North Palisade 2021

September 2, 2021

Back in 1991, as part of my “Summit all the California 14Kers Before Turning 30” quest, I was part of a group that spent several days just west of the Palisades Crest, climbing Mt. Sill, Polemonium, North Palisade, and Thunderbolt. When I look back on some of those photos, I wonder what I was thinking…unroped on super-steep snow-filled chutes, 4th class mantle moves with 1500ft below my feet, damn.

Doug Virtue and Jeff Muss

Thirty years later it was time to re-visit that area, mostly because Jenna wanted to summit North Palisade as part of her California County High Points list (it’s the high point for Fresno county). But this time (totally handled by Schmed) we brought a full set of climbing gear. It was also a very dry year, which meant no snow in any of the chutes. So all we had to worry about was crossing talus fields, ascending/descending loose crud, and falling rocks.

Jenna was finishing up her summer at the USDA predator research facility in Logan, Utah so she drove separately to meet us at the Mountain Rambler Brewery for lunch (highly recommended). We then headed up 168 to the South Lake trailhead, packed our gear, and hit the trail. The Bishop Pass trail covers some beautiful country, as it works its way past lakes and across creeks.

In about 5-6 miles we reached Bishop Pass, at a bit over 12,000ft, and camped at a small lake nearby.

The next morning we got up early and climbed Mt. Agassiz, just a short distance east of the lake.

And for reference, here’s a picture of Chris on top of Agassiz back in 1991…

We then returned back to our campsite, packed up, and headed XC to Thunderbolt Pass. We decided to camp right at the pass, which wound up being the right call, though it did mean a 400ft descent to get water.

The next day we packed up our climbing gear (and not enough water) and continued southeast to the start of the “LeConte Route”, which ascends the large chute between the middle and southernmost cliffs at the base of the southwest face of North Palisade. As you might guess from the above description, the route up North Palisade is a bit convoluted, at least if you want to keep the level of difficulty to class 4. Mostly you wind up climbing steep, loose chutes, punctuated by the fun of the catwalk.

The catwalk is a ledge that connects two chutes, and is the key to this “easiest” route.

Jenna on the catwalk (on the way down)

After climbing most of the chute that you reach following the catwalk, you come to a point where it narrows, and you have to bypass two chockstones in order to reach the U Notch (low point on the ridge in the photo below).

We were about to start this challenging portion of the route when it became clear that we had run out of time – it was 12:45pm, and we still had 700ft of vertical to go. So we called it, and started our descent. We got back to water at 7pm, reached our camp at 7:30pm, and had just enough daylight to enjoy dinner AND the bottle of cab that Schmed had schlepped all the way in from the car. That was some good wine.

We spent the night, then did a fast hike out the next morning, reaching the car by 11am. We enjoyed another meal at the Mountain Rambler in Bishop, then Schmed & I drove home while Jenna headed up to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, spent the night at the Barcroft research facility gate, jogged up to the summit of White Mtn (another 14Ker) the next morning, and drove to Nevada City that afternoon. Oh, and she wants to try North Pal again this fall. To be young again…


Sierra High Route Hike 2021 – Canyon Country

August 29, 2021

I’ve been picking off segments of the Sierra High Route for several years now, and decided that the northern-most section (aka “Canyon Country”, which lies between Tuolumne Meadows and Twin Lakes) was this year’s goal. Dave White had done some of the SHR with me in previous years, and it wasn’t hard to convince him to join me for this year’s adventure, which would start July 19th, 2021.

By reversing the route and heading south-bound, we could climb Matterhorn Peak with our friend Schmed, and he’d be able to facilitate a shuttle, by driving separately and giving us a ride from Bridgeport to the trailhead for Horse Creek near Twin Lakes and Mono Village.

The day started in fine form, with a drive from Nevada City to Bridgeport, some (expensive) beers at the Bridgeport Inn, and then a fast drive to the trailhead in Schmed’s 911. We were fortunate that the smoke from the Tamarack Fire south of Lake Tahoe was blowing north-east, and not impacting us (other than choking on smoke while switching drivers near Minden). But the weather had been threatening, and the start was pretty wet.

But the weather soon cleared, and even with our 2pm start we were able to reach camp near the end of the established trail along Horse Creek.

