The Geezers Vacation or the Last 14’er and the Mystery Bones

Tran was gracious enough to invite me to her annual TM group campsite gala again. Last year’s event was marred by managing to mess up my knee by overtraining on an ill-fitting bike and ending up doing more spectating and fishing than climbing. I had managed to avoid that error this year.

Thursday,
I’d been delayed a bit by a fire and detour in Bishop. I think maybe it was the lumber yard that burned down, it was a large industrial fire and they had 395 closed at the ranger station and had a detour set up around the backside of town. Rolled into the campsite early afternoon, Justin and Tatako’s tent was up, but no one around. Enjoyed the silence, a couple of cheap beers and a fine cigar. About 4:00 everyone started to arrive, Tran, Anh and their boy , Brian , Walt and Patricia, a couple of their school teacher friends who’s name escapes me at the moment (Maria and Trish). There’s probably someone else I’m forgetting too.
Immediately the cooking began and the feasting commenced.

Justin and Tatako almost missed dinner coming back late from a climb, but that just became an excuse to extend the feasting for another hour or two.

Friday,
The plan was to take Brian and Anh fishing although the real plot was to take Brandon, a precocious 12 year old on a hike long enough to take the edge off of him. I was going to take them up to Budd Lake following the approach for Mathes. Last year Budd was full of eager Brookies and I’d caught dinner quickly and caught and released a few more. At the trailhead the NPS had posted a sign that they had gill netted Budd Lake and were in the process of exterminating the fish, so plans changed to Cathedral Lake. The Cathedral Lakes trail is quite boring as far as the views are concerned compared to Budd Creek, (that is until you get to the lake) and if there are any fish in Cathedral Lake they weren’t interested at all. The hike did have its intended effect. I think by the time we got back to the car Brian had reconsidered the utility of a 6” sheath knife versus an extra liter of water. (I get to play the grumpy old geezer role to the hilt;-)
More feasting late into the night.

Justin and Tatako rolled in late again, (I think I’m seeing a pattern here)


Saturday,
About 2:00 or 3:00 am Ryuichi and Hyroshi rolled into camp.
They were up before me at 0 dark:30 and Ryuichi was cooking up some home smoked meat for breakfast. The regular Route on Fairview was the objective. I’d tried to get on it twice years ago, the first time thwarted by a line four parties deep and the second time when Dean had altitude problems and almost hit my shoes when he puked while I was flaking out the rope to start. Ryuichi and Hiroshi had also been stopped by the conga line the year before.

Well, this time the line was only two parties deep. We got there before 7:00 and the first party was half way up the first pitch at a snail’s pace. Hyrosh really wanted this one and since it doesn’t get dark until 8:00 and never rains the third week in August we decided to wait. The second party wasn’t much faster and the first party had a rope cluster f*#k at the second belay so we didn’t get started until 10:00.

Ryuichi and Hyroshi at the first belay.

Hyroshi was climbing on doubles and bringing both of us up at once so the climb went fast and uneventful, (except when I let my mind wander and tested the efficacy of a 7.8mm rope to stop 100kg of lard by pitching off of 5 easy a few feet from a belay). The “crux” wasn’t much, although I can see it being a different story with a little more moisture on the rock. I thought pitches 2-4 were the money, continuous and strenuous (for a Gezer) and would have been nothing but fun 10-20 years ago. There was a party prepping for a Nose in a Day effort behind us that didn’t catch up with us until we got to the last two pitches. They were probably loafing though. We were only passed by two Spanish climbers that simuled most of the route.

Obligatory butt shot, last real move on the route.

Everybody on top.

The descent was a bit different story. A few years ago I was hit with “sudden idiopathic deafness” (A virus ate my cochlea) and though I’ve made a complete recovery of my balance in the “up” mode, down mode has never been the same. That made for a long tiptoe down knobs that at one time I would have happily danced down.
Back to camp about 8:00 for another feast. Walter had caught some fish, Pat’s schoolteacher friends has some vegetarian fare going was chowing down on that. Hyroshi had fired up his wood fired, thermopile powered BBQ grille, with USB charger port, and Ryuichi had layered it with home smoked meats.


Pat opened a fine bottle of Bourbon, and as everyone was turning in it was about 1\4 of the way down. Ryuichi and Tatako found it and stayed up all night giggling and yammering away in Japanese. In the morning the bottle was about dry. Ryuichi appeared to be fine, but Tatako, not so much.
Sunday,

I needed a rest day after they beat the geezer up on Fairview and Walter had found the beta on the lake with the fish and described it as a one mile hike with a few hundred feet of gain, so that sounded about right. Well, it was about 1,200 feet of gain, but still only about a mile and a half hike. He was dead on, another lake to rival what Budd had been like the year before. Dozens of hungry brookies so I kept the three biggest out of a half dozen or so caught, and even more that I intentionally let shake the hook. Forgot the camera so no photos, besides some things need to remain a mystery and I want to make sure there are some fish left next year.
The rest of the crew had gone off to other venues with at least two parties getting the Third Pillar done along with a bunch of other stuff I’ve lost track of.


Last campsite feast that night. Cooked my fish and Tatako showed us how to “fry the bones” they were a bit miffed I’d tossed the heads when I cleaned them, I guess that’s supposed to be part of the mix. Now this is something that I’d never heard of. The small bones, fins and bits are fried in oil, cleaning off the small bits of meat with a chopstick until really well done and the small bones well browned and then liberally salted and crunched up. Kinda like trout chitlins or chips. It really is tasty. I think this will become SOP for finishing off small trout from now on.

