Latest doings - big day in the mountains and now Squaw Valley

Well, I haven't reported on my doings for a while. I had a big day in the mountains July 12th. I hiked in from Pine Creek up to the Morgan mine and then along the ridge over a number of peaks such as Broken Finger with a fair bit of scrambling and up to low 5th class climbing and lots of confusing and tortuous route finding. Then over to Morgan Peak and Little Lakes peak and then back to the trail to hike out by moonlight. It ended up being about an 18 hour push and I was quite tired. Someday I'll make a trip report for it. The spot track is here:

spot track for big day in the Sierras

I also did some mountain biking and scouting of Bishop Creek for packrafting - too much brush though.

Now I am up at Squaw Valley to set up for Wanderlust. Lake Tahoe was very blue, but the traffic was grim. I was getting passed by bicycles.

Lake Tahoe - very blue. I think I had the polarizer on for this pic

short Owens River Packraft (7/10/11)

I got a pretty late (Yogaslacker) start on a packraft trip on the Owens River. I parked my truck at the Five Bridges bridge over the Owens, then I biked up to the Pleasant Valley Campground with my raft. This was into a headwind and took about an hour. Then I switched to raft mode (20 minutes) and cast off downstream at 5:17 pm. The water might have been a little higher than last time, but not by much. I didn't stop at all and made it down to the bridge in about 2.5 hours. I surprised a number of great blue herons and a hawk when I came around corners, but there were less little flitty birds than the first trip. The new packraft handles well without a bicycle on the front. It is definitely narrower than my old raft was.

I also got my spot tracker back (Thanks Frank), so here is a link to the spot track from this trip. You can see how squiggly the Owens is for some of this stretch.

Link to Tom's spot track of this short Owens River packraft trip

back into the mountains - June 28 to July 2

This will be quite brief, but I hope to update it in a few days when I get more easy internet time.

I got another call and headed into the mountains. This time I headed in from N Lake up over Piute Pass. The first night it snowed a few inches and it blew a lot. In the morning it was still blowing around but I decided to get up and out anyway. I ticked off a number of smaller peaks in the 4 Gables area including what is apparently officially the 4 Gables peak as well as the more impressive peaks to the N and S. Then I moved camp closer to the next days objective - slow and frustrating with the soft afternoon snow - it is at least twice as fast with half the effort to walk on top of the snow in the morning.

The 3rd days objective was Mt Merriam (13,077'), Royce (13,280 ft), and possibly Feather Peak (>13,240 '). I managed all 3 and found a nice couloir for the descent from Feather that saved me a lot of tedious downclimbing. Once again the afternoon snow was a chore to pass. I think this was my longest day with over 4600' of vertical. Once again it snowed (and blew around) in the evening - just enough to make me pack up and hide in the bivy tent instead of drying stuff out.

For the 4th day I hiked back and climbed up Mt Humphreys (13, 986 ft) via the NW side - this had some exciting climbing - something about 4th classing past rappel anchors makes one feel both superior and nervous. From there I headed south towards the final objective.

my shadow as I hike back towards Humphreys

The 5th and last day I climbed Mt Emerson from the SW. There was some scrambling to start and a lot of talus up to the lower W summit, then I traversed and scrambled around a lot of ridge to the actual E summit (13,204 ft). This day was a lot warmer with almost no wind. I took the gully SE from the summit, I think this was a big mistake as it had a lot of loose scree and rock, and then pinched down and had some waterfalls and sketchy old snow. I was glad to have my crampons although I wasn't glad to be putting them on on a little ledge. I also had my full backpack with all my stuff. Finally I made it down to the main Piute Pass trail and back to the truck. Down at the trailhead there were a lot of mosquitoes.

I look out over Piute Pass from the SE shoulder of Mt Emerson

It was fun to recognize so many names in the summit registers. Some peaks are a lot more popular than others, with only a few ascents a year, others see many ascents each year.


Another dip in McGee Creek refreshed me, but I had to scrub and scrape the paste of dead skin and sunscreen off of my cheeks.


here is a link to a slightly more complete trip report of the Mount Humphreys Basin trip