Alabama Hills and Tollhouse

With exams graded and the semester over, Teresa and I headed over to Lone Pine for a couple of days of climbing at the Alabama Hills. The weather was warm and sunny, perfect for a couple of days of clipping bolts

Alabama Hills bathed in early morning light

 We spent a full two days climbing, we did a nice mix of easy routes and some of the "harder" routes at the hills. Teresa even did a bit of leading.

Teresa leading a nice little sport route at Paul's Paradise

Stick clip!

Penny came along of course, and got some good sleeps in

Sleeps?

We checked out some area I had not been to before, including the eye of Horus,  and we tried (and failed) to find the Oz wall.

What should we climb next?

 We a great time! When we got back, I still had some free time, so the following day I headed out to Tollhouse and climbed a bunch of easy multi-pitches with Lauren. We were treated to some cool clouds and fog in the valley

Summit of Tollhouse

Lauren topping out "Free and Easy"

Cloudy sunset

Danland in December

I love climbing in Danland. Its a wonderful place, located deep in the foothills at the edge of the Mineral King branch of Sequoia National Park. I went out there with Michelle and her friend Lauren, we had a great time playing around on the granite slabs and cracks

Michelle on P1 of DZ arete (5.10a)

I got to lead a several routes, including both pitched of the very interesting DZ arete. The first pitch was a short 5.10 crack, followed by a bolted slabby arete. 

Lauren on P1 of DZ arete.

The 2nd pitch of DZ aerte was a short, well bolted and very technical slab/face, which went at 5.10d/5.11a. I took a little whip on the crux, so the on-sight eluded me, but I got it 2nd go.

Me leading out on the crux pitch

P2 of DZ arete (5.11?)

WE then took some burns on my long standing project - Lizard run, 5.11d/5.12a. I almost made it through the crux, but not quite. 

Taking a shot on Lizard Run

Michelle takes a-go.

Michelle's dog Bart watched us the whole time. Well not the whole time, he did excavate a rather large hole at the belay station

Bart - looking regal

A great day!

New Jack City

After a couple of weekends off of any climbing, I managed to convince Teresa that we should head into the desert and climb at New Jack City. 

NJC - Parking lot filling up

 Its not a pretty place to climb, but the rock is challenging, and is not in a style that I am very good it. Steep and technical sport climbing on slippery volcanic rock.

Hmmm.. what should we climb

 It was pretty crowded, lots of 20-something straight out of the climbing gym. I am not the at best climbing when things are crowded, I feel weirdly self-conscious. I think also I am used to the nice solitude of places like Shuteye. I need to work on my self-confidence a bit maybe.

We spent a bit of time climbing in the Western canyon, which is a lot quieter, which I enjoyed. 

Sunset in the Western canyon

 

Some solitude in the Western canyon

 We found a nice mix of moderates for Teresa and challenging climbs for me. I took a lot of whips working through some of the routes.

Happy family!

 Overall a nice little trip to the desert. I'm looking forward to heading back sometime over the winter for some more!

Penny had fun as well

Shuteye Ridge -Eagle's Nest - The wrong approach beta

The seemingly endless nice weather continues in California, so Teresa and I made our way into Shuteye Ridge on the weekend for more cragging. I had been wanting to check out Eagle's nest for some time, so we headed up to the magical land of SoYo and Shuteye ridge for another day of climbing

SoYo - The magical land of granite domes

We drove up towards the Big Sleep parking area, but a giant tree had fallen on the road, blocking our way up to the parking area. With many miles to go, we contemplated our back-up options.
I had the "brilliant" idea of driving to the Shuteye ass trailhead and hiking up to Eagle's nest from the other side. So we headed down and around to the other (much lower...) trailhead

Start of the other way up

It soon became apparent that this was not the best way up. While approaching form the other side is a well maintained, easy trail, this side is not well kept. The trail was very overgrown and littered with fallen trees. This made the going very slow, especially for Penny. Jumping giant fallen trees is tricky when you are a 1.5 feet tall.  

This part ain't so bad....

 

Downed trees. No problemo

After a couple (2.5?) hours of bushwhacking and seemingly endless uphill, we eventually spotted Crocodile Dome, meaning we were close!

Crocodile!

