Sawtooth Peak

As part of my training for my upcoming Fall trip to the Himalaya, I have been doing a bunch of trail running and starting to do a bit of peak bagging as well. On Saturday, I headed up to Mineral King to hike up Sawtooth Peak (12,343'). I hiked up it a few years ago, and I thought it would make for a nice day trip. Round trip is about 13 miles with 4800' of elevation gain.

Suunto track for my hike up Sawtooth Peak.

 I took the long twisty road to the Sawtooth trailhead, and started hiking around 9am. It pretty much heads straight uphill right away, taking a typical well maintained, groomed and graded NPS trail.

Trailhead

The going was really quick, and it was not long before the 1st five miles were down, and I was at Monarch lakes, and the end of the maintained trail

Heading up to Monarch lakes. Sawtooth Peak is the pointy pile of choss in the back

 

Lower Monarch ake

There are two ways to hike up Sawtooth, up a dusty hill called Sawooth pass, or up through the two Monarch Lakes and then up the North ridge. As the pass looked heinous, I opted for the North ridge, the same route I took the last time I hiked up. Its a bit longer, but much nicer!

Looking towards Vandever mountain. Next time I'll try traversing over to that pile

Its been a long time since I suffered from a bout of AMS, but somewhere above 11,000' I got all the usual symptoms, dizziness,nausea, and I slowed WAY down. It took me way longer than it should have to climb the last 1000'. I stopped and took a few mini cap naps, eventually making up to the summit block.

Summit block

I napped a bit longer and then quickly dropped back down to the car for the long drive home.