The next day we continued following Horse Creek up to Horse Creek Pass. There had been some discussion online about veering right earlier to pass below a pinnacle near the headwall, but that seems wrong – we did wind up forking right when the faint use trail headed left up a talus field, but that was past the obvious pinnacle. We dropped packs at the pass and started the relatively easy slog up Matterhorn Peak.

Interesting bit of trivia, The Dharma Bums describes Gary Snyder‘s climb up this same peak, and Gary lives just outside my town of Nevada City.

Ken & Dave at summit of Matterhorn Peak

After that Dave & I parted ways with Schmed, but not before posing for a photo looking south down beautiful Spiller Creek Canyon.

From here it was easy meandering through fields of beautiful wildflowers, until we had to cross talus and ascend cliffs (via narrow benches and loose chutes) to reach Stanton Pass, visible in the above photo between the two obvious summits on the skyline. It felt easier than Roper’s description of class 2-3, but that was because we were climbing up, versus working our way down the cliffs.

Looking north from Stanton Pass

What followed next was a super bone-headed move on my part. I blindly assumed the lake we could see from the pass was our destination (Soldier Lake), and made a rapid bee-line descent for it. When we got there, we found (a) other people, (b) no good campsites, and (c) that we were actually at Return Lake. Thankfully Dave didn’t hate me, and was in favor of continuing our day until we could reach Soldier Lake…and that was totally worth it. After a long day, dropping packs at a beautiful campsite with a perfect spot for swimming is good for the soul.

The next day we headed south-east down to the bottom of Virginia Canyon and up the other side, passing through some interesting forested terrain – not common on the Sierra High Route, which tries hard to stay right at timberline.

Dave and the circle of life

At Shepherd Lake we had a view of our next objective, Sky Pilot Col, which is just to the right of the small peak in the middle of the gap.

What came next was an un-fun climb very loose, steep, and sketchy scree to Sky Pilot Col. For those of you doing this same route, you really, really want to head to the broad saddle located just north of the high point that’s immediately north-east of Sky Pilot Col (left of the small peak in the middle of the photo above). Once you reach that saddle, there’s an obvious use trail which traverses below the high point over to the col. What we did instead was follow rocks towards the right (west) side of the col, which eventually became unstable, steep, and unsafe. Definitely the least fun part of the trip. I imagine Roper never reversed this part of his route, which is why he described the descent on this same slope as “not technically difficult”. I could see it being kind of fun to scree-ski down, but the reverse sucked.

We then made the easy descent past “Secret Lake” down to Cascade Lake.

We found some tents set up right next to the eastern shore (is there such a thing as a Citizen’s Backcountry Fine?). Note that you soon enter into the Harvey Monroe Hall Research Natural Area, at which point camping isn’t allowed – so if you want to camp, do it in the band that’s between 50 and 600ft south of Cascade Lake.

We continued past the “cascade”, over a small ridge, and down to the easternmost of the Conness Lakes.

We almost made another critical mistake by attempting to continue due south up some class 3-ish cliffs just past that lake. Luckily we saw two hikers heading down the ridge just west of the lake, which provided a much easier way to gain the east ridge of Mt. Conness. There was some unpleasant up-and-down while traversing east to get to the flat pass & ridge above Saddlebag Lake, but after that it was an easy walk south down slopes to Maul Lake.

Descending to Maul Lake
Nice spot for lunch

Continuing south past Spuller Lake, we encountered the area Roper describes as “a white, slabby section with a few class 2-3 problems”. This wound up taking longer than expected, as we were contouring while repeatedly down-climbing into a slot, then up-climbing the next ridge. We met a father-son duo who were finishing up their through-hike of the SHR, which sounds like an epic adventure.

Soon we arrived at Mine Shaft Pass, which left us with only a short section of easy XC to get to the northern end of the Great Sierra Mine, with its various shafts and crumbling cabins.

Soon after that we were descending to the northern-most Gaylor Lake, via an established trail. I was surprised at the number of people we started running into on the trail, until I double-checked the map and saw that this lake was just a short hike from the eastern entrance of Yosemite Nat’l Park.

The trip was almost over, though we did get a bit more XC from the lakes seen above down to the lowest of the Gaylor Lakes.

From here it was trail all the way to the Tuolumne Meadows market, and our 4pm YART bus trip down to Lee Vining. We got one final swim in the Dana Fork before returning to civilization.

