As one drives north on US395 north of Bishop, it's hard not to be distracted by the immense wall of Wheeler Ridge (or Crest) rising more than 6,000ft to the west. More than 10mi in length, it runs north-south off the main Sierra Crest, bounded by Rock and Pine Creeks at either end. I had been to a number of the higher peaks in the southern half of the ridge on multiple occasions but had always wanted to pay a visit to the northern half. Oddly, most of it lies outside the John Muir Wilderness, allowing 4x4 access, biking and a few national forest inholdings. On the fourth day of the Sierra Challenge, our goal was to tag two widely separated summits for full credit, enjoying a 4-mile ridge walk between them. Though others besides myself had doubts about the quality of this hike beforehand, most of the participants reported it very worthy afterwards.
As Monday rolled around, the weekend participants having returned home,
our group
had shrunk to about 12, still a respectable number. We started from the
Rock Creek Lake TH at 6a sharp, 
hiking the trail up the east side of
Little Lakes Valley, 
heading for 
Dorothy Lake.
We reached this pretty little lake
within the first hour, then struck off cross-country for the short distance
to reach the base of Wheeler Ridge. Talus and sand characterized
the slope as
it was here that the real work began and our posse began to split up. Robert
and I were the first two to reach 
the ridgeline at 7:30a. Smoke from
the Rough Fire had blown east over the crest and filled the
Owens Valley with a brown-gray fog,
marring views off that side, but at least the air quality around us was quite
good. We hiked north 
along the ridge,
climbing towards Round Valley Peak. There
are two summits of nearly equal height separated by almost half a mile. We
first reached Peak 11,980ft before dropping to the saddle and climbing to
Round Valley Peak. Within about 15min of first
reaching the peak, we had a 
group of seven posing for a summit photo.
Andy Smatko, Bill Schuler and a few others had visited the peak
in 1978, leaving a signature Smatko register in a small film cannister.
Barbara and Gordon
visited three years later, leaving a larger register that has seen almost
60 pages of entries over 33yrs. From the entries, Round Valley appears to be a
semi-popular ski tour in the spring. 
Looking north,
we could now see just what
a 4mi traverse really looks like - really long. The terrain appeared to be more
broken and rocky than one might have guessed from the maps and I was beginning
to think we were in for a long day. We didn't wait for the others to arrive at
the summit before starting on our way and for the second time our group broke
up as we dropped northwest off Round Valley's summit.
There are three unnamed summits on our way across the ridge that I wanted to
visit. They don't count for bonus peaks on the Challenge but are found on
LoJ thanks to their modest prominence. These turned
out to be the most interesting of the day's summits thanks to some fun class 3
summit blocks. The granite rock was heavily chickenheaded and easy to
climb, but still offered a short challenge as we neared 
the summits.
In between were long stretches of easy ground with 
much sand. We'd
stop a few times to 
empty out our shoes, sand having accumulated on
the downhill stretches. After finishing 
the last of these we dropped
into a high, 
broad valley south of Wheeler Crest, finding the
jeep road that crosses the crest here at nearly
11,000ft. We followed an older, no 
longer used road
north out of this valley, climbing to a saddle where we could see our
last summit about a half mile away.
Having bypassed the last unnamed summit that was a short distance off the main
crest, Michael had easily beaten Robert, Tom and I to
Wheeler Crest's summit
when we arrived around 11:15a, almost three hours after leaving Round Valley
Peak. 
A benchmark labeled "SHERWIN" and a couple
register scraps dating back
only a few years were found there. Six of the seven from Round Valley had
reconvened at the Wheeler Crest summit before we started down. Rather than
return to the broad valley where the jeep road was located as I had planned,
Michael suggested a more direct route might be taken down to the southwest to
pick up the road below the crest on the west side. I checked the GPSr and
readily agreed, and we soon were making swift progress down the
easy sand and gravel slopes, weaving between the short trees that
populated the slopes.
Robert and another newcomer, Rob Houghton took off at a faster pace that didn't
slow until we lost them in the trees ahead, out of sight. Robert in
particular was beginning to take a shine to the Yellow jersey and didn't want
to jeopardize it. With Tom somewhere behind at a far slower pace, Nick, Michael
and I continued together the rest of the way, jogging the downhills and walking
the flats and uphills. We picked up the road where expected, but followed it for
less than a mile before striking off on another shortcut to the left. We
crossed a 
nice meadow, finding 
the road
again on the far side. It led us south
up a gentle rise of some 300ft or so over several miles, eventually rejoining
the morning trail we'd followed to Dorothy Lake. The last mile saw more jogging
as we dropped the final 500ft back to the TH at Rock Creek Lake. Just before
reaching the TH we came upon 
four others
lounging in the shade of the trees just
off the trail. Patrick and Karl had called it a day after reaching the first
summit and turned back. Matt, who had been out almost 13hrs the previous day,
got a late start and gave up before reaching any summits. Eric, his hand
bandaged from his accident the previous day, had been resting up. He planned
to rest one more day before joining us again on Wednesday. Barely 1p, the outing
had progressed rapidly since leaving the last summit and we'd gotten done
earlier than I'd guessed. We were good with this, giving us more time to relax
in Bishop and have a more leisurely dinner.
Jersey Strategy:
Robert and Rob took the stage win, finishing together in 6h50m. Nick, Michael
and I were 20min behind, allowing Robert to stretch his lead for the Yellow
jersey to an hour over
Nick and another ten minutes ahead of me. The Polka Dot jersey was now starting
to look like a two horse race with Michael and Chris each totaling 6 peaks after
4 days (though still plenty of room for someone else to have a go at it).
Continued...