 We eventually made our way onto the ridge, and found Eagle's nest. What a treat. The sun was shinning, and the climbing delivered the goods. 

Teresa works the moves on this tricky 5.10

Eagle's Nest in all its glory

 

Penny takes a break

Sadly, we only got in about 4-5 climbs before the day was getting on. So we packed it up and headed out. Good climbing, but I don't think I will take the Eastern Shuteye pass approach in the future! I'll stick to the regular way up which only takes 30 minutes and not 3 hours!

Dogtooth Peak (10.302')- First ascent

Dogtooth peak is one of those obscure formations that has tickled my interest for some time. You can easily see it from various point at Courtright reservoir. From a distance the South face looks like it would be a fun adventure.

This past weekend, Kevin and I met up at Courtright with the plan to see what we could find on the face to climb. There are already 4 reported routes, 3 to the main summit, and 1 to the middle summit. 

We woke up at 5:30, and hit the trail by 6:30am. The hike is fairly far, maybe 5-6 miles, but its on a maintained trail (Cliff Like trail into the Dinkey Lakes wilderness) and is easy going. We were approaching the base of the mountain after about 3 hours of hiking

Approaching the East face of Dogtooth Peak

 The East face of the mountain looks quite impressive, fairly steep with featured golden granite, similar to what you find at Shuteye ridge. Apparently there are several undocumented routes up this face. In the future, this is where I think the higher quality, more interesting routes might go.

We traversed around the South side of the mountain towards the other summits. The first half of the South face looked interesting, but are short, maybe 2-3 pitches at most. There were a couple of nice looking cracks system that might be worth exploring in the future. 

The middle and main summits are much longer, ~1000 feet tall, but I was honestly a little bit disappointed with what we found.  The rock  looked like mostly low 5th class, with a series lower angled slabs and exfoliating granite flakes the main summit had a steeper, but crackless slabby face, which would likely require bolts for pro.

Looking up at the middle summit and the main summit to the right

We decided to climb a route on the middle tooth, far to the left of any known routes. We were aiming for what looked like a hand crack about half-way up.

We soloed up maybe 2 pitches worth of easy 4th class slabs, before putting on the rope and heading up for 2 full 60 meter pitches of low 5ht class climbing. This brought us to a big sandy ledge at the base of our hand crack. 

Low angle exfoliating slabs

 

Hand crack pitch

Keivn led the hand crack pitch, which was maybe 5.4-5.5, and then he led another easy 4th class/ low 5th class pitch above that. After that we sort of simul-solo-climbed maybe 80 meters to gain the summit ridge and unropped there. 

One of the interesting sub-peaks on Dogtooth

 We down-climbed form the middle summit, after climbing a false summit, we eventually found the easy 4th class route to the main summit of Dogtooth.

 

Almost to the top....

Summit!

We decided to call our route "Grant Submission" II,  5 pitches, 5.5.
named after my previous weeks hectic effort to get my NIH research grant submitted (thank goodness that's all done! )
Thanks Kevin, for letting me name the route! 

The climbing was fairly fun, very relaxing and super easy. It would for sure make a better way to tick the summit than the hikers route, and would be accessible to pretty much anyone with a rope and a single set of cams! I give our route 2 stars.

We hiked back to the trailhead, and were enjoying beer and chips+salsa by 3:30 PM. Not too bad

Well earned beer

We had a nice big fire that night, and camped on the East side of the lake. The next morning we had a lazy start, before rappelling into Helm's gorge to climb Power Dome. 

I led the first pitch of "A Lilttle Nukey" and then started up the second pitch, but completely lost my lead head. Its been a long time since I have frozen on lead, but I just was not feeling the 15-20 foot (albeit easy) runouts. I backed off the climb  and we rapped out, and did some cragging instead. 

I'm a little bummed I wussed out on Power Dome, I'm not sure what happened, but I basically had no psych for the climb. Maybe just tired. I'll have to go back and give it another shot. Ah well, they can't all be wins, sometimes its good to just trust your instincts.

Lone Pine Peak (12,949') - North Ridge (III, 5.7)

This weekend I met up with Kevin and Mitchell to tick off another peak from my big tick list - The North ridge of Lone Pine peak. I have been psyched to climb this for a long time, and it was great to finally get it done!

