Thanks for the info on Mt. Hood, Diggler. Yes, it is considered an early season mountain (southside) to climb by many; because crevasses open up and rockfall increases as the summer wears on. When I mentioned the shoulder of Hood I was referring to possibly just going up to the hogsback, or do some hiking on the timberline trail.
Scott

One week to go.

I finally got to the High Sierra yesterday, my first visit this year. Sad, I know. I was hiking up the trail to Avalanche Pass and ran into a couple of guys camping at Sphinx Creek around 6am. I stopped to talk to one guy and the mosquitoes swarmed. I was trying to converse and spray DEET at the same time, but wasn't doing either very effectively. He commented, "You should have been here last night - I thought I was in the Everglades." Once I started moving again they were no problem.

First time I've seen one of these guys in the Sierra:


I was heading to the little pointy thing in the upper left:


Nice summit block:


A register placed by Carl Heller and Greg Vernon is always cool:


Should be great fun next week. Join us if you can!

I was gettin' a little worried there, Bob.

One more weekend of prep work, one more weekend to try to not get injured. Can't wait to see everyone!

This is gunna be fun...

I'm planning on doing the last 2 days of the Challenge, and maybe even Friday (Skyhaven). However, I need a ride! Is anyone heading that way from the Bay Area on Thursday or Friday?

PellucidWombat wrote:I'm planning on doing the last 2 days of the Challenge, and maybe even Friday (Skyhaven). However, I need a ride! Is anyone heading that way from the Bay Area on Thursday or Friday?

I might be heading out Thursday after work. 100% will heading somewhere- perhaps there. Not certain but possible.

Vitaliy, August 5th is no good. That weekend I'll be doing a traverse of the Palisade Crest with Dirk (II 5.7 entry to a III 5.6 climb - what fun!).

I'm taking off a lot of Fridays from work for extended weekend trips, including Monday and Tuesday during the first week of the Challenge (for the Crest climb), so I'm not sure I want to take off any more time than I have to since I have a lot of other extended weekend plans in the works

MrChad9 - if things become more certain for you, let me know!

i'm gonna try to show up for Cedric Wright on the last Saturday. would love to meet some of these crazies.

Doing North Pal sometime Aug 3-5, then I'll be back on the Challenge starting the next Wednesday. I'll be back in Bishop in time for the Moosie-Q, looking forward to seeing everyone!

Good luck to this year's group of deathmarchers!

PellucidWombat wrote:I'm planning on doing the last 2 days of the Challenge, and maybe even Friday (Skyhaven). However, I need a ride! Is anyone heading that way from the Bay Area on Thursday or Friday?

Looking forward to finally meeting you!!! Wish I could help with a ride.

I'm flying into LAX at 9:45 a.m. on Sunday Aug 8. Anyone driving from LA on Sun? Monday will be my first day of the challenge, and I'm there till the end.

I'm planning to be there for the nine of the ten days with two variations. If anyone's interested in joining me for Ritter and Banner on Mon Aug 9th or Gendarme, Picture Puzzle, and Aperture on Sat Aug 14th, shoot me an email or PM! I look forward to meeting some new folks and making some fast tracks. Cheers!

I'm drive tomorrow afternoon or evening from San Francisco. Email me if you need a ride.

Day 1 - Finger Peaks

The first day of the Challenge had 17 venturing souls at the Twin Lakes TH at the fine hour of 5am. Finger Peaks, a set of three summits with the highest being the middle, lies just south of the Sawtooth Ridge at the northern boundary of Yosemite NP. The easiest route to the highpoint is class 3, a traverse of all three is rated class 4 (first done by Claude Fiddler in 1989). 4 of the group were headed to Matterhorn Peak as an alternative, the rest of us wandering through the Mono Village CG looking for the trailhead to Barney Lake.

