I figure there's not enough photos of the Gorge of Despair (the gorge, hanging canyon of intimidation, gorge of depression, place that's really hard to get to, or, more simply, GoD) online. And, at the least, surely Kristian Solem will appreciate this.


Most Sierra enthusiasts know about the gorge. Although it isn't even included in the old SEKI climbing guide, the view from highway 180 and, most recently, Kristian's posts and enthusiasm for the place has inspired anyone with an inkling of appreciation for really cool places and sick ass granite. It is definitely due to the roadside view one can get of these striking formations that climbers have been drawn here since the early 50's. I mean, the place is freaking cool. From the mythological setting that revolves around Tehipite valley, to the climbing, to the insane thought of trying to descend the entire gorge (has this been done?).


But...yeah... it's a little hard to get to. No doubt. One starts on the south fork of the Kings where it's dusty and hot (~4,000 ft.) and in 10 miles or so crests the monarch divide (the poetic name that describes the ridge/mountain system that separates the middle and south forks of the Kings. ~10,000 ft.). It feels like the High Sierra up there but it's on the westside, so even cooler.

I'm not a weekend warrior for the time being but my friend Chaz is, to a hardcore degree. The guy is a badass doctor (and painfully, at times :), nice guy) that loves to climb and therefore gets no sleep. But it really meant we only had a few days. Also that we did most of the approach in the dark. It's also late in the year and fkn cold. But, eff it, and finally we get a view of some of these pointy formations.


We started off on the "classic" moderate line of the place. Prow of Cobra. A beautiful line and an amazing summit ridge.





Above photo is Rad for me personally.. It's a view into the drainage that Daniel, Vitaliy, and I descended after topping out on the Watsi Wall, a huge wall we climbed earlier this summer. I'm super lucky and stoked I got to experience this area from 3 different angles this summer (Chaz and I climbed on Tehipite Dome last month as well). Although the place is freaking huge and we didn't even see close to all the GoD has to offer.. So. much. beauty.



Ok so we're on the summit of the Cobra and discover a rule put down by the GoD, no summit registers and no summit rap anchors. WTF. Secor does describe the gorge in his book and eventually we find a pin anchor he mentions. We slung a flake instead. Interestingly, we discovered one new bolt at the top of the Prow route and one randomly placed new bolt in the middle of the descent. hmmmm weird. Only sign of modern activity in the place.


We then decide we have to tag El Commandante since it's the most badass looking one from the highway. We climb some random chimney vaguely/poorly described by Secor and summit that thang. Sweet first day. Since we're camped way up at Despair lake, we have a monster hike to end it. But it's freaking beautiful so what the hey.


Next day we were hoping to do some rad climbing. We wanted to check out the west side of the canyon and it was between a new route on a formation I will not mention :) or the classic looking Solem route Despairadoes.

http://www.supertopo.com/climbers-forum/703700/Despairadoes-on-topic-back-country

Lacking a bolt kit we made the possibly weak decision to climb the established despairadoes. It did look rad, a very obvious line.


Unfortunately, we had to BAIL. After hearing intense buzzing all the way from back on the approach, we discovered a huge freaking hornets nest in the corner on pitch 2. I climbed up to the 2nd bolt of the pitch where you then have to make a traverse into the corner and begin stemming up the thing. Well, we said f*#k it, not worth it. In the course of stemming I would have been curb stomping 100s of the little mother truckers. (bolts are in great shape and the pin in the corner looked good too, and the route above looked amazing. damnit!). So, back on the ground, we decide we have to summit the silver turret somehow, being the biggest thing out there. We romp up the north buttress. Secor said a tension traverse was required on the FA but we found nothing of the sort necessary. Sh#t rock interspersed with actually sweet splitters led to another badass summit ridge.


Chill time ensued...


The descent off the Silver Teabag put us in great position to play around on The Fang, a most sweet spire. The original route up it was good fun and we played around on the amazing westside chickenheads on the other faces.



So, 4 spire summits in two days. We didn't necessarily do the rad climbing we came to do but, we saw the gorge of despair.. a GoD damn dream I will say.


As a bonus, for some real rad climbing down the road and with a shorter walk, we got to check out Vitaliy's Emperor.