Sun, Sep 5, 2021
|
With: | Tom Becht |
Tom Grundy | |
Iris Ma |
I'd been interested in this string of four summits for several years now.
Located in the northeast part of Domelands Wilderness on BLM lands, my first
effort to reach them from the north was stopped by locked ranch gates. From
the satellite view, it looks like one ought to be able to drive the
dirt road south from paved Kennedy Meadows Rd, but I found this not the case.
All the lands along Pine Creek are privately owned and unwelcoming. A longer,
but still manageable route comes in from the south, initially on the PCT and
all legal, and it was this that we used. We left the other vehicles at our
campsite in Big Pine Meadow and drove in the Jeep on Chimney Peak and Chimney
Basin Rds, an hour+ drive to where the PCT
crosses the latter road around the
7,200-foot level. There is no parking area here, so we had to park the Jeep
partially off the side of the road, about the best we could do. It was nearly
8a by the time we started out. Despite the trail's popularity, this was not
the busy time of year for this section, and we would see no one all day.
The first hour was spent plying the PCT, about 700ft downhill on an
easy gradient.
The trail continues dropping into Rockhouse Basin, but we would leave
it well before then. When due south of the first summit, Peak 7,168ft, we
left the trail to descend steeply
cross-country into the canyon
below, another 400ft down to the (mostly)
dry creekbed (this could be
considerably more challenging in the spring). This area had burned in the Manter
Fire 20yrs earlier but has yet to really recover. The large trees are all lying
charred on the slopes, no new ones yet to take their place. The downfall wasn't
horrendous, more of an inconvenience as we
climbed the steep slopes,
weaving through dry brush and downed trees. The upper part of the peak is
a jumble of granite boulders, typical of the Domelands landscape,
offering some scrambling opportunities. It would take us to the end of the
second hour to reach
its highpoint. TomB and I were about 15min ahead
of
the others, Iris continuing to take things more slowly as her knee
works on its rehabilitation. The summit offers some pretty spectacular views
looking into the Domelands area to
the west, where
Stegosaurus Fin,
Bart Dome and other features could be identified among the granite wonderland.
Rockhouse Basin spreads out below us in the same direction, the South Fork of
the Kern River, now just a creek, lazily zigzigging through it heading south.
To
the north was our next summit, Peak 7,380ft, with the other two
hidden behind it. We left
the first of four registers on our summit
before starting down the northeast side.
There were some large granite blocks going class 3 off that side
initially, soon becoming easier, but brushier, especially
lower down.
TomB and I worked our way down
towards a saddle and
then up
the south side of Peak 7,380ft,
arriving around 11:30a. There were
some trees for shade here which we used to advantage, resting up out of the sun
while waiting for the others to show up. Iris was moving slower now, and it
would be another 45min before she and TomG
would arrive. Our outing
today would be less than 15mi, so we had some daylight to burn, and frankly,
hanging around at the summits seemed better than back at camp. It was cooler
here, we had shade, all we were missing were a few cold ones. A little before
12:30p we
started down from the summit, again off the northeast side.
This time we went looking for an old road, now part of the Wilderness, that
runs along the east side of the four summits. It is visible in the satellite
view and we planned to use this for the return. For being out of service for a
few decades,
the road was in good shape, well-suited for foot and
equestrian traffic, albeit
a bit sandy. We spent an hour between
Peak 7,380ft and Canyon BM, using the road for about a third of the distance.
We
went up Canyon BM from the ESE, finding another
blocky summit, this one with
a benchmark and remnants of an
old survey tower. Iris and TomG were only about 20min behind us this round,
giving me some time to reconstruct the
wooden survey post
and its supporting guywires.
The last summit, Peak 7,045ft, was the easiest of bunch, with less mileage and
elevation gain from the previous summit. TomB and I were already at
the summit as we watched Iris just finishing the descent from Canyon
BM, TomG nowhere to be seen. We were puzzled to watch her veer northeast and
east, wondering why she was taking a roundabout route, eventually realizing she
had decided to forgo the last summit and start back on the old road. TomG was
only a few minutes
behind us, it turned out, having sped up his ascent
once it was decided that Iris would skip the last one. We left our
last register and then
descended the SE side. We landed in
a dry wash which we
followed upstream to where it intersected
the road. It would take another 15min from this point before we managed
to
catch up with Iris. Despite her limitation, she was getting stronger
each day - she managed three peaks today and two the previous one. We followed
the road to its end in
a meadow east of Peak 7,168ft. There were
the remains of a old ranchhouse and other buildings, mostly just the
foundations, now part of the Wilderness. At one time, someone had a pretty cool
ranch spread out a the end of this lonely road. I had thought the road might
continue downstream further, around the southeast side of Peak 7,168ft to where
we had started up earlier in the morning. This was decidedly not the case. Past
some
old fencing meant to keep the cattle out of the gorge, we spent
about 20min working our way through
boulders and
brush, the
most challenging section of the day. In front, TomB and I separated as we exited
the gorge, Tom taking a shorter route back to the PCT while I went looking for
our original route, overshooting it by a short distance. It was 4:30p when I had
reclimbed
the hillside to the PCT, after which I spent the next hour
slowly
catching up to TomB along the trail. We reconnected with less
than 10min left to
get us back to the Jeep where we arrived by 5:30p.
It would be another 30-40min before the others would join us, giving us time to
get into more comfortable footwear and
enjoy a cold beer in the shade
of the Jeep...
Continued...
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