It's always funny reading the posts that were made in my absence. Trip went well, three long days covering a lot of amazing country.
As far as the map, I let caltopo snap the lines of the route to OSM track data where available. While not precise, it gives a general idea of where I was heading. Nothing beats reading the terrain while you're on ground and choosing your route accordingly. My mapshare page and the route on caltopo are updated wit my actual tracks recorded while i was out there.
I'll post up a full report when I have a chance to go through all my pics but here's a synopsis -
Thursday evening I drove up to the visitor center and picked up a walk in permit, filled the up the truck and then drove up to the portal to wait for my friend to arrive. We left his truck at the portal and then headed up to the walk in campsites at the Cottonwood Lakes trailhead and camped for the night.
Friday morning we headed out and made good time through Cottonwood Lakes, over Old Army Pass, where we stopped for lunch right before the turn off to Soldier Lakes. After lunch we went up the planned route and found, as Steve described, a soggy wet bushwack at the east side of lower Soldier Lake. We turned around, went around the south side of the lake, and then found the use trail at the north west corner. We went up the ridge and then going cross country to stay mostly level on the ridge line until we could see the use trail coming up from Rock Creek. From there we dropped down and picked up the use trail which dropped in and out through the basin all the way to the waterfalls below the outlet of Sky Blue Lake. We followed the path of least resistance up to Sky Blue Lake where we set up camp.
Saturday morning we got going and headed up to Crabtree Pass with little trouble. We went to the east side of lake 12129 as the route looked easier from near the bench above the outlet. From the top of Crabtree Pass it was decision time. Drop all the way down to the upper lake, to the west end and then up the hill or cut around the cirque and through the cliff bands. We chose the latter. It was slow going as advertised, but we kept a steady pace and made it from the pass to Discovery Pinnacle in 3 hours. The slog up the sand hill really took it out of me and I just trudged along the last stretch from Trail Crest to the summit. When we got to the top we agreed that it was too late to try and descend the MR so we would just bivy at the top. It was cold, but fortunately the weather was good and the low clouds that had descended right as we summited cleared by midnight. Never have the stars been that bright!
Sunday morning we woke early to catch the sunrise, we were joined by one PCT hiker who had come up from guitar lake, a sobo JMTer, and a woman whom had hiked up from trail camp. We sat around watching the sunrise until the cold got the best of us then we made breakfast, packed up our gear and checked out our options for descending the MR. Looking at the final 400 from the top with loaded packs it appeared a bit more spicy with some icy bits that made it a nogo. So we walked down the edge to check out the easy walk off. There was a duck right at the edge when we got to the approximate area so we started down, donning microspikes and helmets. There was quite a bit of icy snow, so having the extra traction seemed like a must for us. The route finding was pretty mellow until right before the notch. There was a patch of high angle snow that made traction tricky. We descended and crossed near the bottom of the patch, kicking in a few small steps across. I had tried kicking in some steps above, but it was too much work with just microspikes. Only time on the trip I would have been glad to suffer the weight penalty for an ice axe. Safely across we made it up to the notch where we began our descent in earnest. The MR was pretty clear until about halfway down, where there is a stretch of icy snow that requires microspikes at a minimum to negotiate safely. Once past the snowy bit it was a steady decent picking our way down the rest of the MR, sticking to the east buttress approach route vs the main gully which still held lots of snow. We stopped at Iceberg lake to eat and fill our water then made the trudge back down the North Fork of Lone Pine Creek route to the Portal. Got back to My friends truck by 4:30, to my truck at 6:00 and home by 9:45.
Last edited by psykokid; 09/18/17 11:40 AM.
