Fri, Jun 17, 2005
|
With: | Matthew Holliman |
Mike Larkin |
We stopped by Mike's parents'
home in Wofford Heights near Lake Isabella to
pick him up on our way. We'd been on the road nearly 5 hours and still had
over an hour to drive to our trailhead at Big Meadow - these peaks were not
easily reached! The roads to Big Meadow are mostly paved, and the dirt roads
were in good condition - any passenger vehicle should be able to make the
drive. Mike had had a report from the FS rangers (via his parents) that Big
Meadow had 2 feet of standing water. That seemed unlikely with little
precipitation of late and most of the snow melted, and so it was that we found
no trouble negotiating the roads to
the TH. There were a few pools of standing
water, but most of the meadow was lush with green grasses and wildflowers. Damp,
but hardly inundated. The weather had been questionable for the entire drive.
We had
had sprinkles in various spots in the Central Valley, and clouds covered much
of the hills and peaks as we drove into the Southern Sierra region. Even if we
didn't get rained on, it seemed we might have no views at all from the summits.
As we reached the trailhead it appeared more optimistic with large patches of
blue sky, particularly to the east. It wasn't until just after 8a that we
headed out.
It was a delightful hike on the trail east through the
Domeland Wilderness. The
trail was in great condition, the weather continued to improve rapidly, and
there were no clouds left before the first hour was up. It was windy, but this
was more a blessing than a hindrance - nary a mosquito was seen all day. We
reached
Manter Meadow in about 45 minutes, and were quickly taken in by
the beauty and variety of the
wildflowers that adorned
the meadow.
It was easy to
see why Matthew had enjoyed the Domelands so much on his previous visits. We
paused regularly to take pictures, and our quick pace of earlier became more
of a leisure stroll as we made our way along the trail as it skirts the
meadow's edge for a mile or more. At the far northern end of the meadow Mike
spotted some cows lazily grazing, the only irksome feature of the entire day.
The meadow should be left to the deer and other wild animals, and I'll never
understand why we continue to allow grazing in wilderness areas (I know the
reason given is "traditional use," but these should have been phased out in
the first 25 years of the Wilderness Act).
From Manter Meadow we continued east, past Little Manter Meadow and then along
the trail as it breaks away from Manter Creek and begins a climb to a saddle
between Rockhouse Peak and a slightly lower unnamed peak to the south. The
trail was thinner here and hard to follow in places. I got off the trail and
ended up behind the others. While they continued up to the saddle before
turning north, I decided to take a more direct tack heading cross-country up
the slopes to the northeast.
I found the off-trail route enjoyable with some
fun class 3 climbing along the vague southwest ridge. What I thought was the
summit of Rockhouse which I climbed via an interesting chimney, turned out to
be just a rocky feature along the ridge. Once atop it I could see
Rockhouse's summit still a good distance further.
I had thought I would surely beat the
others to the summit but now began to think they'd beat me by a good deal of
time as I messed around on ridge. I bypassed a few rocky pinnacles on my way
to the summit, interesting, but not enough to spend further time on - I was
already concerned the others might wonder what became of me. Above Pt. 7,751ft
the terrain leveled out some as I made my way to the west side of the blocky
summit. I scanned the areas to east and
southeast looking for the
others heading up from the saddle, but saw no sign of them.
The rocky summit is an interesting granite feature some 150 feet high, and
more of a short ridge than a round summit. The south side of Rockhouse is
fairly cliffy and difficult looking. From below, I spotted an interesting
ledge high on the west side that looked to twist around to the south side. If
a way could be found to make that go along the summit ridge it promised a most
interesting route. Once I reached the ledge I followed it to the right as it
went around the corner. There I found myself at an abrupt
dead-end. Desperate finger cracks might make a traverse across the vertical
wall possible and allow one to reach safer ground, but without a rope there was
no way I was going to continue. I went back along the ridge and onto the
northwest side of the peak where I found access to the summit far easier (class
3). In fact it would probably be possible to find a class 2 route up from the
north side if one spent a little time looking for it. I did my best to attain
the summit ridge as far west as possible
(encountering a short class 4 section),
and then found myself on an enjoyable traverse across the ridge. The biggest
factor was the wind, blowing strongly and pushing me off-balance if I wasn't
diligent.
