Bear Creek Spire (13,713') - North arete (III, 5.8)

Bear Creek spire was one of the first mountains I climbed, back in 2015 I climbed the easy 4th class route (Ulrich's route) with Garrett. The whole time I remember eyeing the beautiful North Arete, and ever since it has been on my alpine tick list. After communicating with a psyched climber on Mountainproject, I finally got the chance to climb the route this past weekend.

Annotation of North Arete of Bear Creek Spire

 I met up with Kevin Friday night after work at Saddle Bag Lake, where we both bivied in our respective cars. Saturday morning, we headed to the Mono Ranger station, grabbed an overnight permit and then drove to Rock Creek. Since we were still pretty early we hit up some of the great sport climbing in the area. After samling a few enjoyable routes, we packed it up and drove to the super crowded trail head. Around 1 PM, we started the hike into the Little Lakes valley. 

Heading into the little lakes valley

 

Little lakes with Bear Creek Spire in the background.

 

Look out for the mule train!

After a couple of hours we reached Gem lakes and left the main trail into the talus and ancient glacial moiraine towards our base camp at Dade Lake.

Heading up the talus above Gem Lakes

 Around 3:30 PM we reached Dade Lake, so set-up our base camp and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

Dade Lake with Bear Creek Spire in the backgorund.

 

Base camp.

Once the sunset we headed to bed. I didn't get much sleep as the wind was howling all night. A couple of climbers started out of camp around 5:00 AM (turned out to be Peter Metcalf, founder of Black Diamond), and we had a more leisurely start and left camp at 6:00 AM.

Starting out in the morning. Photo credit - Kevin J.

 It took us about in hour of approach on the talus, and we were at the base of the arete just after 7:00 AM. Peter and Joe had just started up the first pitch, so we waited a bit for them to clear the pitch. They were fast and efficient (no surprise there!) and stayed just ahead of us the whole day. Kevin launched up the first 4th class pitch, then I took the lead for the next few technical pitches. 

Kevin at the first belay

 

Looking up Pitch 2 - 5.7 crack. That's the founder of Black Diamond up there!

The climbing was mostly easy mixed in with some steep 5.7-5.8 moves on cracks and wide flakes systems. I found the moves on P3 (5.8) to be fairly awkward but I fought through.

This was followed by three pitches of easy 4th class and low 5th class. Kevin led the last of these pitches, bringing us to a large ledge at the base of the routes techincal crux, a steep 5.8 offwidth. 

Looking up at the crux pitch.

 I led through the crux pitch. I vacillated for a while below the crux, placing probably too much gear, but once I committed the move turned out to be easy and really no big deal. Its all a head game sometimes. After the crux pitch, there were multiple pitches of low 5th class climbing and we joined the ridge system. Kevin and I alternated leading these pitches. They were very easy, but the route finding was somewhat complex. 

Kevin on the ridge

By-passing a tower on the ridge. Photo credit  Kevin J.

We moved around a tower, then joined Ulrichs route finally reaching the summit ridge. A quick 5.6R mantel and the summit was ours!

Almost there! Photo credit - Kevin J.

Kevin on the summit block!

We rappelled off the summit and chatted with Peter and Joe for awhile. We down climbed the south slopes (class 2) and then dropped down a gnarly 3rd class chute to eventually reach the talus field below the peak.

Rappel

Bottom of the gnarly 3rd class chute

We were back in camp 10 hours after leaving. Not too bad. We packed it up, and hiked out to the trailhead. I said goodbye to Kevin and drove all the way home.

It was a full value weekend in the mountains. The route was casual and very aesthetic, highly enjoyable. I'm looking forward to more trips in the hills before the snows come.