We found Glenn and brother Sam at the Twin Lakes Resort parking lot as planned
at 6a. It was very dark and cold (29F), but neither descriptive
was expected to
last long as the new day was about to get under way. The brothers were
eating breakfast
out of the back of their truck and it was another 30 minutes before
we were packed and under way - just late enough that we didn't need headlamps.
Wandering through the campground, we headed
south and soon found a few trail signs leading us in the right direction. I
misread the last one and led us off in the wrong direction on a trail that
took us halfway across the south side of the lake. It was almost half a
mile before Matthew and I realized the mistake and took corrective action.
Nevermind that we'd both been up the Horse Creek Trail multiple times. We
called the wasted 15 minutes a "warm-up" and were soon heading up the right
drainage. We took the use trail that closely follows the stream on the right
side, eschewing the regular trail and its pack mule-friendly switchbacks. The
alternative is a fun bit of very steep trail that makes its way under forest
cover until it rejoins the main trail after the switchbacks.
The sun was breaking on the 
Sawtooth Range
ahead of us as we plied the last mile of 
the trail
to the meadow above. Where the trail ran closest to the
creek at the south end of the meadow, we left the trail to start the
cross-country portion of the day. Sadly, I picked the meanest pile of downed
logs and runoff debris to plow through immediately after
crossing the creek.
Sam and Glenn followed me, only half amused at my poor choice. Trailing,
Matthew watched the three of us pitch into the thick of it, up and over and
along all manner of downed logs. Matthew then calmly found
an easier way around the mess. Fortunately, that was the worst of it, and in
a few minutes we were making our way up talus and then more talus.
The route we took follows the east side of The Cleaver at
its base, only class
2 but a lot of work due to the steepness. Snow that had fallen in the past week
had not yet melted, and from the looks of it, 
some of it
may be planning to
hang around all winter. It looked like there had been 3-4 inches of snow, though
all of the south and most of the eastern aspects had already melted off.
Because our route followed the east side of The Cleaver, much of the snow was
gone, though not entirely. We were fortunate to find a way to our summits with
only a bit of snow as it looked from below like it would be impossible to do
so.
We climbed up the 
talus fields
for two hours, past The Cleaver, past 
Cleaver Notch,
to the base of Cleaver Peak's NE Face. We took a 
short break to
regroup and catch our breath before starting up. Cleaver Peak, lying on the
Sierra Crest at the junction with the North Ridge
leading to The Cleaver was the
first of our objectives for the day. Matthew had hopes to climb Blacksmith,
the Doodad,
and Matterhorn Peak afterwards, but I didn't give us much of a
chance - Cleaver Peak by itself would qualify as a good effort for the day in
my book. Secor rates the 
NE Face as class 3,
but Matthew had beta that
suggested something a little harder, class 3-4. What we found was a little
harder still. Snow, though not abundant, lay on easier ledges along the face
which we tried to avoid - wet boots aren't much fun.
This pushed us onto harder rock and we found
it spicier than we had anticipated. Helmets came out of our packs and onto
our heads. In the lead, I had charged ahead near the
edge of an old retreating snow field. The rocks were sprinkled with sand and
dust left as the snow melted, making things dicier than they would have been
otherwise. Glenn initially followed but soon headed up his own way, following
a flake up a vertical section I had bypassed. Sam found yet another way around
it. The end result was that Sam and Glenn quickly showed their better prowess
on the rock, and I was left asking, "How did you do that?"
Matthew, taking a different route to the right, struggled a bit behind us.
He called
for help at one point where he'd wandered off onto a slab that was making him
nervous. Glenn and I scrambled back to where he stood, Glenn tossing out a
sling to help give him the security he needed to get up the difficultly. At
another airy section Matthew asked for the rope, and in the interest of saving
time we all donned our harnesses. Glenn hooked some slings over a rock and I
belayed Matthew up the short section. As it was easier above, I flaked the
rope into my backpack where it would be quickly ready again, then we continued
scrambling. No more ropework was needed. As we neared the top, the rocks grew
blockier and 
more vertical.
We explored several narrow chimneys for a way up.
While Sam struggled in one partially filled with snow, I found an alternate way
up a steep ramp to the right that deposited me atop the North Ridge. It was not
clear initially that I could continue 
along the ridge,
so while the others
waited below I went ahead a few dozen yards to confirm it would go.
I scrambled the remaining distance to the summit block (which can be
climbed from 
the SE or NW sides)
in order to get some photos of the others on the 
airy ridge.
Glenn followed in quick succession, but Sam took a seat on the
rock right before the knife-edge section. The scrambling wasn't terribly
difficult, but the exposure was getting to him he admitted. As he had done for
much of the climb, Glenn offered encouragement to his brother and in time he
got past the edge. A few minutes later Matthew popped up on the ridge and we
were soon four on the summit.
It had been a good climb, and had we stopped there I would have been satisfied.
