Fri, Sep 24, 2004
|
With: | Matthew Holliman |
The approach is one of the shortest and easiest one can find leading to a Sierra peak. From the
Convict Lake TH, it is a short 35-minute walk around the north side of the lake, up a few
hundred feet of sage-covered hillside, then a small amount of talus to
the start of the gully.
We climbed up a short ways before reaching the first difficulty, a
20-foot wall at about 60
degrees. This was
a bonafide class 4 section and the hardest part we would find all day. Matthew took a first crack
at it, then backed off and let me go up. It was spicy, and I turned with camera ready at the top
to get a picture of Matthew. But Matthew had other plans, and finding the section not to his
liking, backed off about 50 feet and found a loose class 3-4 route on the right side of the gully.
While I waited about 15 minutes for Matthew to rejoin me, I enjoyed the views back towards
Convict Lake and alternately looked for shade and a good rock to sit on, depending on which
was bothering me more. There was little chance to hide from the morning sun on this route, and
though it had been in the upper 30s when we started, it had warmed up considerably once the sun
had come up over McGee Mtn to the east.
We followed the path up the middle of the gully as recommended in the TRs and guidebooks. At times
it was more like canyoneering than mountain climbing, an enjoyable mix of scrambling up the
(at times) very narrow gorge, that was no more than 4 feet across in places. The rock in the center
was quite solid, washed clean from eons of water flowing in this seasonal creek. It was slick in
places too, polished smooth by the same water flow, but not slimy and dangerous. During or just
after a thunderstorm, or while the snow was melting on the upper face, this would probably be
a much more difficult effort. Where the route split into two narrow gorges above us, we took the right
(north) branch. This led to a near-vertical, awkward constriction in the gorge that we chose to
bypass on the left before rejoining the channel just above the constriction, where it became mostly
class 2-3. By his smile, I could tell
Matthew was enjoying himself - in fact we both
were. The route was just hard enough to be challenging and enjoyable, but nothing scary.
The gorge broadens above this point, becoming a wide chute with many possibilities above here.
Another 100 feet up starts the band of
reddish rock that is very notable from Convict Lake,
and while still
in the gray band below it we began angling to our left per the picture in Croft's book. Crossing the
red band, we found the rock more fractured and talus-strewn, but no harder than class 3. Above this
we angled to the right, following the main branch of the gully we'd started in. We found lots of
face climbing on gray slabs that required some attention, but not enough to entice us into our rock
shoes. Matthew isn't a fan of steep slabs at all, and here he fell well behind as I continued up
this section fairly quickly. After losing sight of Matthew below me, the slabs ended in a sea of
loose talus crud, which continued for about 800ft to the summit. Above 11,000 ft there was ample
remains of
snow that had dusted the Sierra the previous week. It was just enough to enhance
the pictures of the north facing slopes, but not enough to get in a climber's way.
The route I followed landed me on
the summit ridge about 50 feet from the summit itself, a pretty good aim it seemed. I was at the
summit at 11:30a, and took off my pack for a break. At 4 1/2 hours it was far from any speed record
(I'm betting the fastest could make it in an hour), but had we broken out the rope it would have
been hours later. There was only a breeze atop, not a cloud in the sky, and the temperature was
cooler and more pleasant than it had been on the route. Mt. Morrison and
Bloody Mtn
were the two closest peaks that presented fine views, but there was much to see in all directions
(
SW -
W -
NW -
N -
NE -
E -
SE -
S).
Matthew was about 30 minutes behind me, giving me plenty of time to peruse the many books in the
summit register. There were four or five books, the earliest dating to the 1980s - this peak gets
climbed a lot. I found my
previous entry from 1996 when I first climbed the peak with my
brother Tom. I
stood up after I'd done with the register and looked around for Matthew. At first I didn't see him
anywhere, but then his form appeared about a hundred yards down on the South Ridge. He had
evidently taken a slightly different ascent route than myself, following up the next chute to the
south. There are many, many options one can take on the upper half of the route.
Behind him I spotted two other
climbers just popping up on the lower south summit, probably having come up the South Ridge. They
spotted us as well and decided to take a lunch break on the other summit. Maybe we smelled bad?
Maybe they thought it was too crowded? Since we never got to speak to them, we may never know.
Matthew wasn't interested in staying long at the summit, so after a brief pause we both headed back
down the North Slope.
From below, I had pointed out Croft's descent chute which joins back up with
the base of the NE Gully. But I hadn't read carefully that one needs to follow the NE Ridge to get
to the top of it. Instead, I zipped down the North Slope aiming for a small plateau and broad
saddle with the
long ridge that runs along Convict Lake's north side. I thought Matthew was just falling behind on
the cruddy talus slopes, but he was angling for the NE Ridge, having read the beta more carefully.
When I reached the plateau I saw no sign of Matthew and figured he'd wandered down the NE Ridge
by accident. From the plateau I dropped east into a hanging valley. The initial slope was loose
and crappy morrainal material, but once I reached
the floor of the hanging valley it was easy
going along tufted, grassy meadows. The valley curved to the southeast and brought me to the
sage-covered slopes that drop down towards the Convict Lake Trail. The bushwhacking was pretty
easy, nothing like the difficulty Croft describes (I'd guess he never actually took this route
he warned against). In fact I think it may have been better than the NE Ridge descent which looked
to have many hundreds of feet of loose scree to contend with. I found many partial trails, a mix
of animal and human that braided their way down the slopes, having only a few places with any real
bushwhacking. I was back at the trail by 2p, and back at the car half an hour later. I had no keys
to Matthew's car, so I laid down behind it on the asphalt where it had created some shade, and
rested. Matthew's familiar footsteps appeared another 30 minutes later. 8hrs car to car, no epic,
no routefinding problems, no 5.hard climbing, perfect weather. What more could we ask for?
We drove on to Bishop (stopping at Vons for the now routine Starbucks Frappuccinos, and other snacks) then further to Independence. We took a room at the motel across the street from the courthouse, and had dinner at the local Subway. We had done so well with time that we were actually in bed shortly after 6p as planned - big day tomorrow, and we needed all the rest we could get...
Continued...
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