Goodale Mountain and Arrow Peak

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For the second time this summer Loren and I drove from SLO straight to the Taboose Pass trailhead and set up camp. My main objective was to deliver a few days' worth of food to my dad who was hiking the JMT, but we also picked out a few nearby peaks that needed bagging: Goodale, Arrow, Cardinal, State, Marion. In the end I only ended up getting two of these. 

When we showed up late on Thursday night we were surprised to find the trailhead packed to the point of overflow. I was able to find a flat spot to park so I could sleep in my car while Loren pitched his tent nearby. The next morning we were up and moving just before 6:00, a bit later than we had started the previous time. My pack was HEAVY, way too heavy. I had packed a few "luxury items", a bit too much food, and of course the extra food for my dad. I never weighed it, but I am sure that it was heavier than 45 lbs., much worse than the 18 lbs. I was at on the previous Taboose trip. I saw that Loren's pack was on the light side, so I let him know that he was going to outpace me by even more than usual and that he shouldn't wait up for me. We never explicitly discussed where we would meet up first along the trail and this caused some issues later on. 

Cross-country route up the gully

I headed up the first few sandy miles of trail and watched Loren slowly disappear into the distance. I was not in a great mood, mostly on account of my extra heavy pack and the looming idea of repeating such a brutal hike with it on. Then there was the fact that I was still below 6,000' in elevation but would need to get up near 13,000' within a few hours. My only consolation was that I'd get to leave the trail after 6 miles and 5,000' instead of having to trudge the entire 8 miles, 6,000' to Taboose Pass. Nonetheless it took me the same amount of time, 3 hours, to get to the departure point this time around as it had taken to get all the way to the pass before. Loren was nowhere in sight, so I figured he had already left the trail and made it beyond the skyline at the end of the gully that lay ahead. This seemed reasonable on account of my slow pace. I left the trail and followed this route up the gully. The entire way was class 2 with some moderately annoying boulder hopping. I followed the route described on Summitpost and climbed the slope at the end of the gully just to the right of the waterfall. 

Goodale Mountain the distance

Above the waterfall I found myself on a plateau with a medium-sized lake. I dropped my heavy pack then continued on toward the summit of Goodale. I planned to climb the class 2 west face, still figuring Loren was somewhere up ahead. About 1,000' below the summit, I had to decide whether to head to the left or right of the summit block; I chose left, which ended up being incorrect. I should have aimed for this arrow, but instead I found myself below class 4/5 terrain on the other side. To correct my error I had to descend a few hundred feet and climb back up to the red arrow. 

I took a few photos from the false summit then tagged the easy class 3 high point and signed the register. I was the second entry this year, and the first one wasn't Loren's which took me by surprise. At that point it was 50/50 in my head as to whether he had opted for Striped or whether he had just gone to the pass instead of leaving the trail at the 10,200' mark as I had. The latter turned out to be the case, but I wasn't sure yet. Views from the summit were great in all directions as it was a clear day. The class 2 traverse to Striped Mountain didn't look too bad from where I sat. I thought about doing it but figured that if Loren was waiting at the pass I should get back.

Summit views

Class 2 ridgeline to Striped Mountain

Descending to the South Fork of the Kings from Taboose Pass

I was back at my pack within an hour and at Taboose Pass 30 minutes from there. Loren was there writing a message in the snow to me that he was planning to head back to the car. It was good that I showed up when I did. We continued on together down the old Taboose Pass trail as we had a month earlier toward the south fork of the Kings River. My dad and I had set a pre-arranged meeting point just north of where the JMT crosses the Kings, and he was sitting there when we arrived at 1:45. We chose a campsite, set up camp, then Loren ran up Mt. Wynne while my dad and I sat around camp. It was tempting to join Loren but my achilles was hurting quite a bit and truthfully I was pretty tired from having ascended about 8,000' already that day. 

When Loren got back we discussed plans for the next day. We had originally planned to get up early and do the Cirque Crest traverse, which would take us from our campsite to Cartridge Pass --> Marion Peak --> State Peak --> Dougherty Peak --> bushwhack back up Muro Blanco Canyon. It would be a challenging 20+ mile day of mostly cross country semi-techinal travel. In the end we backed off those plans on account of my achilles, the weather forecast, and my GPS lacking battery life. Loren guessed that Arrow Peak would not be as trivial distance-wise from our camp as I had guesstimated, and we figured it would be a worthwhile half or 3/4-day objective. 