At the market we met a number of PCT thru-hikers who were waiting to take the bus, due to trail closures caused by the Tamarack Fire. One guy decided to try his hand at hitch-hiking, and the rest of the group provided lots of useful input (“Take off your sunglasses! Look them in the eye! Dance!”).

We had a great dinner at the Whoa Nellie Deli, then spent the night at the El Mono Motel, caught the Eastern Sierra Transit bus back north to Bridgeport the next morning, and drove home.

A few lessons from this trip…

  1. Sometimes a bust-out should be coordinated. Both Schmed & I packed in beers for our first night, which made the next morning a bit harder than it would have been otherwise.
  2. Don’t trust anyone’s way-points. I had downloaded part of the SHR track, which felt a bit like cheating. And that almost bit us in the butt, when we almost tried to scale some cliffs just past the Conness Lakes to reach an incorrectly-placed pin.
  3. It’s more of an adventure to reverse the SHR, since Roper’s descriptions wind up being pretty terse for south-bound. But the real point is that the difficulty assigned to terrain is highly dependent on whether you’re heading up or down.
  4. You get hurt after you finish the hard stuff. Dave ripped off a toenail after we reached the real trail by the lower Gaylor Lake, when he hit a rock while walking around barefoot.
  5. Driving a bit further to make the shuttle easier is worth it. We should have dropped a car in Lee Vining (versus Bridgeport), as we could have skipped the last night’s hotel and driven home after dinner.

Documentary Night

March 21, 2020

My wife has belonged to several book clubs, sometimes more than one at once. And every month I would watch the drama unfold, about how the book sucks, or she won’t be done reading it by the next meeting, or it’s her turn to pick a book but she’s not sure what to recommend, or the next meeting is at so-and-so’s place which is hard to get to, or she’s hosting the meeting and needs to come up with tasty appetizers.

It all seemed very exhausting and not much fun. Over dinner one night (OK, it was June 3rd, 2014) with three friends, we decided that a guy-appropriate alternative was to watch a documentary every month – no prep time, and since we all lived in different cities, it would be a virtual event (no food prep, no pre-event cleaning, nothing but net).

Since that fateful dinner party we’ve watched 57 documentaries, plus 2 stinkers we aborted – more on that later. It’s been a great way to regularly stay in touch, and the group has grown steadily over the years to 27 members. In case it’s useful to others, below are some details about how it works.

The Movie List

It’s all on this Google Doc. The first three columns are the event date, who picked or is picking the movie, and the movie title with a link to a review, typically on Rotten Tomatoes. Column D had scores from the one time (back in 2017) we decided to review past movies and pick everyone’s top 5.

Column F has a list of contenders, which is useful when it comes time to pick the next movie. Column H was used for to remove movies from the list of contenders, but as the group has expanded, we’re not so worried about ensuring nobody has seen it, as that’s rarely the case. Instead, when the movie email goes out, if too many people respond with “seen it, skipping” then we’ll reconsider the pick.

When someone new joins the group, I’ll ask them if they want to pick movies. If they say yes, I add them into the rotation (column B), usually two months out, so they have a chance to watch some movies and get a better sense of what might work for the group.

Movie Selection

We have a general convention that the movie has to be available via either Netflix or Amazon (not necessarily Prime, but that’s better). We’ve made a few exceptions, for example if it’s free on PBS then that’s fine.

Total length should be less than 2 hours. From what I’ve seen, shorter usually is better, as documentaries that are significantly longer than say 100 minutes feel like they could be shorter with better editing.

After a run of depressing documentaries, it’s a good idea to pick something a bit more light-hearted. There are plenty of significant, serious and urgent issues in the world. But not every documentary needs to be the down-bound train.

Managing Members

We use Google Groups, and directly invite people. The invite message looks like:

Hi xx,

Welcome to the group!

We watch movies on the second Thursday of each month.

Beer call is at 6:15pm (Pacific) via Zoom (<zoom link>). You should have this app downloaded & working in advance, of course.

The movie starts promptly at 6:30pm (Pacific). Don’t forget to mute your mic while the movie is playing.

We usually hang out for 15-20 minutes after the movie discussing it (longer if it pisses Jono off, like after “Inequality for All”).

If you’d like to get added to the movie picking rotation, let me know!

— Ken

PS – See <link to editable Google Doc list of movies> for a list of documentaries we’ve seen, contenders for future months, and movies that have been black-balled.

