I was out climbing by myself on the Silver Divide when I got a text from Robert:
Do you have any interest in traversing center basin crags?. I responded
simply, Yes. Very quickly we set up a date for the following Wednesday.
That would give me enough time to get home, reacquaint myself with my wife,
and let her know where I was headed the next week. In the meantime, Robert had
gotten a good deal of helpful beta from Richard Shore concerning their 2019
traverse, including 
a succinct topo of the entire route. Much of what
they
found matched what Beach/Good described in 1984, though they thought the crux
5.8 pitch was on Crag #4, not Crag #3. They had taken 17hrs for the car-to-car
adventure from Onion Valley, something that gave me pause and no small measure
of alarm. These guys were another league ahead of me - Lakey had already soloed
all the Minarets and Kearsarge Pinnacles, well-known to me among his many
Sierra exploits. Shore, I came to find, is a suitable match for Lakey. Robert
had asked me to join him not for my climbing abilities, but for my enthusiasm.
I was out-gunned by all of them, so how were we going to do this in a reasonable
time if those guys had taken 17hrs? We could skip Bradley since that's just a
slog at the end of the ridgeline, saving a few hours. My biggest hope lay in
that photo they provided - it appears they tried to stay on the crest as much
as possible. I have no such puritan needs and would glady pervert the
traverse by dropping all the way down to Center Basin if needed to get around
difficulties. And ultimately, I told myself if we got to Crag
#1 I would call it a success and consider any of others we might reach as
bonus. I'd rather abort the enterprise enroute than have a miserable bivvy
along the ridge somewhere.
Robert and I met up in Onion Valley the night before. We had actually planned
to do Dragon Tooth as a warm-up, but Robert suggested we skip it - better to do
the harder effort when we were fresh than after a tough warm-up day. After some
minor debate on when to start, we settled on 5a. That would allow us to put away
the headlamps once we'd finished with the trail to Robinson Lake. Along with my
personal gear, I carried the 60m rope and a bunch of webbing and rap rings we'd
use for rappels, while Robert carried the climbing hardware. I was up before
4:30a in the morning and we were shortly 
on our way. It would take us
2h45m to 
make our way to 
University Pass, completely
snow-free this
time of year. It seemed slow, but I was only 15min faster 13yrs earlier on my
first time over the pass. If I'm only another 15min slower in another 13yrs,
I'll glady take it. Smoke from several California fires had filled
Owens Valley and much of 
the High Sierra. At the higher
elevations it wasn't thick enough to be a health concern, but would mar many
of our photos for the day. Not much we could do about that.
After a short rest we headed up to Ph.D Peak just above us, a short 15min
effort from the pass with a fun little 
class 3 summit block.
It was my fourth time on top this pointy little summit, giving me the most
entries in 
the register dating to the 1980s. Oddly, it had only 17
pages of entries which seems surprising, considering how close it is to the
pass. We had a decent view 
looking south along the crest that took in
all five of the crags. Even the furthest did not look that far away
(Crag #5 is about 0.75mi from Ph.D Peak) and all of them were lower
than the summit we sat upon. Of course we had done all the easy work - now the
real work would begin, with Crag #1 about 0.30mi away. We 
headed south
along the crest, descending from Ph.D peak and fairly quickly running into
difficulties. Robert persevered while I decided to look for an easier way around
on the west side. He eventually reached 
a more serious obstacle and
concluded that following the crest was not the most efficient way to do this
traverse. He 
came down from his perch and joined me on
the west side, making better time heading south than we could have
otherwise. When our route 
reconnected with the crest, we were only a
short distance 
north of Crag #1 and it looked like it was within our
grasp. We dropped 
off the crest again to get around
another obstacle and were soon around it. After reaching
the saddle on the north side of the crag, we did some
class 4 scrambling on that side to get us to the summit by 9:40a. It
was an hour and a half since Ph.D Peak, kinda slow for only 0.30mi, but it
gives an idea what sort of terrain we were on, with more than enough class 3-4
stuff for the adventurous.
We found the 
Lakey/Shore register in a small glass
cannibis jar. It was found inside a badly rusted tin from an earlier
era, but unfortunately none of the notes that might have been inside from
earlier days survived. 
Looking south, Crags #2-4 looked tantalizingly
close, only 0.25mi further. At this point it seemed like
we were making great progress, but of course we had yet to break out the rope.
On this next section between Crag #1 and #2 Lakey & Shore had done a pair of
rappels along the crest before dropping off to the west side and making their
way below the crest to Crag #2. Robert seemed eager to explore the route along
the crest beyond #1 so we headed off in that direction. A few minutes later I
declared I couldn't possibly solo any further and began to backtrack. I ended
up back at the summit of #1 to access a gully leading down the west side once
again. Robert avoided the return to the summit but ended up in the same gully.
As we began descending, I could see the chute leading up towards Crag #2 that I
wanted to reach but there was no easy way to reach it without descending several
hundred feet. I was more or less resigned to this and heading in that direction
when Robert suggested a shortcut across some slabs and spicy terrain that I had
initially dismissed. I climbed back up a short distance to join him and we
explored that way
further. With a bit of luck it could have worked out quite
nicely and saved us some time and effort, but we came across the last 60ft or
so that looked too dangerous to downclimb. Out came the rope and our harnesses.