NE Ridge of Arrow Peak

The next morning we got up around 6:00, said goodbye to my dad and the other couple we camped with then headed north on the JMT while they headed south. We turned off onto the Bench Lake trail after about a mile of uphill hiking. From there the trail turned flat/slightly downhill until we got to Bench Lake itself 1.5 miles later. We surveyed the route up the NE ridge and looked unsuccessfully for a route across the drainage ahead that would prevent us from losing any elevation. We ended up losing a few hundred feet, crossing a creek, then gaining the NE ridge near it's toe. From there it was just up. We didn't deviate much from the ridgeline except near where it turns right; at that point we traversed off the left side of the ridgeline a bit. The most difficult moves along the route were found there, but nothing was harder than class 3 with some exposure. 

Looking back at the lower part of the ridgeline

Upper part of the ridgeline

The upper part of the ridgeline was easy class 3. We summited about 1.5 hours from when we had gained the ridgeline 2,000' earlier. The views from the top were among the best I can think of, and we both agreed that they were better than those we had from Observation Peak a month earlier. We picked out Split/Cardinal/Taboose Pass, the Palisades, the Cirque Crest/Muro Blanco Canyon among others. 

Palisades from the summit of Arrow

Descent to Arrow Pass

After 30 minutes at the top we descended the class 2 southeast slope to Arrow Pass. We found the pass on the opposite shoulder of the peaklet at the base of the southeast slope, as reported by several sources online. We also thought the chute on the near side of the peaklet would work, though it looked a bit harder. The low point on the far side of the peaklet looked like the hardest option. Once at the base of the pass we continued cross country back toward Bench Lake arriving about an hour from the top of the pass. From there we picked up the trail and headed back to camp. 

A bee at Taboose Pass

Since it was still early, Loren went on a run up to Pinchot Pass while I sat at camp. My achilles was really killing me by this point; I wished I was well enough to tag the nearby Mt. Ruskin. The next morning we woke up, packed up camp, then crossed the south fork of the Kings and looked for the old Taboose Pass trail. We somehow never found it, but hiked uphill cross-country in the general direction of the pass. We picked up a faint use trail at some point and that led us to the pass and the base of the class 2 route up Cardinal Mountain. I had hopes of giving it a shot, but by the time we got to the pass I was hobbling pretty badly. I napped at the pass while Loren tagged the summit. After about an hour and a half, when I saw him coming down the lower part of the ridgeline I started hiking back to the car figuring he'd catch me on the way down, which he did after a few miles. 

It took us about 2 hours to get from the pass to the car where we found that my 4runner wouldn't start. The 7-year-old battery had finally given out and at a pretty inconvenient time. Luckily we had cell service, so I called a tow truck service in Lone Pine that charged an arm and a leg to come jump my car. From there we were on our way back to SLO.

Mt. Morrison

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Loren and I finished a 16-hour, 22-mile Wallace/Fiske dayhike out of Lake Sabrina on Saturday night around 8:00 p.m. then headed straight to the Mountain Rambler Brewery in Bishop since it was the only place open in Bishop that was serving real food. We brainstormed easy (< 10 miles) peakbagging options for the next morning and came up with Mt. Laurel, several Onion Valley ideas, and Temple Crag. We settled on the easiest option, Mt. Laurel, as we finished our burgers and drove back to our campsite off of Buttermilk Rd. but changed our minds the next morning to a slightly more challenging and interesting option in the east face of Mt. Morrison. The planned route would be about 4,600' of gain in 3.8 miles (one-way) with no official trail. 

First part of the trail-less route

Looking up at the east face from the lake just below 10,000'

We slept in until about 6:30, drove to Convict Lake and were hiking by 8:30. The first part of the hike took us from the day-use parking lot up a brush-covered slope. The brush turned out not to be nearly as daunting as it looked from below as we were able to follow use trails most of the way to the low point pictured. From there we picked up a 4WD road/old mining trail/creekbed that led us up to 10,000' (2,400' above the trailhead) just below the east face route. There was some uncertainty as to whether we'd be able to find and stay on the third class east face route, not having done much research, and we even debated ascending the class 2 route further to the south which would add considerable distance. The east face turned out not to be technically difficult at all and was easy to follow on account of there being many many cairns. 

From a small lake at the base of the east face we followed an obvious use trail and some cairns up a class 3 ridgeline to the left of the rightmost gully on the east face. We traversed to the right (north) from the ridgeline and entered the gully just above a steep section, following cairns the entire time. Once in the gully, the route was class 2 all the way to the summit. 

We spent about 20 minutes at the top enjoying the views and signing the register that was housed in probably the least protective high sierra summit register case I have ever seen. I'm surprised it survived the winter. 

Summit views

We descended the same way we ascended and made it back to the trailhead around 1:00. Back at the car, Loren discussed our 5-hour hike with a guy who had done the same route in 23 hours.

