2021 was a year of fails for me, I bailed from Alaska, East Buttress of El Cap, Saber Ridge. I was injured for much of the year. My elbow was wrecked, and I hurt my hand. I gained 20+ lbs and was pretty depressed. I was at a low point in my climbing career. Hence the 18 month hiatus from my blog.
I turned it all around this year, and 2022 has been terrific. Starting in January I lost a ton of weight, I am now the same weight I was when I was 22 years old. I trained and ran a tough 10K trail run in the San Joaquin river gorge back in March. I got my butt back into climbing shape, and I am quickly dispatching and redpointing old projects. I have been climbing a ton in Yosemite, Red Rock and now am back to Shuteye. Ted has emerged as my main climbing partner this year and we have had a bunch of great outing together.
One thing I have been missing with all the hard sport climbing and trad climbing is moderate adventures in the alpine. So for my birthday this year, I managed to sell Teresa on the idea of climbing The Obelisk, an obscure 700' granite monolith hidden away in the depths of King's Canyon National Park.
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| The Obelisk - 700' of featured granite, hidden in King's Canyon |
On my Friday May 13th (my 42nd birthday) we loaded up our packs and headed up to Wishon Reservoir and made our way to the Crown Valley Trailhead to start our hike.
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| Trailhead |
For this little adventure, the plan was to make the ~8 mile hike into lower Geraldine lake and make camp there. Day 2, make the 1 hour approach, climb and then spend a 2nd night at the lake. Hike out on day 3. On paper it all looks easy, 8 miles, only 3000' of elevation gain. However the trail is in fairly rough shape, combined with seasonal snow cover and 2 miles of cross-country travel to the camp from the main trail things were a little slow and harder than I was expecting.
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| Trail to Lower Geraldine Lake and the Obelisk |
Armed with the route pre-loaded into Gaia GPS, I was confident we could find the way. Early on we encountered our first obstacle, a river swollen with snow melt. I managed to get across on a dubious log, but Teresa looked at it, and opted to remove her shoes and walk across the river. I was rather cocky that I had crossed on the log, but my hubris came back to haunt me on the walk out on Sunday, as I slipped into the river crossing the same log!
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| Dubious log crossing. I fell into the river on the return trek |
We lost the trail several times, but eventually found our way up a drainage to gain the col which deposited us above lower Geraldine lake. About 3-4 miles in, we had gained enough elevation that we hit the snow line. The snow was perfect though, being well consolidated and not at all sun cupped. Easy going.
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| Teresa traveling on intermittent snow fields |
Despite going fairly light on gear (I only brought 7 cams and a few nuts, a single 9mm rope) the packs were quite heavy. It's been a while since I have carried overnight climbing loads! After about 4.5 hours we crested the col and finally saw Lower Geraldine lake and our camp site!
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| Lower Geraldine Lake |
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| mmmmm... birthday "cake" |
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| Home sweet home for 2 nights |
The next morning we had ourselves a fairly leisurely start. The climb being only 7 pitches long, not a huge approach, and long days meant no need to rush. We had ourselves a nice breakfast, and left cap around 9:30 am. The approach from the lake is about 2 miles, you first head up a drainage to gain a pass and then head downhill towards the Obelisk. Cresting the pass you get the first glimpse of the rock formation!
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| Sign points the way |
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| First view of the Obelisk! |
It took us about an hour to reach the base of the climb. The start was pretty obvious, being a fairly dank looking chimney in-between two obvious corner systems.
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| Start of the climbing - dank chimney |
I climbed up into the chimney for about 80' and then exited left out onto the face. This was probably the crux of the whole climb, more awkward than hard. I placed a single piece of gear on the whole pitch, protecting that move. After that it was basically a choose your own adventure. I kept the pitches fairly short, about 100'. Since I had a small rack, and 4 of the 7 cams were often tied up in anchors, it was easier to keep the pitches short so I could place at least 1 piece per pitch and be in voice contact with Teresa. We headed
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| Sorting the rope on P2 |
straight up for 3 pitches, before ducking left around some blocky roofs and then traversing right for 3-4 pitches of easy mega-featured chicken headed climbing, Whoa!
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| Teresa arriving at the top of P4 (?) |
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| The headwall of chicken heads. 5. fun climbing |
We picked and chose our way up the crazy featured headwall, all of it climbable at an easy grade. you really could go where ever you want. I sort of drifted right and then up, eventually arriving at the top of the dome. We were met with wonderful views of Tehipite valley and King's canyon proper.
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| End of the technical climbing |
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| Summit views |
The true summit was a boulder, and we managed to find the summit register. We were the first to climb it in 2022 and the peak seemed to get about 1-2 parties per year. I love climbing these obscure gems, away from the crowds.
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| Summit! |
The decent involved 3 single rope rappels with a 60m rope. I had been nervous about this, as Mountainproject noted that the 3rd rappel just makes it with a 60. The first 2 rappels were off slung knobs with recently added bolt back-ups
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| Slung knob - rap 1 |
The 3rd rappel was a doozy. A 100' free hanging rappel into space with no room to spare at the end with a 60m rope.
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| Looking down on the exposed rap 3 |
Once back to Terra-firma it was a short hour hike back to camp and some nicely cooked curry
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| Tese is excited for dinner! |
It took us about 7 hours camp-to-camp for a leisurely, enjoyable day! I'm certainly a lucky man to have a wife who was willing to trudge out into the back-country for my birthday climb!
Looking forward to my next venture into the mountains. Alpine climbing season is on! I just need to find partners willing to suffer a bit with me!
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| Thanks Teresa! Best wife ever! |
