More High Sierra Climbs

Firstly, an apology for not having updated our blog for such a long time. The reason for this is that for the past 10 days we’ve been in Utah, and we haven’t been able to find anywhere with both plug sockets and Wifi. The concept of the independent coffee shop where you can sit with your laptop seems to be alien to Utah. A woman we met from Colorado said (in a very dismissive manner) that this is because they don’t drink coffee in Utah. They also have a pretty strange attitude to alcohol. If you want to drink anything stronger than 4% beer, you have to go to a “State Liquor Agency”. These buildings seemed to be designed to make you feel like a criminal just for going inside.

However, the purpose of this blog is not to talk about Utah but to tell you what we did before leaving California. After climbing Mount Whitney we did three more Alpine routes in the High Sierra. The first of these was on a mountain called Temple Crag. Again, we had to camp at the base the night before and do the route on the second day. The route was OK, but was slightly marred by there being a lot of mosquitoes where we camped and us not taking enough food, so being very hungry.

Temple Crag

The route we did was called Venusian Blind and went up a long arête on the left hand side. It had some good climbing on it but the rock wasn’t as good as the other routes we’ve done.

Innes high on Venusian Blind

Then we decided to take a few days off from the high mountains, and went to a place called Mammoth Lakes. This is a town on the east side of the Sierras, which is a very posh ski resort in winter. It reminded us a bit of places like Chamonix. The reason we went there is that there is good climbing at around 10,000 feet, so we could escape from the heat. The most exciting thing that happened there was that we got to see some black bears. We were walking around a lake to go climbing when we spotted a mother bear with two quite small cubs. They were coming our way, and so we just moved to one side and let them pass. They must have gone within 30 yards of us. Strangely enough it wasn’t frightening at all – the bears were obviously aware that we were there, and were completely uninterested in us. If the bears had been grizzlies it would have been a different matter, but black bears are a lot smaller and less likely to attack people. It was great to see them so close.

Black bear coming our way

Bear cubs

Our next route was on a mountain called Bear Creek Spire. We did the North Arete, 5.8. We did this car to car in a day, so it was fairly tiring. The route goes up the obvious arête leading straight to the summit which is catching the sun.

Bear creek spire

The climb ended on a very satisfactory summit, not big enough to stand up on. I have to admit that I wasn’t brave enough to climb up and sit where Innes is sitting in this photo, as it was very exposed and there was no way of protecting it.

Innes on summit of Bear Creek Spire

After this we headed north about 100 miles for our last stop in the High Sierra, a mountain called the Incredible Hulk. We were excited about climbing on the Hulk, because it has been featured in the climbing media quite a lot and we’d seen a cool film about it on Vimeo. As you can see from this picture, it’s an impressive piece of rock.

The Hulk

We planned to do a route called Red Dihedral, 5.10b, which takes a corner system near the right hand side. We camped in a really nice spot at the base, and got up before sunrise to make sure that we had enough time to do the route.

Hulk at dawn

Unfortunately two other teams of climbers had got up even earlier than us and beat us to the base of the route. This wouldn’t have been a problem except that one of the teams was really slow. After watching them for an hour, during which time they made little progress, we decided to cut our losses and climb an easier variation so that we could overtake them. We didn’t fancy being stuck behind them and getting involved in an epic not of our own making. This was a bit of a shame, because the variation that we climbed missed out a lot of the best climbing. Never mind – we’d been lucky up to this point, as we’d had all of the other routes we’ve done to ourselves. The next day we said goodbye to the High Sierra, and started heading east towards Utah. We took a day and a half to drive across the Great Basin. This is the bit of Nevada which is in between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains. It’s called the Great Basin because no rivers flow out of it. It doesn’t get much rainfall, but any rain that does fall either evaporates or soaks into the ground. This means that it is an empty, barren landscape, punctuated by the occasional salt lake. It was pretty freaky to drive across – you really wouldn’t want to break down or run out of petrol. Our destination was a place called Maple Canyon in Utah. Attentive readers of this blog will notice that we’ve been there before, at the end of our last trip. We were exhausted after climbing in the mountains, and fancied going somewhere familiar where we could relax and not have to move for a few days.

More soon about what we’ve been doing for the last week or so – we’re now in Moab, where I’m writing this in an RV park. We decided to treat ourselves to an evening with Wifi, and the first showers that we have had since 24^th July (disgusting I know, but then I always was a soap dodger).

