TR: North to South Lake via Keyhole Pass
Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 6:30 pm
Many people have done North to South Lake loop so this report is focused on the Keyhole Pass, for which I was not not able to find much information prior to the trip, and some of what I found was not exactly right.
My daughter and I did a North to South Lake loop July 21-26, 20014. We drove up from LA early Monday morning to Rainbow Pack Outfitters at the South Lake, met up with our pre-arranged shuttle driver (Lindsey with a pickup truck), parked our car at the South Lake TH, and got a ride to the North Lake. We were hiking by 1 pm and were at Muriel Lake by 4:30 pm.
The next day we headed up to the Lost Lakes Basin from Muriel Lake. If you hang to the left the talus is not bad.
Fairly soon we were at the top of the slope and were looking at the lower Lost Lake and the next talus slope beyond it. There is even a clearly visible trail through the scree on the left side of the lake Beyond that, at the top lakes, it's talus, but we did not find it too bad. At this point the the pass came into full view. The issue was which notch to aim for. We had two pieces of information:
The close up picture of the pass http://www.thebackcountry.net/bb/viewtopic.php?t=684" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; in snow and GPS coordinates of the pass from http://donsnotes.com/places/california/ ... basin.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. From the picture we figured it was the right-most notch, but once we got close, the GPS coordinates (using Gaia GPS on an iphone) pointed to the middle notch and so we headed there. Once we got there, there was no keyhole. A perfectly good crossing with a way down, or not, to the other side, but no fabled keyhole The good thing is that the ridge is passable from notch to notch and we quickly found The Keyhole at the rightmost notch, The correct coordinates for the actual Keyhole, according to my Gaia GPS, are 37.21495 and -118.68829.
As Siecor says, there is a short Class 3 section right after you get through the hole. It's not difficult, but slightly dangerous as a fall would be noticeable. We traversed to the right and then climbed down a crack with good holds. A more skilled climber might be able to go straight down.
The rest of the way down was pretty straightforward. We made a mistake of cutting to the left a bit too soon and ended up on steep ledges. A better way would be to go straight down and even a bit to the right (West) all the way down to the lake and then skirting the lake to the left, as the path along the lake is perfectly clear.
This is the view of the Southwest side of the pass Beyond that the way to Darwin Bench is pretty straightforward, but with tedious talus. The last lake, Lake 11540, presented us with a dilemma: take the short way around the steep East side or the long way around the West side. We chose the West side as we were pretty tired by then and were no longer looking for adventures. The West side does get choked off by steep rock right before the outlet, so tired us had to retreat a bit and go higher. The rock was probably passable, but at this point we were not in the mood for climbing anything with a significant drop with, by now heavy, backpacks on our backs.
After this last obstacle, the Darwin Bench is an easy descent down a gentle outlet of Lake 11540.
The rest of the trip was the usual trail trip which we shared with a multitude of JMT people and regular North-to-South-Lake-loopers. The only thing of note is that there is no fish in Wanda lake (frog restoration) and if you come up to Wanda Lake from below, take the first good camping spot that you see. We did and were very fortunate as later many people came by on further only to come back and pitch their tends around our area. Apparently there weren't any good spots further on. It was quite a change to all of a sudden have so many neighbors. But that's JMT.
My daughter and I did a North to South Lake loop July 21-26, 20014. We drove up from LA early Monday morning to Rainbow Pack Outfitters at the South Lake, met up with our pre-arranged shuttle driver (Lindsey with a pickup truck), parked our car at the South Lake TH, and got a ride to the North Lake. We were hiking by 1 pm and were at Muriel Lake by 4:30 pm.
The next day we headed up to the Lost Lakes Basin from Muriel Lake. If you hang to the left the talus is not bad.
Fairly soon we were at the top of the slope and were looking at the lower Lost Lake and the next talus slope beyond it. There is even a clearly visible trail through the scree on the left side of the lake Beyond that, at the top lakes, it's talus, but we did not find it too bad. At this point the the pass came into full view. The issue was which notch to aim for. We had two pieces of information:
The close up picture of the pass http://www.thebackcountry.net/bb/viewtopic.php?t=684" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; in snow and GPS coordinates of the pass from http://donsnotes.com/places/california/ ... basin.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. From the picture we figured it was the right-most notch, but once we got close, the GPS coordinates (using Gaia GPS on an iphone) pointed to the middle notch and so we headed there. Once we got there, there was no keyhole. A perfectly good crossing with a way down, or not, to the other side, but no fabled keyhole The good thing is that the ridge is passable from notch to notch and we quickly found The Keyhole at the rightmost notch, The correct coordinates for the actual Keyhole, according to my Gaia GPS, are 37.21495 and -118.68829.
As Siecor says, there is a short Class 3 section right after you get through the hole. It's not difficult, but slightly dangerous as a fall would be noticeable. We traversed to the right and then climbed down a crack with good holds. A more skilled climber might be able to go straight down.
The rest of the way down was pretty straightforward. We made a mistake of cutting to the left a bit too soon and ended up on steep ledges. A better way would be to go straight down and even a bit to the right (West) all the way down to the lake and then skirting the lake to the left, as the path along the lake is perfectly clear.
This is the view of the Southwest side of the pass Beyond that the way to Darwin Bench is pretty straightforward, but with tedious talus. The last lake, Lake 11540, presented us with a dilemma: take the short way around the steep East side or the long way around the West side. We chose the West side as we were pretty tired by then and were no longer looking for adventures. The West side does get choked off by steep rock right before the outlet, so tired us had to retreat a bit and go higher. The rock was probably passable, but at this point we were not in the mood for climbing anything with a significant drop with, by now heavy, backpacks on our backs.
After this last obstacle, the Darwin Bench is an easy descent down a gentle outlet of Lake 11540.
The rest of the trip was the usual trail trip which we shared with a multitude of JMT people and regular North-to-South-Lake-loopers. The only thing of note is that there is no fish in Wanda lake (frog restoration) and if you come up to Wanda Lake from below, take the first good camping spot that you see. We did and were very fortunate as later many people came by on further only to come back and pitch their tends around our area. Apparently there weren't any good spots further on. It was quite a change to all of a sudden have so many neighbors. But that's JMT.