We cut a section of webbing and 
rapped off it to reach
the chute we were aiming for, taking about 30min for the effort. We
now had access to a wide chute that would 
take us up to the notch on
the north side of Crag #2, only 10min away.
With everything going pretty well so far, it was time for us to make a tactical
error that would suck up an extra two hours. Without actually climbing to the
notch where the previous two parties agreed there was a 5.6 route, we noted that
the East Arete looked less steep and a possibly better way. "We should at least
check it out..." went our thinking. And so we did. We spent maybe 10min
scrambling up
and right to reach the arete, but never gave the North Face the
same look because it appeared to start off impossibly vertical from our
limited view. At the East Arete, I had climbed as high as I safely could and
turned to Robert, "I guess we go up here?", pointing to the edge of the arete
because the south side of it dropped off near vertically. Robert took this to
mean we continue scrambling and started up to join me, but I said no, we'd
need to get the rope out. Robert hadn't gotten the same look I had and would
not have gotten more than about 10ft up without one. Here we paused to put on
climbing shoes and to gear up for an actual climb.
We could only see up about 50ft of the route, perhaps 1/3 of the way to the
summit. It looked like we could manage that first part, but beyond that was
a guess - we might find ourselves rapping down again if we hit a blank wall.
It was not an easy pitch, maybe something like 5.7. Robert did an excellent
job on 
the sharp end
of the rope, placing about five pieces all told for the
first 40ft. Some rocks tumbled down into the chute to the south of the arete
as part of some route grooming that Robert was doing as he went along. The
last 10ft
proved to be very awkward as Robert spent almost half an hour trying
to get up a body-width crack that had poor holds. He eventually looked around
the corner to the right
and discovered a small alcove from where he could belay me. Though
I had been standing in the sun during all of this, a breeze blowing across from
Center Basin had me chilled by the time it was my turn to climb. I found
the climbing very unnerving for my skill level, the rock surfaces rough with
loose grains sloughing off under my shoes. After joining Robert I was
out of breath and my limbs were shaky. I had pulled on the rope at the crux
move and had managed to get up, but I found myself suddenly wondering what I
was doing on the side of this pinnacle, not enjoying things in the least.
I was breathing hard and my hands were trembling, and Robert might have
wondered if having me along was a mistake at this point. He was pretty calm,
suggesting that once we got back up to the crest we could do "a reset" and get
on with the program. I knew that was just a calming tactic, but appreciated the
sentiment.
After a few minutes I was able to regain my composure. The alcove we were in
had two vertical cracks that might be climbed, by Robert, anyway. I had brought
prussiks for just such a scenario (I was expecting to have trouble on the 5.8
pitch still ahead) and declared that that was the only way I was going to get
up the next 20ft. Robert left his pack to make this short
pitch easier, and after a
few hesitations while sizing things up, placed two pieces and worked his way up
and over the lip above. The going looked easier above him, so he set up an
anchor and fixed the line so I could jug it. I've used the prussiks enough to
feel confident I could get up, it was just a matter of working through the
mechanics and then executing. Robert's pack was tied to a sling that
dangled below me
as I went up, an awkward bit of weight that made prussiking more
taxing. In hindsight, it would have been much better to just tie it to an extra
length of rope and haul it up after I had done the vertical section.
Once I had 
joined Robert,
we packed the rope away and began scrambling higher,
now tantalizingly close to the summit, less than 25 horizontal feet according
to my GPSr. Robert was in the lead, 
heading to a notch
directly on the crest
and north of the summit rocks. I started following, but then wondered if a
ledge system on the left might afford an easier route around to the backside of
the notch. Going off to explore it, I found it did just what I'd hoped, an
easy class 3 workaround to avoid the class 4 scrambling on the east side.
We rejoined on the backside and then found a class 3-4 scrambling route up the
remaining 20ft, 
getting us to 
the summit by 1:40p.