Best wishes

Ruth

Mount Whitney

As Innes said in the last blog, last Thursday we got a permit to climb Mount Whitney. Whitney is 14,496 feet high (4418m). This is a good 1,000 feet higher than any mountain I have ever climbed, although Innes has been higher than this in the Himalayas. So I was apprehensive about how I would cope with the altitude. It’s also a beautiful and impressive mountain, with big cliffs on the eastern side but a flat summit plateau and a gently sloping western side – a bit like Ben Nevis in shape.

Whitney at sunrise, photo taken from our high camp

There are two popular ways of getting up Whitney. Most people walk up the Mount Whitney Trail, which is 11 miles long and goes round the back of the mountain where it is less steep. More adventurous is the Mountaineer’s Route, which takes a fairly direct line up the east side and involves a bit of scrambling. This seemed to be very popular with guided parties. Because Whitney is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, lots and lots of people want to climb it, including people who have never been up a mountain before (again, a bit like Ben Nevis). Unfortunately some of these people attempt to climb the Mountaineer’s Route rather than going up the trail, despite all of the warning signs at the bottom trying to put them off.

Our plan was to climb Whitney by the East Buttress Route and then descend the Mountaineer’s Route. The East Buttress Route roughly follows the right hand skyline of Whitney in the picture above. It’s about VS and 11 pitches long. To do this we had to walk in on the first day to camp at a place called Iceberg lake, at 12,600 feet. I found the walk in hard – we started at 8,000 feet, so it was a lot of ascent, at altitude, carrying a heavy pack.

View up towards Whitney on the approach

The place where we camped was fantastic. A really unspoilt, pristine place. Perhaps the Americans have got it right with their permit system – there were a few other people camped there, but not many, and none of them were planning to do the same route as us. One reason it’s so pristine there is that it is illegal to leave ANY waste behind – and that includes human waste. So we discovered the delights of pooing in a bag and carrying the bag around with us for a couple of days (they do give you a special bag, called a “wag bag”, which is supposed to be leak proof and contains a deodourising powder).

Camp at bottom of Whitney

It was a pretty cold night – it was definitely below freezing, as our water bottles were frozen and I had to break the ice on the lake in the morning to get water. Once the sun came up it was pretty warm, and it was an absolutely perfect day – not a breath of wind and no clouds in the sky.

Me getting water from Iceberg Lake

The East Buttress Route turned out to be brilliant. Not too hard (which was just as well as the smallest bit of exertion left me gasping like a fish), exposed, and following a great line. We had the route to ourselves again.

Innes climbing pitch 5

Then we popped out onto the summit and entered a different world, as there were at least 30 people there. It was fun to surprise all of these people by emerging right onto the summit, having climbed what looks from above like a sheer cliff – they were very impressed, and congratulated us heartily.

Crowd on the summit of Whitney

At this point it was about 1.00pm, and we mentally relaxed thinking that it would just take us a few hours to get down. We didn’t realise that the day’s drama hadn’t yet begun. We had just started scrambling down the Mountaineer’s Route, when we met a party of four who were on the way up, who turned out to be in quite a bit of trouble. The two more experienced members of the party had gone on ahead and were climbing up the rocks that we were climbing down. The other two, who had apparently never done any climbing in their lives, were trying to traverse across a snow slope to get to an easier way up. In doing this one of them, a guy called Kevin, had slipped and fallen and gashed his leg badly. The other one, a woman called Sachi, appeared to be completely exhausted. When we arrived Kevin was apparently unable to move, Sachi who was close to him when he fell was too scared to try and get across to him, and the other two members of the party were too scared to climb back down what they had climbed up. To make things worse this party had set out from Whitney Portal (at 8,000 feet) at 2.30am, having had no sleep the night before and having come straight from sea level. They really had no business being on the mountain, and we were surprised that they had got so far. Even if nobody had been injured, they would have been in trouble (Innes says I shouldn’t be judgmental, but the more I think about it the more angry I get, particularly at the so-called experienced members of the party, who put their friends in a lot of danger).