This also will have your name & date for when it’s your turn to pick the movie, if you want in on that action.

Video Conferencing

Initially we used Google Hangouts, but even highly trained MIT engineers had trouble figuring it out. I’ve heard it’s gotten better. We also tried Skype, but that failed when we got to more than 5 or so people. In the end, Zoom has been a win. I’ve got a paid subscription that I use, so we don’t have any weird time limits on the video chats.

Scheduling

When we first started, we’d try to pick a night that worked for everyone. This became an administrative nightmare, as someone would have a conflict, and we’d be proposing alternative dates, and waiting for responses. At the end of 2017 it became so painful I stopped trying, and we missed a few months.

Eventually we decided to make it the second Thursday of every month, come rain or shine, regardless of who could or couldn’t make it. This has worked well, though our Valentine’s Day meeting was controversial.

I usually send an email reminder to the person picking the movie on the Sunday before the meeting date, and then send out a general email (via the Google Groups mailing list) to everyone on Tuesday. This looks something like:

Hi everyone,

Drinks at 6:15pm Pacific, movie starts promptly at 6:30pm.
The movie (recommended by xxx) is “Little Dieter Needs to Fly”.
It’s 74 minutes long, and available on Amazon.
See you soon,
— Ken
PS – The Zoom meeting link, as always, will be <zoom link>

The Ripcord

Twice we’ve watched documentaries that were just not doing it for the group. Via Zoom chat, it’s pretty easy to express opinions during the movie, and if the majority of attendees aren’t feeling it, we’ll call an audible and switch to something else. So I usually have a movie in mind that I’m pretty sure will work as a fall-back.

Summary

I’m sure I’m forgetting important details, but the above should be enough to help you start your own group, if the spirit so moves you. Enjoy!

 


Recovering from a VMWare Fusion Friendly Fire Incident

September 1, 2017

Yesterday I’d just completed a painful migration from an old Macbook Air to my new Macbook Pro. I went old-school manual due to the amount of cruft Migration Assistant had loaded the last time I used it; I guess after 10 years it was time to start fresh.

For one of my final tests, I launched VMWare Fusion (version 8.5.1) on my new Mac. It prompted me to enter my password, so it could “adjust some settings”. Which I did. Big mistake.

After about an hour of a spinning beachball, I force-rebooted the Mac. When I logged in, I got a dialog box saying my Library folder had to be repaired, with a Cancel and a Repair button. Clicking either of these immediately showed the same dialog again.

Based on this thread, it looks like there’s a really nasty bug in Fusion, where on Mac OS X 10.12.5 it somehow (by following a symlink?) changes the owner of everything on your Mac to root. That includes your user’s home directory. which makes the Mac unusable. I know the thread implies this is a very unlikely situation which also required a corrupted disk or some other problem, but I think that’s a bunch of hooey.

I wasn’t about to start over, so after several false starts, I wound up following this procedure:

  1. Boot the Mac in “single user mode“, by holding down cmd-S during startup. I had to select an account to use, but I didn’t enter a password – seems odd.
  2. This boots to a terminal UI, and after a few minutes the various startup messages ended. The fun part is that it’s using full resolution for the display. We’re talking 3 point text on my Macbook Pro. I’ve never felt so old, as I pretty much had to take off my glasses and press my nose against the screen to read anything.
  3. The terminal displays some helpful hints about what commands to run next.
    1. The first one is /sbin/fsck -fy, which checks your disk for corruption issues. That command was fine, and completed without issues.
    2. The second one is /sbin/mount -uw /. Unfortunately on Mac OS Sierra you have to provide a filesystem type parameter (-t fstype). I tried -t hfs, but that no longer works. After a fair amount of searching I found that Sierra uses the Apple File System, which I guessed was type “apfs”. Running /sbin/mount -t apfs -uw / worked, and my disk was now mounted.
  4. At this point I could list my home directory files via ls -l /Users/kenkrugler/, and I saw that they all had their owner/group set to root:wheel, which was wrong.
  5. I tried to fix them up via chown -R kenkrugler:staff /Users/kenkrugler, but this failed with an error about “kenkrugler” not being a valid user.
  6. This question on Super User explained that Mac OS X uses Directory Service, not the /etc/passwd file for keeping track of users. But when you’re booted in single user mode the Directory Service isn’t running. Luckily I found a folder that hadn’t been converted, which showed me the user as “501”, which is the raw id.
  7. Running chown -R 501:staff /Users/kenkrugler/ took a while, and reported a number of issues with files that couldn’t be changed, but in general seemed to work.
  8. Running exit returned me to a regular boot of my user, which worked.

