headed off for the same campsite we used for the Sill approach. At camp, I ate the two frozen chicken burritos I brought, tastefully complemented with Brother Neil’s Habanera Powder – Shazam! Further positive news – both Mat and I (still) are hungry and Mat didn’t feel as bad as he did the first night out on the Mt Sill trip – thank you, Mount Dana!
We enjoyed a stunning sunset , with the moon and the stars coming out, packed for the next day (peak day) and then it was bedtime. Mat’s good night was saying something unkind about having to share the tent with my feet. Admittedly, they did need a little TLC.
0918 Tuesday Thunderbolt Peak Day Today we would attempting to climb Thunderbolt Peak. Up at 5:30 or so, breakfast, work out the kinks, saddled up (climbing gear, 4 liters of water, food, extra clothes) and we were off by 6:30ish. We searched for the optimum path to Thunderbolt Pass, trying to keep as much altitude as possible while trading off difficulty of movement. At the pass, our chute was obvious (“first chute south of the pass”) per the guidebook we were using (in a rare fit of thinking ahead, I’ve brought the route descriptions along for the day. Yay me.).
Up the chute we went – a tedious talus & scree climb, interrupted by a scramble up some “third class ledges”, which were relatively easy but somewhat exposed, with some of the trickiest moves featuring gravel underfoot – nothing like gravel on granite with a big fall underneath to get your blood flowing. Per the guidebook, we kept to the rightmost chute when it divided, and soon we were climbing up under a chockstone and then we were standing in “the notch”.
Stunning views to the southeast including the Palisade glacier and Mount Sill. Mat went off to the east to look around and look for a way up onto the ridgeline. After a little sightseeing, I started casting around as well – looking for the class three way to the ridgeline that’s supposed to be “a hike to the south” of the notch. I never did spot anything that was “hikeable”. The wind was blowing like crazy through the notch. After some time, Mat appeared above me at the top of a class 5 climb (the guidebook calls it class 4, but if you fall, you die, so I’m calling it class 5) directly out of the notch. I don’t know how he got there; later he said “Don’t tell my mom what I did.” Not to worry, I didn’t see what he did. Anyway, Mat had found a set anchor and offered to belay me up. OK. Oops, what a swell time for a nature call. Then, I had to get out my harness and get it on, tie in, etc. Meanwhile, Mat was turning into an ice cube, as he was even more exposed to the wind than I was.
Tied in, “on belay, belay on”, etc and I started climbing. I had taken my gloves off as the climb did not look trivial. Then I got to the crux move, and on first attempt, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t feel my fingers, I was stuck in a bad spot (but safe because I was toproped), the wind was blowing ice up my wazoo – I started to have thoughts of backing off, but the thought of all the work we had done to get this far plus a little hot breath on my fingers stiffened my resolve, and I got up and over the crux on the next try. Easy climbing up to the anchor, Mat wondered aloud what I was doing down there all that time; well, stuff happens. A short climb and I got up on the ridgeline; meanwhile Mat was managing rope and climbing up after me.
Now it got real busy. There was another climb to get up to the peak monolith and we couldn’t quite see how far or how hard it was. Mat asked how I was doing – besides being nervous and scared, fine. Somewhere in here, Mat got a chance to take a couple shots looking south toward Starlight Peak and North Palisade. Starlight Peak is a stunner – a so-called “milk bottle” to surmount on the ridge. Someday soon…
I got Mat on belay and he lead the climb; it turned out to be relatively short and easy, though with a LOT of air underneath. I seconded but left some of the gear and then we were both up and looking at the peak monolith. Impressive. It wasn’t too high (25′?) but essentially unprotectable and severely lacking in hand and footholds. With Mat back on belay, we had him look around at the two other sides we could get to and nothing looked better. There was a large, pointed block of granite to stand up on, then get over to the monolith. That pointed block of granite also happened to be prime landing zone if one were to fall – not good. Mat spent some time feeling around and deciding what he was going to do. I was looking at it and thinking that if anything went wrong, we would be so screwed. I had him on rope, but all that was going to do is keep him from taking the big fall (looks like several hundred feet at least), but he’d most likely land in the big pointy rock zone – not a good thing at 14,000 feet and many miles from the trailhead and help. Mat prepared himself; I said “If you’re not 100% sure, don’t do it” – and I meant it. While I was sitting there holding the belay and realizing Mat’s only chance was to dyno up and grab the lip on top of the monolith, it occured to me that it would be a bad thing if he started the dyno then ran into my tight belay, which was completely useless anyway, so – I told Mat I was giving him plenty of slack. Mat laughed. Mat went for it, grabbed the lip, pulled up and scrambled up onto the top.