Anyway we helped them out. Innes bandaged up Kevin’s wound, which luckily wasn’t bleeding too much (it was pretty nasty – at least half an inch deep) and we got him and Sachi and the rest of the party to a safe place. We then managed to convince them that the only sensible thing for them to do was to go back down the way that they had come up, as although they were close to the summit there was no way they were going to get there. We also thought that they all needed to get down as quickly as possible – they all seemed to have altitude sickness to some extent, and Kevin was in shock and quite confused. Then we shepherded them down the Mountaineer’s Route to where we had camped at Iceberg Lake. This wasn’t difficult, just a bit of steep scree and scrambling, but it took Kevin and Sachi more than 3 hours to descend, and we had to give them a rope in a couple of places.

Me helping Sachi down the Mountaineer’s Route

When we got to Iceberg Lake I’m afraid we abandoned them, as we wanted to get down ourselves. From there it was just walking, they had plenty of food and water, and we reckoned that the two fit members of the party would be capable of getting them down, although we thought it would probably take them until well after midnight. I hope they got down okay.

We were back at Whitney Portal in time to have the famous burgers and fries from the Whitney Portal Store for dinner – tired but happy!

Today we’re having a rest, and then we plan to do a few days cragging before heading back into the mountains.

Best wishes to all

Ruth

Charlotte Dome

Just a quick blog 'cos I'm sat in a coffee shop in Lone Pine and we've actually managed to get some climbing done over the last few days.

Having been knocked back due to floods we spent a few days climbing at a place called Rock Creek, which is a high valley between Bishop and Mammoth. Nice climbing, but not what we wanted to do really. It was all that was available to us as it was 35 C in Bishop, but raining at altitude in the mountains. Neither are much use really!

The rain eventually looked forecast to stop so we dropped into the Ranger Station in Bishop and got a permit to hike (that's American for walk) in to climb something called Charlotte Dome in the Sierras.

Charlotte Dome has a famous climb up its south face which is one of the "Fifty Classic Climbs of North America" and so we went in to climb it.

This is Charlotte Dome. The classic South Face route climbs the left skyline.

The route itself is about 12 pitches long (maybe 400m high) but it took us three days in total to climb the route as it's 12 miles from the trailhead, and requires crossing some high alpine passes to get to it. We had to camp for two nights in the wilderness.

The climb itself wasn't that difficult. In fact the hardest part of the whole expedition was dealing with the altitude. At one point on the approach you have to cross the Kearsarge Pass which is at an altitude of 11,670 ft. This would actually make it the same height as a reasonable summit in the French Alps. The difference here though is that this time we were carrying heavy rucsacks filled with climbing gear, rope, tent, sleeping bags, and food for three days (stored in a heavyweight bear-proof cannister), and a stack of other assorted stuff. We carried all this stuff for 7 hours on the approach and never dipped below 10,000 ft after we left the van.

High meadows in high summer - very nice!

Ruth got a bit sick due to the altitude and felt nauseous. She also went a little bit grey for a while immediately after the Kearsarge Pass, but recovered when we dropped down a bit of height. Ruth approaching Charlotte Dome on day 1.

We camped for the night by a little spring at over 10,000 ft and climbed the south face of Charlotte Dome on the second day. Its not a difficult climb (5.8) but it is one of those routes that goes up a cliff that looks way more difficult than it really is once you get on it. The rock on Charlotte Dome is very featured when inspected up close, and covered in quartz knobs. This lets you climb up sweeping faces that look completely blank and impossible, but prove to be quite simple once you get on them - though sometimes the protection is 'sparse' shall we say.

Looking down Pitch 6 of the South Face.

We didn't see another soul all day, and probably had the entire valley to ourselves. It was a treat. A route as good as this in the Alps would have teams stretched from top to bottom, and guides climbing all over you. I remember climbing the Cassin Route a few years ago and thinking we were lucky only having 4 other teams on the route with us - how things are different in America!

We walked out back to the trailhead on the third day. Having subsisted on mostly tortillas, peanut butter and packet noodles for too long, we made a bolt for a pizza restuarant to stuff ourselves senseless. We have just this morning been successful in the bizarre ritual that is the 'Whitney Lottery Draw' which takes place at 11 o'clock every morning in the LOne Pine Ranger Station. This means we have in our possession two very interesting things: a permit to camp tomorrow night at Glacier Lake (under Mt Whitney's east face); and, a good weather forecast. So our luck is in now!

Innes