I was feeling indecisive and slightly unmotivated about what to do last Tuesday when Marsha came by to visit my housemate and said that I would be welcome to take her dog, Jasmine, along on one of my upcoming hikes/runs. That seemed like a sign that it was time to hit the dirt, so I told Marsha that I would be by to pick up Jasmine shortly. Peter Croft had put Agassiz as the only class 2 route in his guide The Good, the Great, and the Awesome, so I figured it would be a worthy goal for the day. The register entries on summitpost noted a number of other options also from Bishop Pass with better rock and harder grades. I had seen Jasmine before in the Tablelands, so I was confident that she could handle most class 3 we encountered.
Jasmine and I headed out from South Lake at a brisk pace, reaching Bishop Pass in under two hours. I selected a chute to the right of the main ascent route and up we went. As I had guessed Jasmine found her way up most of the route, requiring me to pick her up only a few times for surmounting taller boulder and when the grade steepened to class 4 for a small section. Once out of the chute we rejoined the regular route and headed up the talus heap to the summit. I was feeling a bit slow, but Jasmine didn't seem to mind, as she fell behind in a few spots. I was beginning to see why the route made it into Croft's book as I looked over the edge to the southeast. The
Palisades from Winchell to Sill were laid out before me, and I thought back to our Thunderbolt to Sill traverse last August.
We headed down the screen laden regular route and back over to the Bishop Pass trail. By the time we made it back to my car it was dark and Jasmine promptly sacked out on top of my bouldering pad.
Tuesday rolled around and I was still deliberating about whether to do Trapezoid with the Sierra Challenge the following day. I wasn't feeling particularly motivated for either a 6 am start or trying to keep up in my sluggish recovery state. My housemate, Lisa, said that she would be interested in joining me the next day if I decided to do something short. That seemed like a better idea, so I settled on a repeat of the SE Face of Emerson, with its obscenely short approach and which Lisa hadn't done previously.
We headed out late morning for North Lake to find both parking lots almost full (mid week!). The clouds of mosquitoes that had 
accompanied me on my previous backcountry trips were completely absent and the skies were completely smoke free. We hiked up the Piute Pass trail passing loads of wildflowers and before long we were at the base of the route.
The chimney, which had been running with water back in May, was dry but polished. I was feeling slightly more energetic and we stopped only briefly to snap photos. Once on the ridge traverse we were met with sweeping views of the surrounding peaks, including part of Evolution, which had so far eluded me this season. We stopped for a snack break on the summit, not looking forward to the scree laden descent. This time there would be no glissade.
We picked our way through the gravel-covered slabs, plunge stepping when possible and beelining for the trail skirting Loch Leven. We made it back to Bishop in time to hit the weekly potluck and Tricia and Matt's.
Finally I was starting to feel more normal, not 100% but good enough to hit the backcountry again. Not quite ready for a death march, I emailed Bob Burd and bailed on Monday's Sierra Challenge peak. I wanted something with a short approach, but with enough technical difficulty and exposure to satisfy my adrenaline junkie side. Even though I had climbed it back in June I decided that the SE Buttress of Cathedral merited a second go around, plus Jascha hadn't been up it before.
With clear skies there was no need for an early start, and given the popularity of the route it was to our advantage to head out late (such a shame). After waiting in line at the Tioga Pass kiosk for what seemed like forever we made it into the park, parked at the Cathedral Lakes TH, and cruised up the climbers' trail to the base of the route. I could see a number of parties on the face, all at the usual bottleneck, the chimney. Because we were soloing I figured we
would be quickly joining the crowd, so I looked for an alternate route on my topo. The 5.6 crack variation to the left of the chimney seemed more palatable than 5.7 slab variation to the right. At least we had options.
We headed up the same way I had gone a few months prior (option C on Supertopo). Jascha quickly acclimated to the frictiony granite laden with cracks and classic Tuolumne knobs. Before long we were standing at the base of the chimney. A friendly French father and daughter team were about to follow their leader up the left-hand variation on double ropes and another guy was struggling up the chimney on toprope. We weighed our options and decided that it would be faster to head up the regular route once he had finished the chimney section, then pass him on the Class 4 section above.
We passed the other member of the French party, another party of three, and a guy following the final pitch. I was greated with the question "Did you forget your rope?". On the summit we chatted briefly with the other member of the two-person from the S Bay about Eichorn Pinnacle. I was regretting not bringing a route description because while the pinnacle looks nearly impossible to solo from Cathedral I knew there was a hidden exposed 5.4 route somewhere. It seemed like it was worth exploring anyway, so we headed over. The 5.4 route was fairly easy to find (just out of view from the Cathedral traverse) and we headed up, enjoying some airy step across moves and Jascha's favorite: scrunchy, balancy traverses where you have to match your hands and feet. We quickly summited and found Bob's register entry in blood. We later found out the story on summitpost, which involved a missing pen and an ingenious marine (Dave D).