So now I’m back in business, after only a few hours of pain and suffering.

 


Cindy’s iPhone Starter Kit

February 5, 2016

It’s Cindy’s birthday, and she’s all grown up now with her very own iPhone.

After consulting with my own personal Apple Genius, I’ve come up with a list of apps that Cindy should purchase using the iTunes gift card we got her for her birthday. I’ve broken these down into a few different areas…

Word Games

Health & Fitness

Hipster Stuff

Useful Apps

  • Yelp – find good stuff nearby
  • Google Maps – sometimes better than built-in map app
  • Todoist – To-Do List/Task Manager

Happy iPhoning, Cindy!

 


Kaweah Basin Hike 2015

July 20, 2015

Every 5 to 10 years I decide that it’s a good idea to head up Shepherd Pass again. The first trip was back in 1978, when the Sierra South trail book’s description of it as “one of the most challenging passes in the Sierras” caught my eye. Back in those days there wasn’t much of a trail near the top, so three of us kicked steps in the snow-covered headwall. The second time involved a dead horse in the Potholes area (1990), followed by an insane decision to cross the talus-cursed field that is the Williamson Bowl (2000). My last trip over the pass was an out-and-back to East Lake in 2009, so six years later I’d forgotten enough about it to accede to my daughter’s request for a hike that included the pass.

To make things more interesting, we decided to do it as a trans-Sierra trip, crossing through remote Kaweah Basin and meeting up with friends in the Big Arroyo, before exiting via Mineral King.

Since it’s a one-way, issue #1 was how to get there. I originally made plans to use the Eastern Sierra Transit bus from Reno to Independence (or “Indy”, as the locals say). But since we’d be spending time in Sequoia-Kings Canyon Nat’l Parks (SEKI), we had to get our permits in person at one of the four offices along the eastern Sierras. Which doesn’t work very well for the once-a-day bus to Indy. Wouldn’t it be great to have a “Trusted Hiker” program similar to TSA Pre-Check, where you could then get your permit mailed to you directly?

Day 0

My convoluted solution was to rent a car from Hertz in Grass Valley, drive with Jenna to the Mono Basin visitor center & get the permit, then continue to Mammoth Lakes. There we dropped off the car, and caught the south-bound Eastern Sierra Transit bus at 5:20pm, arriving in Indy at 7:30pm. We spent the night at the Mount Williamson Motel, which is a great place for hikers. Our host that night was Dave (Cris, aka “Strider”, was out and about), who made us breakfast in advance so we could heat it up early the next morning before our shuttle ride to the trailhead. Thanks Dave!

And as it turned out, not leaving a day earlier was a good call…there had been torrential rains, hail, sleet, and flash floods today in the mountains. But it was rapidly clearing for our start the following day.

Day 1

Speaking of the shuttle, we used Paul Fretheim of East Side Sierra Shuttle to get to the Shepherd Pass trailhead. He showed up promptly at 6am as promised, and was a wealth of information about the area.

Shepherd Pass Trailhead

The above photo is from the hiker’s trailhead, which is a bit upstream from the packer’s trailhead (note that you can click on any photo to see a larger version).

We actually got started at 6:45am, with the traditional four crossings of Symmes Creek, followed by a 2300ft climb up to 9100ft atop a ridge that separates the Symmes Creek and Shepherd Creek drainages.

Jenna on Symmes Creek drainage ridge

From there (4 miles out) came the soul-sucking 500ft descent to where you cross a (typically) year-around stream, followed by the ascent to Anvil Camp (8.7 miles). But before you can relax in the trees, you have to cross the dreaded “washout of 2013”, as several people had warned. Which wound up being much ado about very little.

Shepherd Pass Trail "washout"

You walk down one side of the gully, head about 40 feet to your left (downhill), and then scramble up the other side.

It’s another 2 miles through the Potholes and up the headwall until you reach Shepherds Pass at 10.7 miles and 12,050ft. Which is about 2.7 miles more than Secor has in his “The High Sierra” book. Thanks for low-balling it, RJ.