Wow. Really. Wow.
On top, there were a pair of bolts that came with a nice lesson in how not to place bolts. Additionally, the bolt anchors were tied together with a ‘biner such that there was virtually no way to use it unless you cross loaded it. Mat threw a sling over the peak and then spent some time tying webbing onto the bolt hangers (he can’t work the stupid ‘biner out, what a total CF.) A peak pose later , Mat tied in to the anchor (leaving my sling and bail ‘biner behind) and I lowered him. I rigged my Tibloc’s for an ascending system and Mat anchored his end of the rope.
Now we have the conversation: Me: “How obsessive do you have to be to risk your life to get up the last 20 feet of the mountain just so you can have been on the very top?” Mat: “So you’re not going up?” Me: “Hell yes, I’m going up – I didn’t come all this way to fall 20 feet short!”
I ascended the rope, got up on top, got my peak pose, and then abseiled down. We signed the peak register and got ready to start our descent. I was ready to tie in again for the traverse and Mat says “Do you really need it?” Well, no, the traverse was easy, but if one were to fall, it would be a quick way to die. OK, time matters and I knew I could do it (safely), so I did it and then here comes Mat.
We made our way down to the anchor above the notch and set up for a rappel into the notch. The wind was blowing at least 15-20 mph and I thought about throwing the rope down and having it blow off to somewhere and catch in a crack – so I proposed to Mat that I lower him; that way we’d always have control of the rope. Sounded good. I lowered Mat, tied in, asked Mat if there was enough rope to which Mat replied “plenty”. At the bottom, “plenty” turned out to be about another 2-3 feet of rope. Guess we brought just enough rope and no more. We stowed gear and started the long descent – I think we both bonked about the time we got to Thunderbolt Pass. We had brought what seemed like a lot of food and water for the day, but as it turned out, neither of us got sick and we ate all the food and I drank all my water by the time we got up to the notch, so it was a long, dry, hungry retreat across a couple miles of talus. Wonderful. We got into camp, collapsed for a while – I had left behind a bottle of water at camp, thankfully.
Nice evening, lots of eating and drinking – including a couple shots of the alcohol we had brought along – and then early to bed.
0919 Wednesday Bishop Pass Outbound Up early, packed and ready to leave by 8:45 am. It was bloody cold. No drama, nice hike out. OK, a little drama when I couldn’t seem to locate my truck keys at the trailhead.
Exiting the Bishop Pass parking lot, we saw a hitcher and stopped to pick him up (only our first of the trip) – crusty old buzzard named Harold who turns out to have several packs. He’d been living up the trail for a couple months and had multiple 70-lb packs. Dropped him off in Bishop after a nice discussion on how to catch your limit of trout every day.
A side note – originally, Mat and I had planned to be in country for 4 nights so that if we felt spiffy after Thunderbolt, we could attempt more than one peak. Sometime while we were packing gear, Mat played the adult and said “I think since this remote alpine technical climb on an unknown approach on a new climbing route is new to us both, realistically we should plan on only one peak”. Point taken. I left a message for Carol to change her train reservation from Friday to Thursday. Today we got in touch with Carol and she said she hadn’t changed her reservation. OK; Mat and I now have a couple days to explore anywhere we want between Bishop and Barstow.
Next stop was the Von’s in Bishop for food (breaking with my longstanding Bishop Taco Bell tradition in deference to my low-carb diet, have I mentioned I’ve lost 25 lbs on it so far?). I procured a whole roasted chicken and a pound of slaw; Mat went with bagels upon which he would pile salami and cheese. He also got some fresh brats for the evening meal. We drove off to a Izaak Walton Park which always looked sheltered as I’ve driven by in the past. Couple true dirtbag climbers there sorting gear, etc when we drove up. Mat talked to them a bit; I was more concentrated on my food. Half a roasted chicken, a couple beers (gotta have SOME carbs, right?) and some slaw later, I said “Well, I guess I should wrap up the rest of this chicken” and Mat says “Why?”. Why, indeed – so I ate the rest. Mat seemed impressed – not that he didn’t put away a couple large bagels, etc.
While discussion where to spend the night, Mat comes up with “Cowboy Camp” where he and his climbing buddy Bob had spent a night. Mat says it’s “20 minutes” north of town, so we head out. After driving up onto the tablelands there was a parking lot near a large group of volcanic boulders that were covered with petroglyphs. Nice. It turns out there are petroglyphs scattered in a wide area on the volcanic tablelands. From the website “The tablelands are part of a 580 square mile area covered by a series of volcanic ash flows from the eruption of Long Valley, 760,000 years ago. Composed of several layers of a salmon-colored pumice known as Bishop tuff, it is up to 600 feet deep in places, but averages 12 feet thick on the south-east edges. The tablelands border the northern end of Owens Valley, slightly slope to Round Valley, and reach to Mono Lake. In places where this broad, arch-shaped flow was subsequently folded and tilted by faulting, andesite and basalt leaked up through volcanic vents called fumaroles. The resulting formations were composed of more erosion resistant minerals and thus eventually became exposed.” Cool. The Owens River Gorge is cut into this tuff.
We did a little exploring and then Mat started on dinner – brats in onions sautéed with beer. Perfect. We had a fabulous evening sky with a complicated interplay of clouds, shadows and sunlight, culminating at sunset with a jet contrail actually throwing a shadow upwards onto the clouds.
Click me for today’s pictures…
0920 Thursday Buttermilk Bouldering Day The next morning we awoke to a stunning sunrise. The weather seemed quite complicated – there was the front that had chased us out of Bishop Pass yesterday to our west, and to our east it seemed there was another front blowing up from the southeast and rising up over the Inyo mountains. After another leisurely breakfast, we went driving down Fish Slough Road in search of more petroglyphs. Sadly, too many people have had the need to add modern touches to the petroglyphs – but what is there and preserved is beautiful and interesting.
All day, we had been looking to the west and admiring the blanket of snow on the Sierra – it looked to be down to 9-10,000 feet in some areas – so we decided to head back up to the Bishop Pass trailhead to see it up close. On the way, we picked up our second hitcher of the trip – this guy was fairly young, but wow, seemed to have burned out his brain somewhere along the line. As we dropped him off, he hit us up for money for a passport – sorry, dude, a ride is the best we can do. We drove up to Lake Sabrina and had snow flurries along the way.
After hanging out here for a while, we headed to the Buttermilk Boulders to try our hand. What a cool area this is. I was in awe all afternoon of the environment – hundreds of bouldering routes with a backdrop of the snowy Sierra Nevada – I will definitely be back here in the future. After burning ourselves out on the boulders and a little driving tour of the area, we settled on heading for Independence and Upper Grey’s Meadow campground for the night.
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0921 Friday Fossil Falls and Barstow to pick up Carol Another fine sunrise. We headed south to Lone Pine. I was hoping that along the way we’d get to see Mount Tyndall, Mount Williamson and Mount Whitney, but the clouds were too low over the Sierra Nevada crest. Rats. On the other hand, the cloud cover made for spectacular views. In Lone Pine, we stopped at an internet cafe (I won’t say their name, as they charge for wireless internet access and I think this is crap) and then at the Sierra Elevation gear shop and had a good visit with the proprietor, Kastle Lund. We then headed out to the Alabama Hills, explored, had lunch and had a long conversation with a road grader driver (Harry?) who used to be a fireman and work SAR for the Forest Service. He had a lot of good stories.
We then headed down 395 and stopped off at Fossil Falls and did some exploring. After climbing down into the gorge, we walked downstream a ways and found another tributary set of falls that I had not seen before. After taking some pics of some interesting rock formations, we made our way back to the truck and headed off to Beautiful Barstow, “Crossroads of Opportunity” and the Garden Spot of the Mojave Desert to pick Carol up at the bus station. Interestingly, if you click on the “Things to do Within 100 Miles of Barstow” link, none of them appear to actually be in Barstow.
The final adventure of the day – when Carol bought her ticket, on the website the Barstow terminal was listed as being in one place, then she called Amtrak and was told by a person that no, it’s at this other place, so Mat and I went there to meet her. It made sense, as it was clearly a train station and there was a sign saying “Amtrak Bus Stop”, so yeah, we were in the right place.
Not.
Carol calls, says I’m “somewhere else” and after a few stress-filled minutes, she figured out where she was and we headed there. It’s a McDonald’s on Main Street, it’s Friday night, and apparently most of Barstow is there. We find Carol, get on the road again, wonder why that spot was so popular and then pull off at Afton Canyon road and head to a secret spot Carol and I had found before to camp for the night. Mat makes us Salmon filets sautéed in white wine, onions, garlic and I forget what else, but YUM – it believe we also polished off the rest of the wine along with the salmon – again, gotta choose carefully where you get those carbs in your diet.
Mat decides to tent it for the night, which turned out to be a good choice given the windstorm and sprinkles later in the night.
We’re off to Utah in the morning to meet my canyoneering buddies…
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