We headed out and made it to Mammoth Mountaineering just in time to find the doors locked for the day.
Thunderstorm season is in full swing in the eastern Sierra and many a climbing plan has been squashed, so I didn't feel too bad being one of the casualties. With the inclement weather I decided to choose a route with a relatively easy approach. With its gentle gain, something around Bishop Pass was an obvious candidate. I had Winchell's E Arete on my to do list, but the approach from Glacier Lodge didn't sound overly appealing and the more technical western side routes were a bit more to my liking. I also figured that I could possibly traverse over to Agassiz.
I headed out at 7:30a under mostly sunny skies and made it to the top of the pass in under two hours where I encountered a helicopter dropping off supplies. 
It didn't occur to me that the search for a missing climber on Mt Goode was still ongoing, but I suspected that they were looking for someone. I was glad to have my mp3 player to block out the drone of the circling helicopters given that I would be soloing. On the way up I scouted out possible breaks in the ridge before the pass in case I had to downclimb one of the eastern routes.
I had a somewhat vague description of the SW chute of Winchell from Secor, which rated the route class 4-5. That led me to ponder the obvious question of "5.what"? The description noted several class 4 variations, so I figured that I would have bail out options if the answer turned out to be "5.9+". I contoured
around the base of Agassiz, noting how jagged the ridge from Winchell appeared. From below a traverse looked out of the question, but it was difficult to know for certain without closer investigation.
I identified what looked like the SW Chute from Secor's route drawing and headed up through a break in the lower cliff band, which appeared to lie directly below the route. Once through the break I saw an obvious chute flanked on each side by aretes. The rock looked solid, but vertical, on the left hand side of the chute and easier, but loose and lichen 
covered on the right. I chose the the left for obvious reasons. The clouds were starting to thicken over the Palisades and surrounding valleys, but for now they were continuing to move east. I kept a watchful eye on the weather, knowing that easy class 5 wasn't as much fun when you're downclimbing it in the rain.
The chute appeared to top out so I headed right to get a better assessment of my location, only to find that I was one chute over. My options were to continue on the arete or to drop down into the SW Chute proper. After noting a very large gap in the arete formed by a huge overhanging boulder it seemed that it would be best to drop down into the chute. By this time clouds had started collecting over the range and I could see a downpour in the range to the west. I probably had time to summit, but neither the prospect of downclimbing the route in approach shoes in the rain nor heading down the E Arete and getting all the way back over to the Bishop Pass trail didn't seem too desirable.
Not wanting to end up as the next SAR target I decided to cut my losses and head down. After some deliberation I decided to head back down the same chute I came up. Initially I
tried to check out the easier class 4 rock, but after experiencing one disintegrating foothold and one detached handhold I headed back over to the more solid class 5 rock that I had ascended. At the base of the chute I consulted my Secor description and noticed that I had taken the Roper/Waddell variation, which was incorrectly depicted in the route diagram. I wondered if they too had "accidentally" discovered the variation.
By the time I got back to the top of Bishop Pass I was not regretting my decision; Dusy Basin was socked in with thunderheads and I could feel rain drops. On the way down the trail I ran into one of the SAR guys from Lone Pine. He was looking a bit haggard so I offered to shuttle his pack down, but he politely declined. I hiked with him for a while, discussing his volunteer work. They were already on day 9 of the search with 3 helicopters and 30+ rescuers. I wondered who dictates how long a search lasts and whether the can the family call if off if the chances are it is only a body recovery operation. I would rather leave my remains in the backcountry than be buried in a box under a lawn. I decided that I should probably discuss this with my mom (who is probably stalking my blog) just in case. By the time I reached the South Lake the storm was all the way down to Hurd.
That night I emailed my friend Chris, as he was the only person in summitpost to have registered as climbing the SW Chute. He gave the route stellar reviews, but noted that the top section felt dicey, especially the exposed arete. I hope to be back after the t-storm season dies down, armed with climbing shoes.
I decided to do some recon for our attempt at Evolution Traverse next month and headed up to the Lake Sabrina trailhead with plans to do Peak 13332, Haeckel, and Wallace. Thanks in part to my housemates' cat whining at my bedroom door in the wee hours I ended up sleeping through my alarm. So much for an early start. Do you see a pattern here?
