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.