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