Shepherd Pass

As you can see, afternoon weather was blowing in. We then had the long, gradual 3.4 mile descent to our junction with the JMT/PCT.

Jenna at PCT junction

Turning left (south), we hit the junction with our side trail to the Tyndall Creek ranger station in a few hundred yards; note that current topo maps incorrectly show the junction being to the north. This side trail used to be called the Tyndall Creek trail, or the “John Dean cutoff”, depending on what you were reading. It’s actually an unmaintained stock trail that connects with the Kern River canyon, of which the last 0.6 miles to the JMT/PCT is now a real trail that leads to the ranger station.

We ran into Ranger Chris at the cabin, who gave us some great beta on how to stay on the trail – and this was her day off! Thanks Chris! It actually wasn’t that hard to avoid losing the trail, as Jenna was a guided missile that I followed all the way down to the junction with the Lake South America trail after 3 miles. The last bit was a steep drop on a pretty rough trail, which I wouldn’t be all that excited about coming up. And getting rained on for 2 hours wasn’t great, but it was more of a sleety drizzle so I couldn’t complain too much. Here’s Jenna in front of a wrangler cabin – no, that’s not the ranger cabin 🙂

Jenna at cabin on John Dean cutoff

Turning left (south) once again, we continued descending all the way to 8000ft at Junction Meadow. 24 years ago my wife & I had entertained ourselves here by pulling the proboscises off mosquitoes that blanketed the netting on our tent. We’d heard from several people that the bugs were bad this year, so I wasn’t very excited about camping in that same area, but it seems like the southern Sierras were relatively free of the curse that was making northerners so unhappy. Jenna was excited to stop after 21+ miles and 8200 ft of gain.

Jenna at Junction Meadow

Day 2

We got a slightly later start, so our tent and gear had a chance to dry some before we packed up. The first bit of the Colby Pass Trail involved finding our way across several branches of the Kern River, which took longer than expected. After that we had a 3 mi ascent on an often overgrown trail to Rockslide lake – glad we didn’t try to push on to this spot the previous night, as there aren’t any campsites in the area.

At 3.75 miles we encountered the trail maintenance camp that Ranger Chris had mentioned as a good starting point for the cross-country leg of our trip. We quickly found a way over Kaweah River, then slowly worked our way south up the shoulder of the ridge that separates Kaweah River from Picket Creek. After a few false ridges we finally arrived above “Picket Guard Lake”, which is a beautiful gem that I’d love to camp at one day.

Picket Guard Lake

We then crossed Picket Creek and headed west up the canyon for about a 1/2 mile before angling south over the low point in the ridge that divided us from Kaweah Basin. Upon descending, we encountered unpleasant talus alongside the creek that heads up into the basin; in hindsight we should have crossed, found a way up out of the small gorge it flowed down, and continue on the (much easier) slopes on the other side.

Instead we wove our way upstream along the creek until the talus-choked gorge ended, after which we continued in a generally west direction towards Table Mountain.

Table Mountain

We kept a close eye on weather that continued to threaten us from the west, but in the end we remained dry.

Weather over Pyra-Queen Col

We made camp by the three large lakes at the head of Kaweah Basin at about 3pm, after 8 miles and 3800 ft of gain.

Unfortunately atmospheric conditions then played a cruel trick on us. I’d been attempting to contact my friend Randy via walkie-talkie on the hour, as we’d agreed upon in advance. He was planning to hike in from Mineral King (in the west) over the previous two days, then come from the Big Arroyo over Pyra-Queen Col and meet us this evening, and at 4pm I heard him say “I’m stopping at the <garbled> lake.” Since Pyra-Queen Col (at 12,800ft) is the low point on the ridge between us and the Big Arroyo, I assumed he must be at the col or in the Kaweah Basin, as you need to have good line-of-sight for the radios to work.

So I spent the next several hours climbing up various high points in the basin, trying to re-establish contact…to no avail. We checked all of the lakes again, just to make sure he wasn’t camped over a small rise (that would have been embarrassing). Still nothing. In the end we decided he’d gotten to the top of the col and then turned around, even though that really didn’t make any sense.

Day 3

We knew this would be a challenging day, so we got started by 7:30am. Looking north, the red “bump” on the ridge was obvious – thanks to others for having posted such great route descriptions, especially Mark Scheeff’s Kaweah basin trip report from 2005.