It was 11:15a when I found my way to the highest point along the ridge, and
Matthew was already there ahead of me by a few minutes. He was hunkered down
as best he could out of the wind and I followed suit. We signed into the
summit register (not the first visitors for the year) and took photos of the
beautiful country around us.
We were both surprised to find the area looking
as good as it did after the "devastating" McNally fire in 2002. After
about 20 minutes at the summit, I decided to have a look around to see if I
could spot Mike. Poking my head over the southeast side I found Mike less than
a minute from the summit. We stayed another ten minutes or so after he
joined us before heading back down. I convinced them to try the route
I'd taken, and we all headed off west
along the ridge and then off
the northwest side once we got to the end of the traverse.
We got split up some
after this, but regrouped again along the
trail shortly before it joined Manter Creek.
Heading back the way we came,
it was about 2p when we reached the west side of
Manter Meadow. Mike had dropped back by this time and Matthew and I took a
break for a snack and potty stop. When Mike caught up with us some ten minutes
later, he decided to forgo the additional climb of Taylor Dome in favor of a
nap back at the car. We hoped to climb Cannell Point after we got back from
Taylor Dome, and Mike expected he'd probably join us for that easy climb of
an HPS peak further to the south.
Matthew and I headed west along the trail for another half mile or so past
Manter Meadow before leaving it to approach Taylor Dome from the north. This
had been Matthew's idea since he'd already climbed it via the standard route
from the west, and it turned out to be a good one. The climbing from the trail
was steep but non-technical, and there was really nothing special until we
reached the crest of the ridge marking the wilderness boundary a short distance
east of Taylor Dome. We inadvertently climbed a lower pinnacle north of Taylor
Dome without Matthew recognizing our mistake until we were atop it. Looking
south we could see the correct summit and what looked like a pretty steep
North Face. This turned out to be some interesting climbing as we
made our way up a
class 3-4 chimney feature that climbed some 50-60
feet almost to the very summit. A short bit of steep face climbing with huge
bomber holds brought us atop the highpoint directly at 3:30p.
We stayed a short while at the summit before another interesting pinnacle just
to the south caught my attention.
The pinnacle was split by a chimney dividing
the summit in two, and access looked even more difficult than the higher one
we'd just climbed. Matthew was thinking it was impossible without a rope,
commenting about it as I headed up. Before he had a chance to see which way
I'd gone, I found a fairly easy route up to the east side of the pinnacle and
had jumped across the gap. He was a little surprised to see me climb it in less
than a minute. "Which way did you go?" he asked. I smiled and said he'd have to
figure it out himself. Matthew climbed into the chimney, but instead of
turning around to the east half, decided to climb the
knobby face
directly up
to the higher west half. I had to admit it was a finer choice than my
jumping across which seemed like a cheat by comparison. We took a few more
pictures from
the top, then decided it was time to
head back.
It took almost another hour to get back to the car where we found Mike napping as expected. It was nearing 5p now and we were admittedly tired. Cannell Point was looking less attractive. The biggest problem was that it involved another nine miles each way on winding dirt roads, and the diversion might cost us another 2-3hrs. In the end we decided the long outing the next day shouldn't be jeopardized by a measly HPS peak, and we headed back to Lake Isabella.
Not finding any rooms available at the motels in the area, we decided to take Mike up on his offer to stay with his folks. This turned out to be the best choice of the whole weekend - Mike's parents were the perfect hosts, and despite our efforts to minimize our impact and disruption in their home, we were supplied with beers, appetizers, and Seinfeld on a projection screen almost as soon as we stepped foot inside. Life was very good indeed...
Continued...
For more information see these SummitPost pages: Rockhouse Peak - Taylor Dome
This page last updated: Tue May 4 13:36:52 2021
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