Been too many non-climbing threads recently. What did ya'll do this past weekend? I'll kick it off.

I went backpacking with a bunch of friends. Luckily one was a climber, and was willing to laden himself with chalk, shoes and a harness for the oh-so-long two-day hike out to Island Lake in Dinkey Lakes Wilderness. I lugged out the rope and a small rack.

The first taste of the wilderness: Night hiking under a (practically) full moon to Mystery lake, roughly midnight-to-1am timeframe on Friday night (looong drive from the bay area).

The next day, since we had to hike a oh-so-far 4 miles or so to Island Lake, and we arrived at our campsite by noon (even with 9 people in our group!), we were forced to climb, what with the Three Sisters calling out to us from just above the campsite and all (oh the horror!).

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After the long scramble up, we found something climbable. Some nice fingers on sharp granite, a few hand jams, and before I knew it the difficulties on the first pitch were done with (about 30 feet up a slightly-right-leaning block with a bit of a finger crack behind it before topping out onto the prominent ramp). Yo, this shiz fun!


As you can see, my buddy forgot his helmet. No big deal since I found him this spacious-alcove-with-a-view to chill in while I tossed rocks down from P2. Dude man, check it out!.

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P2 kept it real, starting with pulling over that roof we're sittin' under. After an aborted attempt trending left immediately over the roof (I couldn't find good pro), I went straight up for a while, then wandered across a blocky ledgy type feature before finding something else to throw myself at. I found a nice lichen covered horizontal finger crack / lieback / mantle for the topout. Oh yeah!

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From there, we scrambled across all the summits of all Three Sisters, ending on the tallest one where we found a summit register and so recorded Mounting a Sister 2 Pitches, 5.8.

Yar!