Pyra-Queen col looking good

The one significant navigation error I made during the trip was near the top of the valley leading towards the col in the photo above…I took us too far to the right, so we had to do a somewhat painful traverse over talus to get to the smaller ramp that runs left-right up to the actual col.

Once we reached the top of the col, the negative impact of bad weather during previous days became clear – we had icy packed snow in the chute down from the col, which prevented us from following the right wall. Instead I had to carefully talk my daughter through several crossings of a steep snow chute that ran down the middle of the descent path, once we got past this first stretch (that was the “easy part”).

Prya-Queen col from the top

I think Jenna nailed it when she said “I never thought I’d be so happy to get onto talus”, once we were out of the chute. And then we suddenly heard from Randy on the walkie-talkie; he had spent the night at Lake 11682, and was working his way up the slope to greet us. He’s the very small black dot in the picture below, about even with the bottom of the right snow field and just right of the center of the picture.

Randy on slope waiting for us

With Randy guiding us down the easiest path, we were soon at the lake and getting ready to enjoy lunch.

Lake 11682 Panorama

From here we descended into the Nine Lakes Basin, then headed towards Kaweah Gap, where we picked up the High Sierra Trail and headed left (east) towards the junction with the Big Arroyo trail.

Nine Lakes Basin

While cruising down this trail, we got a walkie-talkie call from Chris “Schmed” Schneider, who was on the Black Rock Pass trail near Little Five Lakes, looking towards us as we descended from Nine Lakes basin.

9 Lakes from Five Lakes

And that was really good news, as our original plan was to meet him and Mike “Foo’ball” Bromberg at their camp near a high lake just below Red Kaweah.

Schmed and Football at cirque

Which would mean we’d have a steep uphill XC slog to get there, and a really long day tomorrow exiting via Mineral King.

Instead we headed toward Schmed & Foo’ball on the Black Rock Pass trail, passing one of several beautiful lakes before arriving at their campsite on the shore of the middle lake.

Little Five Lakes #2

It was great to be able to relax with all of our friends, while watching the sun set on Mt. Kaweah.

Ken & Jenna at 5 Lakes    Sunset on Kaweah
Day 4

In the morning we had a beautiful sunrise…

Sunrise at 5 lakes

After which we headed up Black Rock Pass trail at 8:45am. Along the way we had some excellent views of the Little Five Lakes basin.

DSC02465

As well as a nice panoramic of the Kaweahs and the lakes.

Kaweahs from Black Rock

Once over the pass, we dropped down the many switchbacks until we headed cross-country towards the cascade leaving Spring Lake (in the center here, with the XC route leading up and to the right towards Glacier Pass)

Descending from Black Rock Pass

Below Glacier Pass is a lovely bowl, with a good use trail all the way to the pass. Here’s a shot looking back towards Black Rock Pass from near that bowl.

Below Glacier Pass

Glacier Pass itself was anticlimactic; in low snow years, there’s no cornice, so you can follow what looks like an old trail (we saw a few iron bars hammered in to hold rocks) all the way to the top, with no class 3 to be seen. The other side was actually harder, in that the use trail turns into a dozen branches across a sandy slope leading towards a small ridge, after which the Sawtooth Pass trail is pretty much a bunch of use trails following all possible paths up the slope. My only advice here is to try to get the left of the slope as you head down, so that you can eventually do some scree skiing down to lower Monarch Lake.

At this point we finally started meeting some other people, who were day-hiking in from Mineral King. We continued the endless switchback descent to the trailhead, passing one sign with additional commentary…

Sawtooth Pass sign

I’m guessing they were referring to all of the Star Thistle that you had to avoid on your way down to the parking lot.

Sawtooth Pass trailhead

From here we caught a ride with Randy to Bakersfield, with a stop for Mexican food, followed by a welcome shower at the Marriott.

Day 5

We caught the 7:15am San Joaquin train, arriving in Sacramento a bit before 1pm (25 minutes late).

Jenna on train

My brother-in-law picked us up curbside, and gave us a ride back to Nevada City. Thanks Paul!

Net-Net

It was a bit of a miracle that it all worked out, given the weather and complicated meetings in the backcountry.

Ultimately it was a wonderful experience with my daughter and friends, and I finally got to experience the splendid isolation of the Kaweah Basin.