Following Secor's directions for Little Slide Canyon, we turned off before reaching Barney Lake, crossed Robinson Creek and followed a fine use trail up the canyon. Some of us did better than others at navigating through this canyon. Six of us, myself included, got sidetracked on a cliffy mass of granite just east of Maltby Lake. Several others, following a better route, got some laughs watching us trying to descend by one route after another before finally escaping the rocky prison. It took more than three hours to reach Ice Lake Pass on the Sierra Crest, from where we got our first view of Finger Peaks:


Sean O. had raced ahead and we'd lost someone along the way, leaving us nine starting down from Ice Lake Pass into upper Slide Creek Canyon, between the Sawtooth Ridge and Finger Peaks. Aside from Sean, only Adam J. and myself were interested in the traverse, so we left the others lower down in the canyon to start the ascent up to the west summit. It was a fine class 3 scramble up the West Shoulder and on to the west summit. By the time we got there after more than 5hrs, we could see Sean patiently waiting at the top of the middle summit. Our view of the middle summit from the west summit:


Adam and I scrambled down to the saddle between the west and middle summits, at which time the other 7 were just starting up the snowfield on the north side leading to the saddle, perhaps 20-30 minutes away. I followed the class 3 route described by Secor to the top of the middle summit while Adam, unread or uncaring as to the beta, took a class 4 route straight up, same as Sean had used. The summit register was a cool, cast iron cylinder, the likes of which I hadn't seen in the Sierra:


Cool as it was, the cast iron was heavily rusted and did little to preserve a register inside that dated back only about 14 years - the contents were mostly unreadable. The summit block was easy class 4 and nicely overhanging:



Before the other seven had reached the summit, three of us dropped down the SE side of the middle summit on an improbable series of class 3 ledges that was broken only by one small stretch of low fifth class rock. We sent Sean down first to test it out:


It was a spicy little stretch that Sean made look easy. I took off my pack, handed it down to Sean, then followed, making it look hard. Adam dropped us his pack, took a few tries at it, then decided against it. He chose to go back up and then descend the class 3 route. We left his pack at the saddle between the middle and east summit, then continued to the east summit. It was a largely uneventful summit, but it has a fine view of the backside of Matterhorn Peak:


Sean and I descended back to the canyon and the Burro Pass Trail, starting back. Sean decided to tag Eocene Peak for a bonus. I whimpered at the extra 1,500ft of gain and wished him well as I continued down the trail. Ten minutes later, now 12:30pm, I ran into Bill Peters on his way up to Finger Peaks. He'd started late, at 7am, had had no sleep since driving from Sacramento, and was going quite slowly. We calculated that at his present rate he wouldn't get back until 9pm. This made him stop and consider. Maybe he'd just do Eocene. No, too hard. How about Kettle Peak? He followed me back down the trail with this last idea in mind, then stopped a few minutes later to reconsider going to Finger Peaks. He was laughably not altogether thinking sharply. I left him in his state of bewilderment as the mosquitoes were chewing me up while we stood there. Bill would do something and Bill would get back, that much seemed certain.

Descending Little Slide Canyon I ran into Faith P on her way down as well. She had lost the group in the morning and told a short tale of wandering for hours in Little Slide Canyon and trying to get to Finger Peaks (the use trails are not always easy to follow in the canyon). We went down to the middle of the canyon together to get a good view of the Incredible Hulk, the primary reason I wanted to take this route:


Several parties were camped at the base there, but no one was in camp. It was not hard to pick out several climbing parties about halfway up two different routes. Quite impressive looking:


I continued down Little Slide at a pretty good climb and was only a mile from the TH when Sean popped up behind me - he had made it to the top of Eocene and down, and still got back at the same time. We finished together at 3:30pm for a 10.5hr day. I didn't stay around to see the others come in, but we had at least 10 on the summit of Finger and several more atop Matterhorn (we spotted two at the top from Finger Peaks), a pretty good success rate.

Tomorrow: Stanton Peak in Yosemite NP, starting from the Green Creek TH, 6am.

I'm trying to document each day's adventures on my blog. Dirtbag internet access being what it is in e.g. Bridgeport, I'll probably be a day or two behind.

Bob suggested that I put a few photos on this thread, so here are some highlights from day 1. First, some scenery: This is the Slide, a prominent feature of the valley south of Icelake Pass and west of Finger Peaks, in northern Yosemite. It looks recent, but isn't:

This is Sawtooth Ridge from the west, stretching from Matterhorn at the southern end to something cool-looking that I should probably look up to the north:

There was also plenty of climbing action. Here's Adam descending off the first (southwest) finger. It's class 3-4 slabs and cracks with that annoying northern Yosemite super-abrasive granite:

And here's Bob carefully making his way down the crux of the descent off the Middle Finger. The route follows a surprising series of zig-zag ledges, with this short 5th class pitch connecting them at one point. Pretty decent exposure: