WEEK 15 MAP Hiking along Fish Creek I was amazed by the destruction of trees from the windstorm that had happened the following winter. Nothing but a tunnel of trees where 800 had come down in this short stretch. The rest of the
hike out normally is hot and sandy in places but there are plenty of nice watering holes to dunk a hat into and stay cool.
As I passed the
Rainbow Falls junction I decided to go take a look from the top to see what the water levels were looking like on this dryer year. I set up camp just at the boundary of the pack station outside the national monument in order to save 20 dollars for camping.
Continuing a trend for the third year in a row I had planned the most luxury resupply and layover of the whole trip by staying in the Sierra Nevada Lodge in Mammoth for 2 nights. Since the shuttles were not running I made the hike over Mammoth Pass which is a rather easy hump. I secured a ride into town saving myself another 5 miles of walking. Naturally I ate all the food I possibly could and left having spend 500 dollars.
When it was time to get back on trail I walked the road back to the trail head and made the slog back up and over Mammoth Pass down to Reds Meadow store where I took a break and enjoyed some refreshments before taking the trail into King Creek where I set up for the night.
On this day it was time to do a lake tour so I took the trail up to
Fern Lake and over to
Anona where I took cross country past
Gertrude Lake and up to
Ashley where I took lunch. Ashley is probably the most scenic of all these lakes. Now time to visit
Noname and
Holcomb. Leaving here I stayed high on the hillside above Superior Lake and up to the first of the two
Beck Lakes. I decided to take the North shore and it was a rather tedious mix of talus to get around. The
upper lake was my destination for the night as I found a poor campsite at this scenic yet some what bland lake.
Leaving these lakes in the morning I decided to try the South shore of the lower Beck Lakes which wasn't much better and had one location where I had to shimmy along a
vertical wall with my body flat against using hand holds high as I could reach above.
My next goal was Nancy Pass which was a rather straight forward walk to the top offering
nice views of the more extreme end of the Minarets.
I continued onto Minaret Lake leaving Deadhorse Lake as the only unvisited one. This whole region of the Sierra seems to offer one amazing lake after the other with such a dynamic background. This having been my third trip from
Minaret Lake to Cecile Lake I decided to try and take the standard route on the far NW shore rather than up past the little tarn lake. It worked well enough and had me talus hoping the shores of
Cecile in short order. When I got to the outlet area I peered down at
Iceberg seeing a rather different contrast than the snow covered mess from the year before. Thankfully I was able to locate a nice campsite on the NW shore among one of the only patches of trees here. As I relaxed that evening I saw a Douglas Squirrel working the tiny amounts of trees here. I felt bad for the poor little thing with such a tiny food store so I put some peanuts at the bottom of his tree and waited. Finally he came down and inspected the bounty and promptly turned his nose up at my peanuts and went on his way. Hmmph I thought...Too proud to take hand outs.
Day 7 of this week could not have ended with a greater task as I stared up at the mighty
Clyde Minaret looming above me. Time to take on a peak greater than any that had come before!
I decided to first go straight into the walls above my camp. This immediately led me into high level technical class 3 with possibly some easy class 4. Once
up this though it was a nice stroll up the slope with the cut over ramp being obvious. Once I was
on it I made my way up to the chute where the rock route begins. But I had a problem. The chute before me was obvious but so was a path that crossed directly over the chute. I had no idea which way I was supposed to take. I made the wrong judgment and crossed over the chute and took to the NE face. I came to a section of rock that was semi inverted which I thought I could not get up. I decided to give it a try and was successful but with a price. It had been so difficult that there was no going back. This clearly was not the rock route as the move had been class 5 and my only choice was to push forward. I began climbing up a very narrow ledge system and took a
video of me leaning against the wall on a 6 inch ledge with about 1000 feet of air below me.
The next move involved making a step up which was higher than my knee with only a small piece of rock to hang onto. Luckily another 20 feet of mostly vertical class 5 took me back into the chute where it clearly was all major class 3. From here it was a
continuous scramble of class 3 until you reach the top of
the ridge. Traversing the ridge I reached the only piece of
class 4 that you must navigate if you don't lose your way and it did not give me any trouble. A few more paces and
victory!!! Talk about a summit where you feel on top of the world with how
steep down the views are.
After soaking up
the views for as long as I could I made my way carefully down. 3 points of contact is a must on this descent as more than once I had multiple holds break at the same time with both foot and hand holds going together. What I remember most about this descent is getting past one difficult obstacle after another and looking down and being no where near finished.
Once I had made my way back down near the wall I had first come up out of my camp I had no interest in going back down it so I began trying to make my way down some grassy hillsides but I was lead into extremely dangerous conditions and I turned back and climbed my way further South where I believe the traditional route up is and made my way down and back to camp feeling a sense of accomplishment and ending another week.