And being in better shape, with lighter packs, turned Shepherd Pass from a painful grunt into a generally pleasant stroll. Heck, I’d go back there later this year…

— Ken

PS – in case you’re interested, I uploaded my GPS data to Strava, though sadly my Garmin 401 GPS missed the first 5.6 miles and +2800/-500 of elevation. But it gives you a pretty good idea of the route, and elevation profile.

Kaweah Hike profile

PPS – once the Vulgarian Ramblers site is fixed up to handle long paths, I’ll post a link to the complete route, along with an elevation profile.


Sufferfest at the Banff Mountain Film Festival

April 6, 2014

Every year we travel to Downieville to watch the Banff Mountain Film Festival movies as part of their annual tour. Downieville might be their smallest stop in the world, with a theater that seats about 200 good friends. It’s an hour drive on windy roads from where I live in Nevada City, but once we’re there it’s always a fun party, including the annual intermission frisbee-fest.

This year my favorite film was The Sufferfest, featuring Alex Honnold and Cedar Wright. You might remember Alex from all of movies and articles about the crazy free solo climbs he’s done, but Sufferfest is a different kind of adventure – he and Cedar climb all of the California 14ers, biking between the peaks.

What made it extra cool was that Schmed & I climbed these same peaks 20+ years ago, as part of a goal to summit them by the time we turned 30. And we also biked part of the way up White Mountain on our way to Barcroft right before Schmed’s knee surgery.

During the film they showed a shot of the register box on the top of Polemonium Peak, which I’d hauled up and installed in 1991. The register has a sad back-story. In 1988 Robin Ingraham was climbing with his friend Mark Hoffman at Devil’s Crag #8. A talus chute slid during their descent, and Mark went over a cliff. He was still alive, so Robin made an epic hike to get help (from back country ranger Randy Morgensen, see The Last Season) , but Mark didn’t survive the night. As a tribute to Mark, Robin started making summit registers, and I wound up getting a box from him for Polemonium.

Here’s me installing it back in 1991…

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And proof that it’s still there, from The Sufferfest movie…

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Good to see it’s still in place, as many of these registered have been vandalized, removed by rangers, or stolen over the years. There’s an article written by Robin Ingraham in 2008 about the history of registers in the Sierra Nevada, for those interested. What’s interesting to me is that Robin is strongly opposed to any mention of registers online, as he feels this gives would-be thieves more information about what to steal, and how. My views on this have evolved into treating registers more like prayer flags, which are left in place to fade as the years pass – I think historical records should be copied, but the originals left on the tops of peaks. If they get stolen, or water-damaged, or struck by lightening…that’s part of their story too, and someone will have to start a new register.


Project Vote Smart Rocks

October 25, 2012

I got a letter recently from Project Vote Smart, thanking me for being one of their original supports (beginning around 1990 or so). They also sent a nice pin.

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But what I really like is being able to go to their web site during this gnarly election process and find real data about candidates, instead of having to sift through the endless commentary that floods the news.

I realize they’re a small voice compared to all of the Super-PACs that are pouring money into races & ballot measures, but they also are one of the few rays of light I can find in the political landscape. If you’re a voter who likes to make their own decisions instead of voting the “party line”, I’d strongly encourage you to support them.

 

 


Tube of Terror post-mortem

October 4, 2012

So in the end, we didn’t win.

We did avoid hitting other vehicles, or crashing into a hay bale, or crashing into somebody (like a race volunteer), unlike a few other vehicles I could mention.

And we looked good…

Turns out my near-death power slide on Nimrod during a test run caused the rear axle frame to bend, leading to toe-out (or toe-in? I can never remember).

So we were scrubbing off wheel rubber the whole way down – which was…disappointing.

But we’re ready for next year’s race, this time with a properly aligned frame…


Can Ken Climb Aconcagua?

September 2, 2012

Schmed & I have decided to attempt Aconcagua this December.

Aconcagua

Which doesn’t leave much time for travel planning, setting up Big Data training in Buenos Aires, finding mule packers to help get gear up to base camp, and (most importantly) implementing a training regime appropriate for getting to almost 23,000ft.

We’re planning to make it a business-climbing-vacation trip, which means the family flies to Buenos Aires in mid-December, and we spend two weeks exploring the city and surrounding areas.