Things mostly just got easier after this. I wish we had looked down the North
Face to assess that route as the best way to get to Crag #2 from that side, but
alas we were too focused at the time in reaching the top, and once at the
summit, there was no view looking down the north side. We found the second
Lakey/Shore register
in another cannabis jar, located in a small recess where
the rap anchor was located. The next two crags were very close now, only
150ft to Crag #3 and a similar distance to Crag #4 behind it. Rapping off the
south side of #2 would take us to a notch between it and #3. Because the sling
already there was a year old, we 
added a second for backup and a rap
ring. Once this was set up, Robert 
rapped off
into the notch, myself following in
turn. When we went to pull the rope, we found it completely stuck, neither side
giving way. Robert climbed around and up partway on Crag #3 in an effort to
free it from a higher angle, but it still would not budge. Robert suggested we
might be able to scramble up the southeast side of #2 in order to free the
rope. "What is this nonsense?" I thought to myself since it looked like a
vertical wall from my vantage in the notch. I reluctantly walked down a short
distance from the notch and around the corner to discover that he was not
wrong. A steep dihedral went back up from that side, with good holds that I
carefully negotiated to the east side of the summit blocks. I then had to simply
redo the final moves we had done earlier and I was back at the rap anchor. I
had left my pack below to make the climb easier, but had brought an additional
piece of webbing to extend the anchor over the edge where our rope had gotten
stuck in a crack. Once this was done, I rapped off Crag #2 for a second time,
and the rope was now easily retrieved. Robert, meanwhile, had gone up to
investigate the route to Crag #3, choosing to take a line on the right side,
directly up from notch with Crag #2. This avoided what looked like the harder
route on the left of the face that Beach/Good had rated as 5.8 and Lakey/Shore
as 5.6. It proved to be a very good route indeed, no more than class 4 and
took us all the way to the top without using the rope. This was undoubtedly the
route Brower had used in 1940 when he reported a class 4 traverse across Crags
#2-4. Even with the rope getting stuck and having to reclimb #2, it took only
50min between #2 and #3. Things were looking pretty good now and we were
feeling on our game.
We found no register 
atop Crag #3 so we left one of our own, then
started the scramble off the south side towards the notch with #4. Most of
this went pretty good, but there was a 10ft vertical section we could not see
a way down. We found another year-old sling at the top of this, to which we
added a fresh loop of webbing and another rap ring before
rappelling off in turn. 
At the notch, we once again
packed away the rope and started 
scrambling up towards Crag #4 on its
north
side. There is a 5.8 route right up the middle that we could easily identify
from the photos that Shore had provided. Robert would have been able to climb
this, but I would have resorted to the prussiks, no question. But Robert had
been eyeing the lefthand edge and thought it would be an easier line. I agreed,
thinking I could probably climb that one. We had scrambled up from the notch
about 1/3 of the way, making 
this last pitch a reasonably short one.
Robert did another fine lead, placing about five pieces including three
small nuts that would give me a challenge when retrieving. The upper third
of the route was easier class 2-3. I was able to enjoy following this line
quite comfortably, without the nervousness of that first pitch on Crag #2, and
by 4p we were 
atop the last difficult crag. We were almost giddy with
out success. 
The last crag was just a walk-up, so really all we had to
do was rap off Crag #4 to be done with the technical work. We left
a second register
here because the tiny Lakey/Shore one seemed insufficient.
After some rest for food and drink, we started scrambling down the south side of
#4, quickly finding the first of two rap stations on this side. We replaced the
sling left by the previous party 
with our own plus rap ring, then
dropped off that side a full rope length, discovering the second rap station
just before the length of rope ran out. While 
Robert was rapping the
first pitch, I was setting up new webbing in the second rap anchor, using the
same two small nuts wedged tightly in the rock to hold it. The
second rappel was much shorter, perhaps half the length of the first,
and by 4:45p we were on semi-solid ground in the wide chute that leads up to
Crags #4 and #5 from Center Basin. After packing the rope away for the last
time, we left our packs and 
scrambled up to Crag #5 in less than 10min.
We took more photos, bumped fists, left our 
last register and returned
to our packs. Robert had lost all interest in 
Mt. Bradley, and since I
had already been there, was more than happy to save the extra hours it would
cost us.
The rest of the day was an exercise in grinding out the return, though it wasn't
as unpleasant as that might sound. We first dropped all the way down
the wide chute to Center Basin, about 40min all told from the summit
of Crag #5. We then hiked the eastern edge of Center Basin heading north,
making an ascending traverse towards 
the westside chute that leads to
University Pass. 
The chute was a slow climb, much as we expected, the
day's effort having taken its toll and fatigue setting in. It was 6:50p by the
time we returned 
to the pass, the sun about 
30min from setting
and a chill breeze blowing over the crest. We took a last break here for food
and water, then shouldered our packs and plunged down 
the east side of
the pass. I had hoped that we might get back
to the trail before needing our headlamps, but we were about 30min shy of that.
We were just finishing with the boulder fields in the upper cirque when safety
suggested we should throw some light on the ground. We weaved our way through
more boulders, slabs and trees to descend to Robinson Lake, then picked up
the trail on the south side of the lake. It was quite dark by this time, but
the nearly full moon was illuminating Kearsarge Peak across Onion Valley to the
north, a sublime sight. With his stronger headlamp, I let Robert lead us down
the 1.5mi of trail, along which I managed to slip and stumble half a dozen
times. I'd like to believe it was due to sand and dust on the rocks making them
slippery, but they were tired falls, no question.
We got back to 
the TH
by 9p, making for a rather full day at 16hrs. I think
Robert was hoping we'd stay up a bit to make dinner and enjoy relishing in the
day's adventure, but I had no interest in food. I wanted a quick shower and then
off to bed, rest sounding so much better than food to me at this juncture.
I thought I would drift off pretty quickly, but I lay awake for almost an
hour, the day's episodes playing over in my head. I eventually fell into
unconciousness, my body overcoming my brain, and setting recovery in full
motion...
Continued...