My daughter was home for the summer with an internship that would keep her
occupied during the weekday. We scheduled a one-day trip to do some
hiking/climbing on a Sunday, but I did not have anything definitive planned. I
considered a return visit to Round Top (we had turned around on
a previous snowshoe visit
due to high wind and extreme cold), or perhaps a climb of Jeff
Davis (now changed to Da-ek Dow Go-et). On Saturday I got the idea that Two
Sentinels might be the ticket, located above the Kirkwood Ski Area. Both are
about 60ft in height, short but impressive rock pinnacles. Kristine
had reported them being "exciting" scrambles. The Thunder Mtn Trail starts at
SR88, passing by both features about a mile and a half from the TH. A short
outing would
be much to Jackie's liking. I decided to add 7,980ft as a bonus if we had the
time and energy afterwards. We packed a rope and climbing gear just in case,
though we didn't use them for the most part.
Two Sentinels
We left San Jose early, but not
too early, since the hike wasn't very
long. This gave us the opportunity to stop for coffee and fastfood breakfast in
Jackson on our way up SR88. We arrived at the before 8a
to find it already 3/4 full - This is a very popular TH and would be completely
full when we returned. It took us 30min to the delightful
trail to the base of North Sentinel, our first stop.
were in abundance about the meadows that
interspersed with forest, with smatterings of red ones, too. There were several
route possibilities on facing the trail, and while
to put on her climbing shoes, I surveyed the feature's
faces, eventually concluding that the only reasonable
was right up the side facing the ridgeline. About 30ft up is
, a 15-foot near-vertical rock face just right of the
chimney we would ascend. The chimney here was overhanging, necessitating the
move out on the right side. Getting to the start of this is easy class 3 and
would be the
place to rope up if that were to be used. We left our packs at the base of
North Sentinel to make the climbing easier. Jackie went up first so I could spot
her from below. It was her first time back on rock since her lead fall at
Pinnacles NP
back in December,
so she was understandably a bit nervous. She handled it well and was soon in
above. The route gets easier ,
standard class 3 on mostly solid volcanic rock. Small rocks came down on me as
I followed, a reminder I should have had a
helmet on as my noggin got pelted by a few of them. I would wear it for
South Sentinel. took all of ten minutes, with nice views
looking over and the ski area. We looked about for a
register but found none, so of . On the
return, I so that I could again spot Jackie
. We were both happy to the crux without
incident.
After changing back to her boots, we the short distance to
and began to size that up. The short side facing the
ridgeline was the obvious place to look and I was immediately taken by a
safe-looking chimney that went up that side. While Jackie was
to rock shoes, I went around to
to see if there were options there. It looked like
it might make for a fun class 3+ on huge, knobby
holds, but we didn't use that route - others might find that preferrable if
not comfortable with narrow chimneys. on the short side of
the feature as nicely as I'd hoped, again leaving our packs at
the base. We had none of the nervousness of the North Sentinel route and we
laughed and joked the whole . Above the chimney, the route
becomes , only slightly harder than trivial. Again, it took
less than 10min for the entire . are similar to
North Sentinel with a very nice of that first feature. We
left a second here before back
the . A pause at the bottom for Jackie to
change to her hiking boots and we were soon heading back
. We passed a number of parties on their way up. It
wasn't yet 10:30a when we ,
less than two and half hours for the outing.
Peak 7,980ft
We drove about a mile east on SR88 to the turnoff for Kirkwood Lake (which we
ironically never saw) and . The parking here was near
capacity. There is a $10 day-use fee. Marcus Sierra had reported on PB using
the Margaret Lake Trail near Kirkwood Meadow, but that route was more than 5mi
in length. I figured the approach from Kirkwood CG would be less than about a
mile each way, though all cross-country. The terrain here is mostly granite
slabs with some brush. We had to climb over
before to Caples Creek and then climbing to our summit.
It was more than I had guessed it might be and I enjoyed the
scrambling very much. Jackie seemed to enjoy it only slightly less - she's still
not so comfortable on . crossing proved
to be the crux. I went over on a series of boulders that taxed a 60yr-old's
leaping abilities. Jackie then balked at the largest
gap - the water was flowing too strongly to take such a leap lightly. She ended
up walking on the south side to
that was much easier. We then spent another half hour
up to via
that never got harder than , but
was consistently . In all, we spent about 50min to reach
with in all , a really
nice summit. We left a third here before starting back down.
I handed the GPSr to Jackie with instructions to follow the track back to our
starting point. I then , letting her make the best
of her memory and her GPSr abilities. She did very well getting us back down to
, very close to our original route. From Caples Creek back
to she didn't do as well, though her route was somewhat
shorter than the one I had taken us out on - overall a B+. We
back at the Jeep by 12:30p. It was getting quite warm by
this time and we were ready to call it a day. I changed into some fresh clothes,
got us some cold drinks from the cooler, and started for home. Another fun day
in the books...