Secor and Supertopo give this ridge a grade of III, 5.5. I upgraded the route for our ascent as the presence of snow filled cracks and wet slabs seems to have upped the difficulty! I also think 5.5 is a bit of a sandbag for the short crux sections.

The three of us hit the Meysan lakes trail around 5am. We followed the National forest trail up towards the lakes for a couple of hours in the dark. Somewhere around 10,000' we broke off the trail and headed cross country towards the ridge. 

The sun started to rise just as we approached the base of the notch to gain the ridge. We climbed up some sandy class 2 slopes to gain the ridge proper. By the time we were on the ridge, the run had risen.

Early morning light on the Owen's valley and the road to Whitney Portal

Start of the ridge at sunrise

 The first section of the ridge was easy class 2/3 sand and talus. This section was quick and trivial. Soon enough the real ridge climb presented itself. We reached the top of a short tower and were presented with the view of the rest of the climb. A cool looking blade of rock sticking up from the ridge marked our path.

Start of the technical portions of the ridge. We were on 4th and 5th class terrain for over 8 hours

We down climbed to the notch and then back up again towards the rock blade.

Kevin traversing on the ridge. Photo credit - Mitch Q.

Kevin on easy 5th class terrain

Below the rock blade presented the first technical section of the ridge. A 30 meter crack system, that is maybe 5.5 or less. This would have made an easy solo, but the crack was full of ice and snow, so we roped up. I'm glad we did because it was slick and somewhat tricky with the snow!

Leading the 1st technical pitch. Photo credit - Mitch Q.

After the technical pitch, we unroped and continued on our way, traversing 4th class terrain for a while

Kevin emerges from the shade into the warm sun!

We eventually made our way to the the next technical section. There is a large steep tower about half-way up the ridge. The tower can't be bypassed, and has to be climbed to the top. Using the beta in Supertopo, we had no problem finding the "5.7 layback" crux pitch. Mitch led up, same as before, this pitch was full of ice and snow, making things interesting. Fortunately, the crux move itself was dry and protected by two fixed pins.

Mitch heading up the crux pitch at the start of the tower. Photo credit - Kevin J.

Following the crux section - photo credit Mitch Q.

We climbed the rest of the tower in 2 more pitches, another pitch of 5.5ish terrain which I led, and a pitch of 4th class/ low 5th which Mitch led. We topped out on the tower and warmed up in the sun. 

The next section of climb traversed along a fun and easy knife-edge section. I had a small scare when I slipped down climbing a crack, but fortunately I didn't fall to my death, as there was a ledge underneath. Yikes!

Looking toward the knife-edge traverse and the final summit headwall

After the knife edge, we down-climbed again, to the base of the last technical section, the large tower/headwall that guards the summit. Kevin led the last technical pitch a short 5.5-5.6 hand crack that led to easier 4th class above. He pitched it out to a snow covered ledge where we unroped and continued up.

The rest of the headwall was low 5th class and 4th class terrain, that went on for maybe 4-5 pitches worth of rock. We soloed through some sketchy sections, including a slippery slab and a giant off-width crack.

Kevin at a snowy belay after the 3rd crux section at the base of the summit headwall.

Soloing on the summit headwall. Photo credit - Kevin J.

 

4th class terrain on the summit headwall

Finally, we could see the summit block ahead!

Almost at the top! In the sunshine! Photo credit - Mitch Q.

We topped out to the big sandy summit plateau above. We enjoyed the sun, and warmed up our hands and feet.

Summit! Photo credit - Mitch Q.

Mitch is psyched to be on the top!

After relaxing on the summit for 30 min or so, we started to head down. We totally blew the beta on the descent, it taking us well over an hour to find the correct gully to drop down. 

Beta note: the gully is NOT very far from the summit (we went way to far) and there is a big vertical granite wall right along the side of the gully.  

We began the long descent back to the car. 

Descent gully. Photo credit - Kevin J.

We arrived back at the trailhead after dark, around 8:30 PM. It took us 15.5 hours car-car to climb the route. I think it would be MUCH faster if we did not have to contend with the snow and ice in the technical sections which slowed down the climbing considerably. 

We made it back to Lone Pin, just in time to catch the Mexican restaurant before it closed. Sweet!

Almost home. Photo credit Kevin J.