Clearly we wouldn't make it to The Doodad or Matterhorn. The south side of the
Sawtooths is even more vertical than the north side, unusual for a Sierra ridge.
And the chutes on Matterhorn's 
West Face,
purported to be class 3, looked to be
much more challenging with the amount of snow we could see lying in them. It
was nearly noon and we set our sights much closer to nearby
Blacksmith Peak.
None of us wanted to retrace our route on Cleaver Peak if we could avoid it,
and initially it seemed as if adding Blacksmith before our retreat would be a
lot of work and time. Matthew offered the suggestion that we could avoid the
backtracking if we descended the south side of the Sawtooths after Blacksmith
and returned via the Burro Pass Trail. That was a brilliant suggestion,
or so it seemed at the time.
Matthew was the only one in our group who had been on that trail,
and it wasn't clear to the rest of us ahead of time just how long that hike
out would be. No matter - we had a plan and were soon on our way to Blacksmith.
Getting off Cleaver Peak
to the notch between the two was no easy trick. We
started down the easiest way on the 
southwest side,
but this ran into cliffs
after a few hundred feet. Traversing around to the northwest side where we
were told the class 3 route could be found, things were a bit spicier. Slabs
and cracks led down on that side, but lingering snow made it look harder than
class 3. Going first, I made my way slowly and very carefully from one foothold
to the next, taking a zigzag pattern down through the icy minefield. It turned
out to be easier than it had looked, but I was unable to convince the others of
this. They 
gathered together above to take stock of this section.
Sam initially started down, but within a few feet dislodged a large
50lb rock that came crashing down about 20 feet from where I stood. Smaller
pieces the size of marbles bounced off my helmet. Holy
smokes! Afraid of another bomb, I dashed down the ramp leading across the West
Face, out of firing range. The sun was warming the rocks nicely here and I
thought
could relax for a bit while the others decided how to descend. They chose to
rappel off the West Face, directly above my head. I quickly moved further south
across the face to get out of range again. 
The rappel took 45 minutes
before the three of them were 
safely down and on the way to Glacier
Col, while I warmed myself in the sun and strained my neck watching them.
The 
north side of Glacier Col looked like
a moderate snow climb (and a much shorter return route),
but without crampons and axes it would be impossible. We had earlier considered
this for a return route, but hadn't held out much hope.
We scrambled across the talus debris on Blacksmith's south side, traversing upwards towards the SW Arete. Up until this time we had been relying on Matthew's collection of beta for getting us up and down the scramble sections, but here we paid little heed to the written directions as it seemed there were many options on this side of the mountain. Out in front, I scrambled up the SW Arete as far as I could go before the blocks grew too large and vertical. I then traversed back to the South Face, following a convenient set of ramps that took me within about 50 feet of the summit ridge. Some class 4 cracks followed by an easy class 5 move out on a vertical face with excellent handholds got me onto the ridge. Unfortunately, an inpassable gap stood between me and the apparent summit to the southeast, some belay slings suggesting to me that others had run into similar difficulties. Not wanting to rappel into the gap (after all, this is supposed to be a class 3 peak), I backtracked to the ramps and followed Glenn into the narrow chute leading to the summit. This chute was the prominent gully described by Secor, and led us to the middle summit where we found the register. Success!
Or so we thought. The altitude was adversely affecting Sam who decided to call
it quits halfway up the South Face. We could
see him hunched over, holding his
head. Communicating by shouts, Glenn found that he was suffering a headache
along with an upset stomach he'd had most of the day. He wasn't having a lot of
fun at the moment. Matthew 
scrambled up
to join us a few minutes later on what we learned was the SE summit. He
pointed out the 
NW summit
across the gap was the highpoint, the block rated
5.6. Huh? That was the one I had nearly climbed when I came across the gap and
backtracked. We studied the upper part of the NW summit a good deal, trying to
determine if we could climb it without a rope. It was past 2p now and though
not critical, time was certainly becoming a factor. If we got out the rope to
do the NW summit it would easily chew up an hour and a half, and having Sam
wait it out below for that length of time didn't seem a very nice thing to do.
We debated briefly whether it was worthwhile giving it a go, but started our
descent without making a decision.
After descending back to the gully between the two peaks, I told Glenn, who
was nearby, that I was going to give the NW summit a shot without the rope.
Glenn decided to join me. As we started up 
the class 4 cracks I had
done earlier, I
called over to Matthew what we were planning, but he remained non-committal. I
had dropped my pack which made the low class 5 move easier
than the first time. Once at the ridge where I'd found the sling, I scampered
up the remaining 20 feet to the summit. Nothing past that crux was harder than
class 3, so it was hard to see where the 5.6 rating had come from. Possibly
that was for following the gully up from below instead of the face. Glenn
came up
to join me and take a few quick pictures before we beat a retreat. We knew
that Matthew wasn't going to like that 
crux move though. Glenn went
down quickly to rejoin his brother and start their descent to get Sam to a lower
altitude. I hung out below the crux talking with Matthew. He decided to put on
his rock shoes and to give it a try.
He did a fine job on the short class 4 cracks below the crux.
I showed him the crux move and the holds that go with it, but
he wasn't liking it much. He almost succeeded at finding an easier way around
it, but the flake he was climbing proved too awkward to surmount. He hemmed and
hawwed for what seemed like 20 minutes (but was really only a couple minutes),
eventually deciding it wasn't worth the risk. He'd come back another day. I
didn't say so at the time, but if it were me I wouldn't bother coming back just
to tag the NW summit - it was maybe a foot or two higher than the one holding
the register, and the climbing wasn't that great to warrant a return.
I hung out with Matthew while he changed back to his boots, then we shouldered
our packs and 
headed down.
Glenn and Sam had left some 15 minutes earlier back
the way we ascended along the SW Arete. Matthew suggested the gully ought to be
faster than the ridge so we headed down that way. It was a junk-filled chute
that fortunately wasn't too steep to cause worry over sending rocks down on
each other. I didn't follow the gully all the way to the base as it
grew steeper in the lower reaches. I traversed right (west) towards the SW
Arete a bit before finding class 3 scrambling down through the rocks. Matthew
was a few hundred feet above me when I got off the last of 
the face.
Lower down I watched to make sure he was off the hardest parts before turning
and heading for the Burro Pass Trail.
Glenn and Sam were nowhere about when I reached the trail, presumeably already
hiking down the shallow valley.
My map didn't cover the return route we planned, but I figured it would be
pretty easy - just take any right forks at the trail junctions. It was 3p now
as I hiked on alone for the next hour. I figured I had a few hours of daylight,
another hour of dusk, then headlamp. Without knowing how long the trail was,
I hoped I might make it out before dark. That was wishful thinking. After
hiking up one steep section of the trail I thought I was near the pass, only
to find the trail headed west and continued climbing. I didn't know at the time
that this false pass led to Island Pass, a class 2 cross-country route down
Little Slide Canyon. A little beta and a map could have helped save some time
there. Or maybe I would have gotten hopelessly lost in the canyon thicket at
nightfall and suffered an epic. It was possibly a good thing I followed the
trail. I continued on for a few more miles to 
Mule Pass,
catching Glenn and Sam along the way. The three of 
carried on
together from there. Sam's headache was gone, but not so
his upset stomach. For a 17-year old he was pretty damn tough and didn't
complain much. This was turning out to be one hard day.
The nice part about our return route was that it went through some very
beautiful country, with high alpine meadows, 
sparkling lakes,
and 
rugged peaks.
There was no evidence that there had been anyone on the trail recently
as the only bootprints in the dust were our own. It seemed we had this entire
wilderness to ourselves. Half a mile past Mule Pass the trail headed NW down
a steep section with snow that was unavoidable. We stomped our way through it,
the Gookins leading the way, now and then pausing as the trail was momentarily
lost. We began to see boot tracks in the snow, first from one hiker who had
ventured the highest before turning around, then more as we dropped lower. It
seemed we were the first over Mule Pass in some time.
We passed by 
Crown Lake
and Robinson Lakes as the trail meandered about, not
taking the obvious route down the drainage. It continued in a northwest
direction which was away from Twin Lakes, with some uphill sections
thrown in for good measure. The convoluted route made sense when we realized it
was meeting a trail junction to Peeler Lake, but at the time it seemed odd.
After the junction, the trail began to descend Robinson Creek in earnest as the
three of us forged on. We took a break near Barney lake just after sunset,
where I refilled a water bottle for the last leg of our journey. It was still
a long way back to Twin Lakes, but we were heading in the right direction at
least and it was all downhill. After one too many stumbles we paused to put on
our headlamps, using them for the last hour and half.
It was 8:15p when we stumbled through the campground and found our way to the cafe at the Twin Lakes Resort. Not sure how late they were serving dinner, we filed into the small building with our packs and headlamps still on. "How late are you open?" I asked. "If you want dinner, you better order now before the kitchen closes," was the reply. We set Sam at the counter while Glenn and I ran back to our cars to get our wallets. We ordered bacon cheeseburgers, patty melts, and similar to satisfy our cravings for fat and protein. We ordered salads because our Moms taught us to eat vegetables and roughage. We ordered beer because we could (excepting Sam, for shame). It was the best darn burger I had had in a long time, though that might have been the case with any burger after a 13 hour outing. We had expected Matthew to catch up to us along the trail, but failing that we ordered a cheeseburger for him should he be too late to order for himself. He didn't make it back until the rest of us were done and in the showers, but he found his to-go order on the front seat of the car. He was happy to have the burger, even if it wasn't as hot and fresh as our own. A good finish to a long day.
Continued...