Sunday morning (Sept. 20th) we headed out from the Convict Lake trailhead and made our way up to the start of the route.
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
We spent a bit of time at the 5.2 crux - the first 15' was probably the hardest of the whole route. We were wearing sticky rubber approach shoes, but decided to bust out our climbing shoes for this part.
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
Afterwards, the climbing shoes stayed in our packs for the rest of the day.
We continued up the gully, alternating on loose flat rock and smooth gully walls.
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
We were having a blast. It reminded me a little of hiking up canyons in Death Valley. At some point we encountered a steep and wet looking slot, and decided to bypass it on the left using a loose third class chute. This led to some traversing on smooth white slabs to get back into the gully. Here, the gully opened up and we had some expansive views of Convict Lake and Crowley Lake off in the valley.
Visit on flickr.com
The rock was also quite interesting in this part -
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
Soon we came to a red band mentioned in the supertopo writeup and headed left.
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
This led to another reddish section - still keeping mostly left.
Visit on flickr.com
Once past the scree & talus in the red stuff we found ourselves at the base of the slabs. We took a lunch break and I checked the elevation - about 10100', a little over half way up the route. Laura had done the Whitney mountaineer's route car-to-car the previous day and had a pretty good excuse for being kinda beat -- me, I just suck in general :)
What amazing views -
Visit on flickr.com
A party of four we'd seen earlier soon overtook us as we lounged .. they were in climbing shoes and moving at a pretty good clip. We later found out they were also from the eastside. The woman in the lead had done the route before, so we kinda followed them from that point.
A friend had told me about the slabs, and I'd been pretty much looking forward to them all day -
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
That was great. Now for the suckage .. the long plod up the the summit on loose crap -
Visit on flickr.com
Pretty tired now we stopped for another break and marvelled at the views.
Visit on flickr.com
At some point we decided not to head up the gully and around, but up some kind of class 2-3 thing that seemed to offer marginally better rock. Glad we did, the gully looked awful by this point.
Visit on flickr.com
Now for the last push to the top !
Visit on flickr.com
The other party was still up there when we arrived. What an excellent day ! We had our snacks and took the usual summit pics.
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
Woohoo !! We made it. We were pretty beat by then, and just wanted to get back down. So we did.
Visit on flickr.com
Looking back ..
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
We headed down into the "off route cirque" mentioned in the supertopo description. The summitpost page mentions that this part is brushy, but preferable to the scree, etc. in the other descent. We were wearing long pants so the brush wasn't really that bad -- plus Laura (who has an uncanny and almost supernatural sense of direction) found us a nice use trail. Folks wearing shorts might not like it too much, but it worked for us.
Visit on flickr.com
Visit on flickr.com
Speaking of worked, so were we. This was Laura's first unroped class 4 climb and she totally kicked royal booty, so we decided to treat ourselves to dinner at the Convict Lake resort (highly recommended).
It was a great route, and the rock was highly interesting. I have to imagine the geologists would love this one !
Original thread here -
http://supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=964619