Descending the east face

Mt. Wallace and Mt. Fiske

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Friday after work Loren and I drove over to the east side and camped along Buttermilk Rd. near Bishop. We planned to head up to Lake Sabrina early the next morning to try for a Fiske/Wallace/Charybdis dayhike. That route would be about 30 miles and 12,000' of elevation gain with lots of off-trail hiking. In the end we only summitted Fiske and Wallace. 

A lake along the trail

We were awake at 4:00 and hiking just after 5:00 from the Lake Sabrina trailhead. The early start brough back memories of the only other time I had hiked out of this trailhead back in 2009. The first 6.5 miles of the route involved some easy trail hiking with only a few thousand feet of elevation gain. Loren moved fast as usual, and I had to hustle to keep up. The trail led us past Blue Lake, Dingleberry Lake, a few others, and eventually up to Hungry Packer Lake. From the Hungry Packer Lake outlet, we headed cross-country and uphill toward Echo Lake. Just before getting to the lake, we'd turn northeast toward Wallace Col. This was as close as we got to Echo Lake.

Wallace Col Route

Mt. Wallace summit block

We reached the base of the col after 3.5 hours and followed this route to the top. It was extremely loose and reminded me a bit of University Pass. We may have been better off ascending the face of Mt. Wallace directly. Nonetheless we made it to the col then followed the class 2 ridgeline to the top of the peak. The scramble from Wallace Col to Mt. Wallace took about 30 minutes. The summit block was fun. While we were at the summit we crunched some numbers and figured we'd need to concede Charybdis. It was already almost 10:00 and Fiske looked pretty far away. Rather than descend from Wallace Col to the basin below (Fiske is the highest peak on the far left here) then up the chute below Fiske's east summit, we decided we'd follow the ridgeline between the two peaks. In retrospect, the former option probably would have been quicker but we just couldn't bear the thought of it after just having hiked up the loose sand pile that is Wallace Col. 

Fiske from Wallace

First part of the traverse

Blue = Loren's route.  Red = my route

Loren and I did the first half of the traverse together but deviated when the route along the crest turned class 4/5. The start of the class 4/5 section is the tower above the notch in the opposite ridgeline shown here. From the notch I was able to descend off the opposite side to an easy but loose class 2 route below the east summit's east face. Our respective routes are shown here in a photo taken from the east summit. I waited at the top of the east summit for Loren for about 45 minutes. Once he arrived we made the easy walk to the higher west summit. It took us 8 hours to get to this point. At the summit we picked out the Palisades, the Black Divide, Mt. Goddard, Mt. Williamson and the Whitney group, the Kaweahs, and many others. We also picked out Echo Col to the southeast and planned out a relatively direct descent route toward it. The col is easy to spot from the west because it is marked by a vertical meeting line of dark rock and light rock. 

We gingerly descended the extremely loose east face of the east summit doing our best not the start a massive rock slide. While stopping at a small tarn for water, I accidentally dropped by camera in the water and it hasn't worked since. Two hours from the summit of Fiske we were at the top of Echo Col (east side shown here). As we descended I recalled the improbable string of cairns that leads the way around the south side of Echo Lake from the base of the col from my 2009 trip, so we followed those to the Echo Lake outlet where we found a large group camping. We didn't interact at all but I overheard them discussing the route up to Haeckel Col. It was a beautiful camping spot. 

Descending from the east summit of Fiske

Descending the east side of Echo Col

We eventually found the trail at the Hungry Packer Lake outlet and followed it 6.5 miles back to Lake Sabrina. The totals for the day were about 22 miles and 7,000' of elevation gain.


 

Mt. Russell and Mt. Carillon

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Danny, John and I drove over to Lone Pine on Friday morning planning to try for walk-in permits to enter to Whitney zone for a Mt. Russell dayhike.  It would be my 9th 14er, John's 3rd, and Danny's 1st.  At 2:00 every day at the Lone Pine ranger station it's possible to claim permits that weren't picked up by the 10:00 a.m. deadline. If there are more people interested in claiming unsued permits than there are permits then a lottery is held. Based on this forum post, our chances looked pretty good even though it was a holiday weekend. 

We got to Lone Pine around 12:00 so we went to the ranger station early to see if we could claim walk-in overnight permits for the next day that we would just use for a dayhike. Sure enough there were 3 overnight permits available. Just as the ranger was entering my information in the computer and starting the print out my permits, another ranger walked in the door and said "Stop issuing permits! A fire just started on Whitney Portal Rd." I pleaded with the ranger, but in the end we left without a permit or even any kind of special priority for the next day. In addition, the 2:00 unclaimed permit lottery was cancelled. We decided to camp at Onion Valley and dayhike Dragon Peak the next day, which is short enough so that we could be back at the ranger station by 2:00 the next day to try our luck in the lottery. 

