Mt. Wallace and Mt. Fiske

All maps and photos

Google Photos



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.