I parked my motorcycle at the trailhead and marched around the lake. I made good time, passing a number of Outward Bound students/Boy Scouts, most donning those mosquito head nets. Bad sign. The trail was a bit difficult to follow at times as it meandered over multiple slabs, but I made it through the mosquito infested lakes to the trail's end at Midnight Lake. A use trail led up from here to the basin below Darwin and Peak 13332.
I didn't have any beta on 13332 other than the routes on the S side were easy, but I figured that I could probably find
something on the N/NE side. It seemed to take forever to get to the base. There were several obvious chutes, one of which had spilled out a large amount of rockfall. OK, skip that one. The next two chutes appeared to meet up on the top of an interesting looking buttress. I decided to find a way up the buttress, knowing I could bail out on the left if it got too dicey. The buttress was made up of a series of large steps with short class 4 and class 5 cracks connecting them. The steps made even the committing lieback I tried seem less exposed. At the top of the buttress were several snowfields/ramp systems that led to the summit. I attempted to cross the northernmost snow chute, which was a bit sketchy when I first tried to kick steps and hit a sheet of ice. Luckily I managed to step over a few feet and get purchase. Back on the rock, it was class 4 at most to the summit. It had taken me an hour of actual 
climbing. Once on top I found a history of the first ascent of the Evolution Traverse in the summit register, with entries from all three of Peter Croft's attempts. The peak got little travel with only a small portion of the register being filled since its inception in 1964.
The traverse to Haeckel looked long, but traverses always look longer than they are. Initially I tried to stay on the ridge, but I decided to pretend like I was climbing the route and stick to smaller talus for efficiency. If you stayed low it was pretty much class 2, but a lot of it was covered with snow so I stuck to the rocks. I could see a large notch below Haeckel so I also tried to minimize the amount of elevation gain/loss by contouring. The final section of the ridge before the notch was super rotten. In retrospect I should have bypassed this on the snow. Once in the notch my options for getting to the base of the headwall on
Haeckel were pretty obvious: loose class 2 crap or large blocky class 3 with a fun class 4 variation to start. I chose the later. Approaching the headwall I could see several class 3 ramp systems, plus a number of crack systems for spicing up the rating. Since routefinding would be fairly straightforward I figured that I could slack on my scouting duties and have fun. From the summit I could see what was in store on the traverse, fairly easy but long ridges leading over to Wallace, then Fiske. It had taken me ~2 hours from summit to summit. It was getting to be late afternoon and I wasn't psyched to have to do much of the trail in the dark given that it had been slightly difficult to follow in broad daylight.
For variation I thought I would descent via Hungry Packer Lake. Big mistake. The slabs that surround the lake cliff out fairly rapidly and the descent route follows this heinous scree chute. There was a vague cairn leading off and left part way down the chute, but when I checked it out it looked like a false lead so I continued down. This is when I noticed that the cliffs dropped straight down to the lake and it was too deep to wade. The 
mosquitoes were thick and I inhaled many as I slogged back up the chute to the turnoff I had earlier dismissed. I hoped this was the correct way as the sun was dropping behind the mountains and I was not keen on routefinding through the slabs in the dark. Happy day, the route went and it dropped me out on flatter shoreline and soon the trail.
I started jogging to keep the mosquitoes from swarming around my head. Looking back toward the lake and the granite spires I could see why I heard about this area being so spectacular. No time to doddle. I hurried down the trail to get through as much of the confusing slab sections as possible before total darkness set in. On the way back I lost the trail a few times, but only briefly. I kept waiting for the section where the trail started skirting the lake. It took
forever. I could see lights from the boat house on the far end of Sabrina. They taunted me for over a mile. Finally I reached the road and my motorcycle. It had taken 13.5 hours (3 hours of climbing time) for 2 peaks and ~17.5 miles, at least 4 of which were x-country, with ~6000 ft of gain. Ugh, I feel slow.
I was feeling indecisive and slightly unmotivated about what to do last Tuesday when Marsha came by to visit my housemate and said that I would be welcome to take her dog, Jasmine, along on one of my upcoming hikes/runs. That seemed like a sign that it was time to hit the dirt, so I told Marsha that I would be by to pick up Jasmine shortly. Peter Croft had put Agassiz as the only class 2 route in his guide The Good, the Great, and the Awesome, so I figured it would be a worthy goal for the day. The register entries on summitpost noted a number of other options also from Bishop Pass with better rock and harder grades. I had seen Jasmine before in the Tablelands, so I was confident that she could handle most class 3 we encountered.
Palisades from Winchell to Sill were laid out before me, and I thought back to our Thunderbolt to Sill traverse last August.