University Peak from the Golden Trout Lakes Trail

The next morning we were hiking up the Golden Trout Lakes trail by 6:00. The usual approach to Dragon follows the trail to the lower Golden Trout Lakes then cuts cross country into a gully north of the Upper Golden Trout Lakes. After about 1.5 miles of hiking Danny and John fell behind, and I lost sight of them, so I waited. As I waited they somehow hiked around me without my noticing. After about 20 minutes of waiting I figured they either headed back down for some reason or had bypassed me. I hiked back down to where a group was camping and asked whether they had seen my friends. When they said "no", I jogged back up the trail hoping to catch up. I caught Danny, but unfortunately we were unable to catch John before he headed up the wrong gully. Danny and I hiked all the way to the base of the east face of Dragon Peak then hiked over to the Upper Golden Trout Lakes to look for John. We never found him, so we just hiked back to camp. John showed up about an hour later, and we compared notes. It turns out that he had in fact hiked up the left-hand gully to Upper Golden Trout Lakes instead of the right-hand one. By the time Danny and I were in that vicinity, John had already left to scramble up a nearby ridgeline. At around noon we headed back to the ranger station to try and grab unclaimed dayhike permits for the next day. 

When 2:00 rolled around, there were quite a few people gathered. The fire, which had burned a small area across Whitney Portal Rd. near the Lone Pine CG, had been put out. There were more people than unclaimed permits, so we had to draw a number (one number per party). Danny drew a 17 out of a possible 20 :(, and we did not get a permit. We decided at that point to take our chances and do the hike permit-less since we had already invested so much time and gas in the trip. Besides, we felt like we deserved a permit after what had happened the previous day with the timing of the fire. 

Campsite at Whitney Portal

We drove up to Whitney Portals to look for a campsite, and we were able to find one in the lower section of the walk-in/hikers campground. The next morning we were hiking by 4:45 and climbing the E-ledges by 5:30.Sunrise over the Whitney Crest was amazing. We made our way above LBSL by hiking up talus along the left-hand side of the creek that feeds the lake. Our approach would continue to the right across the creek and up a class 2 gully just before we got to UBSL. We had to do quite a bit of bushwhacking to cross the creek and get to the gully. Things would have been easier had we crossed earlier (blue line here). 

Mt. Whitney from near Russell-Carillon Col

Lake Tulainyo from along east ridge of Russell

Once in the gully the next few thousand feet were a slog, but we eventually topped out onto the plateau below the Russell-Carillon Col. No technical moves were required to get to the col. We took a break and I scoped out theroute up Carillon. It looked really easy and it was only a few hundred feet above where we sat. I planned to bag it on the way back since it is on the SPS list. 

Class 3 section

We started up the east ridge of Russell and found the first section quite easy. The first class 3 moves were found at the top of the first peaklet. From that point on, almost all of the terrain was class 3 with varying degrees of exposure, but nothing went class 4. The most exposure was found just before the final ascent to the east summit, but we were able to find mid-class 3 terrain with great holds and not-too-terrible exposure by dropping off the right side of the ridgeline. The traverse from the east summit to the west summit took about 20 minutes and also had some moderately exposed class 3 terrain. John was able to bypass the infamous "step up rock" by descending a bit on the right-hand side of the ridge. There were a couple of rappell slings along the crest of the ridgeline where one of the south face routes met up with the ridge. 

Class 3 section below the east summit.  Mt. Carillon and the col on the end of the ridgeline.

The weather was nice and it was only 10:30 a.m. when we summitted, so we spent quite a bit of time taking photos and eating lunch. Views were great as expected (Kaweahs, Williamson, Barnard/Forrester Pass area, Great Western Divide, JMT). We descended the way we came up at a slightly slower pace. Both John and Danny were feeling the effects of the altitude, the early start, and the lack of breaks (I don't like to take many breaks longer than a minute or two when I hike). Once we got past the most technical section of the descent, I left them and jogged up Carillon. It took me about 15 minutes from the col. The register dated back to 1989, which was surprising considering that no technical moves were required to get to the summit and considering how close it is to Whitney Portal. The views of Lake Tulainyo and the east ridge of Russell were awesome. 

North Face of Whitney

Kaweahs

Barnard

Great Western Divide

Williamson to the north

Carillon summit register

Russell from Carillon

We all arrived back at the col at roughly the same time and headed down together. The scree ski back across the plateau and down the class 2 chute went quickly. Near the base of the chute we decided to traverse left hoping to bypass a lot of the bushwhacking that we found near the creek on the way up. It turned out to be the right choice. We even picked up a series of cairns that led us across the creek and down to LBSL without any bushwhacking at all and with much less annoying talus than on the ascent. Our easier, cairned route stayed closer to the creek than on the ascent. 

We took a long break at LBSL then headed back down the E-ledges. We were at the trailhead by 4:15, about 12 hours after we started.