Monday,
Ryuichi had his eyes on a three pitch climb on Dozier. My arthritic toes had had enough of knobs so I talked him into a lazier day on NW Books which was also on his tick list.
As we were unloading a lone guy sitting on one of the tables yells “Wendell” It took a while for it to register, (funny how you don’t recognize familiar faces when they suddenly appear in an unexpected locale) but there was Eppi (Greg Epperson) siting there. Got caught up on all the J Tree local gossip until the rest of his crew arrived and we were off to Lembert.
There was one party ahead of us (at least we thought) but no wait as the second was starting up the first pitch, but trailing an odd 30 or so feet of rope. Ryuichi polished it off in quick fashion and finishing up the last pitch I heard the unmistakable chattering in Japanese. Now I’ve learned to never underestimate Ryuichi’s talent for finding someone to converse with in his native tongue. Party in the desert at Todd’s, no problem, he’ll find someone to converse with in Japanese. Turns out the strangely dangling rope was an alpinist from Japan with no mean European credentials that was rope soloing ahead of us. They traded contact info and the invite is out for JTree next year.

We stopped by TPR and Lynne was out on a hike so we left word that we would be back for dinner and headed on over to Saddlebag Lake to get a campsite. Came back that evening, visited with Lynne a while and then sat down to the largest meal I’ve ever been served in a restaurant. It must have been the “Friends of Lynne special”, and the best pot roast I think I’ve ever had. The pies are supposed to be something special, but there was absolutely no room left!
Tuesday,
This was going to be a casual driving day. Stopped at Mono and checked out the Tufas in the early morning.
Then a stop at the, “Green Church” Hot Springs to soak for a half hour or so and wash off the accumulated grime.
On to Bishop for a grocery store stop and picked up the permit. We camped that night at the highest drive in camp below South Lake. The stream was teeming with wary Brookies and we spotted this right above camp.
Anyone know if this has ever been climbed? Looks like a wild feature!


Wednesday,

The grind over Bishop and Thunderbolt Passes.
The trail was rerouted above Bishop Lake a few years ago and is a much more pleasant experience with no more mule pee pools. I guess a rockfall wiped out the old trail. I don’t know if the exposure on the old one scared the piss out of the mules or what, but the new trail had some wet spots, but no stinky pools to negotiate that were a repeated feature, quite literally, ad nauseum at almost every switchback of the old trail.

Thunderbolt Pass on the other hand hasn’t got any easier. No matter how you go about it you end up negotiating about a mile of big talus with a full pack. No one in the frame for scale, but a lot of this stuff is small car size with equally sized holes in between.
We finally made the top of the pass,
And could see our campsite below
There were three other parties there. The last three times I was in there we never saw more than one other party. The recent thunderstorms had greened everything up though and the flower blooms were more intense and fresher than I’ve ever seen before in late August.

Thursday,

The big day!
The plan was to head for Polemonium and depending on when we got there bag it first and then go on to Sill. Sill was still to be the primary objective and if we were short on time Polemonium would be dropped off the agenda. I had a secondary motive behind this. Trudging up the talus and the moraine below the Polemonium glacier to only grind up a dirty chute on Sill didn’t really appeal to me at all as a way to get my last 14’er. Descending that way was going to be drudgery enough.
A 0: dark 30 start found us high above Potluck Pass as the sun came up.

Coming around the corner on the ridge to peak 13,962 we got our first view of Sill
Ryuichi had a few comments on how far away it looked and kept consulting his topo.
We stuck fairly high on the ridge, 50-100 feet from the crest on a band of relatively good rock for almost a mile of wildly exposed 2nd and 3rd class with the occasional harder move.
13,962 and the ridge from Sill

Dropping down off the shoulder of 13,962 to the notch between Polemonium and Sill we stopped for a water break with the remains of the Polemonium Glacier in the background. It’s the highest and only south facing glacier in the Sierra. Given the drought conditions it’s fared better than I’d expected. I really didn’t expect to see anything left at all.
Starting off again, we came upon this bizarre sight.

About an eighteen inch section of spine from a fairly large animal. (maybe someone can identify it, I suspect it’s sheep) Completely picked clean, but fresh enough that the spinal disks were still glossy and not dried out. It was lying on the middle of a large flat boulder and there were no signs of any other remains on either side of the crest. It was large enough that with meat on it a vulture couldn’t have carried it there. They can’t get their own weight airborne without a headwind. Best guess is it was the work of an eagle.
Location was about where the white arrow is in this shot from the top of Sill.
We were running out of time and energy so Polemonium was dropped from the agenda and on up the ridge to Sill we went.


Finally hit the top. Ryuichi dug out his topo that he’d been consulting all day and tried to make sense out of it. This whole day had been “map reading 101”


The view down to the Palisades’ Glacier and the N Fork lakes.


The rest of the Palisades group.


Finally!
The last 14’er! Done all fifteen of them now.

This was Ryuichi’s first 14’er, and next on his tick list.

Now I have an excuse to do them all twice.

Signing the register was interrupted by a loud boom to the south. There were abundant puffy cumulus, but nothing that looked like it could produce lightening. Another boom and we decided it was time to go.
The descent down the second class chute went fast and uneventful. The ridge we had used on the way up was a lot more impressive from that aspect.

The slog thru big talus went on forever until we finally found Potluck pass and took the easy way down to Barrett Lake. The trail from Barrett back up to passes this little water feature.

Finally home for the evening.


With the view

Friday,

The next morning started out a bit ominous with swirling clouds.

But, by 7:00 or so it cleared. I went down to Barrett to scare some fish, but they were all feeding way out in the middle so no luck. We left about noon to deal with the talus and head back over the pass and spent the final night at Bishop Lake.


Photos by Anh Doan-Tran, Ryuichi Yamamoto and Wendell Smith