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!