8/2-8/6/15 LL Valley-North Lake Off Trail Odyssey
Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2015 2:18 pm
Gold at the End of the Rainbow 2015.
Note: this is a long post, so I apologize in advance for the length and the likely profusion of typos and grammatical slip ups. Nowadays folks are saturated with hyperbole. It’s not good enough to be good. A star is commonplace and a superstar is what a star once was. People are math intolerant, so they invent absurd terms such as “110 percent”. I’m not into this BS. I will say that this was an excellent trip and I mean it. Why? Great off trail backpacking (primary focus of trip) and one singular moment of High Sierra fishing—one hour--of what folks such as me dream about but may never get to experience. Is this “my best High Sierra trip ever:? No. Why? Because this wasn’t one I did with my wife (who was my partner on my very best ones). OK, is this my best High Sierra trip w/o my wife or dad (not to forget my peak bagging trips with my dad from the late 60’s to late 80’s)? Dunno. Has some serious competition (Tunechuck 2008 comes to mind for fishing, Mordor I (2001), and Mordor II (2002) exceed it in off trail theatrics. Time will tell, and this will be measured only in my own memory. Day 1 of this trip coincided with my 56th birthday and in this respect this trip resembles the 2014 Lost Lakes-Algers trip and the 2008 Tunechuck trip in that I celebrated a birthday on the trip. Note fishing folks: owing to that one hour I am a bit more vague about location specifics than usual—If you want to read about the fishing, skip to the end, because I’ve had to make the fishing part non-chronologic for good reason. As regular readers know, I don’t worry as much about spot burn and such as most, but… Anyhow I’m sorry, but don’t bother to PM on the specifics unless you are able to provide me with a senior level (ie full professor) geology faculty position at the academic institution(s) of my choice in the SF Bay Area.
Prelude (“Day minus 1”). August 1, 2015. The plan was to go out of Little Lakes Valley, but I couldn’t reserve a wilderness permit for Aug. 2 entry, so I figured to drive up to Mammoth on the 1st with arrival not long after 11am to swap my reservation (entry from Pine Creek for a grueling day 1 up Morgan Creek) for a walkup LLV permit. I left Fresno later than usual because my son Lee (13) wanted to do a pancake breakfast for my birthday, for which I would be absent for. It was a fine breakfast, following up on his awesome kitchen performance on Friday in which he baked a German chocolate cake beyond anything I’ve ever had because he had heard the family legends of my memorable 10th birthday which I celebrated at Monarch Lake (Mineral King) in 1969 after bagging Sawtooth Peak on a Sierra Club trip—an adult trip member happened to have a Sarah Lee German Chocolate cake that he shared with me for my birthday. Yes Lee is a phenomenal young chef, but back to the story…
In spite of the late start, I made Mammoth at about 1130 am, only half hour after the walk up permits for the next day became available. As hoped, I was able to swap my Pine Creek entry for the Little Lakes Valley permit. This was not as easy at is sounds. The entire regular wilderness permit staff was out sick or otherwise absent at the Mammoth RS, so a very nice, well-intentioned newbie was attempting to operate the system with minimal success. As the time ticked away, I imagined folks snagging my spots from the Bishop RS. Fortunately, with a fine team effort the Mammoth folks were able to get the permit done and I had cut the elevation gain in half for day 1. In the meantime, my redoubtable death march buddy, Todd (alumni of many of my favorite trips, most recently the Dana Mdws-Kuna Pass-Lost Lakes-Algers trip of 2014 and Tunechuck 2008), arrived.
After grabbing a quick lunch (breakfast burritos) at Stellar Coffee, we headed to the Sherwin Lake trailhead for a quickie warmup dayhike. As predicted by NOAA, the weather looked threatening. It was already clouding over and booming elsewhere. My first target was this unnamed golden trout lake near the Sherwin Lakes. Although but a quarter mile from the trail, the topography and forestation make this hard to find. Well, it’s also hard to find because..,it is NOT a lake (see photo), but rather a reed-infested swamp with open water accessible only to some sort of fishing amphibian. We then struggled back through the complex topography (multiple glacial moraines, if there are any geo-geeks reading this) to the Sherwins. These lakes were way down in water level, but I saw some rises, but by now the heavens had cut loose. It really dumped. I attempted to fish but my casts returned no results, so I then moved to another Sherwin. Here I need to back up and report an equipment issue that would plague me throughout the trip. The night before I took off I noticed that my prized Asolo 520s had an issue with a partly delaminating sole. I had to take my “2nd string” Vasques that weigh the same but have decidedly less stability on rough ground and deficient friction grip. The latter failed on a rock surface that couldn’t have been more than 5 degrees inclined (not an exaggeration—I know this from years of using Photoshop). The fall wound up completely breaking the foundation of the fishing reel (ie the part that attaches the reel to the rod), ending the little dayhike before I could really sample the fish population of the Sherwins. Did this mean a shopping run to a sporting goods store in Mammoth or Bishop? No, because in order to save time, I had brought a completely separate dayhike “unit” (daypack plus fishing gear) which was Lee’s. Now I need to buy Lee another reel. After walking/jogging down to the cars, we drove to North Lake, where we left Todd’s car, then we drove back to Bishop, had a very nice dinner at El Ranchito, walking there and back in surprisingly heavy rain, then checked into our room at Best Western.
Day 1 Little Lakes Valley to Spire Lake. Sunday 8/2/2015. When checking into the Best Western the evening before I was pleasantly surprised to hear that their free hot breakfast was served from 6 am, which facilitated an early kickoff. The early takeoff also avoided the construction delays on the Rock Creek road. My aging (2001, 137k miles) but still very spry Sentra took us to the Mosquito Flat kickoff point where we easily secured a parking spot. The weather report had looked ominous for days 1 and 2 with 60 percent chance of precip for day 1 and 20 percent for day 2. I had fretted about this because of the high passes we planned to cross. However, it seemed as all of that moisture condensed and dumped on Saturday. We saw the vestiges of that downpour everywhere. The weather didn’t even get close to dumping on us for the entire trip, as it turned out.
We made our way out up Little Lakes Valley with the usual classic views—they never get old. I killed only two mosquitoes on this part of the hike (one of which was accidentally consumed when it flew into my mouth)—I wouldn’t get another kill until late in day 4 in what ranks as the most bug-free trip I’ve ever done this time of year. At the upper end of Little Lakes Valley we left the trail and headed up past Gem Lakes to Dade Lake with a typical sand, rock, and greenery sort of ascent (class 1 with a smidge of class 2). At Dade Lake, the work really began to get to Peppermint Pass. I had gone over this to Spire Lake with my wife, Judy, in 1996 on a “routine overnighter”—maybe not so routine because I pulled a lower body muscle pull that I sustained on the ascent (2 yr recovery time) on which we exited via another off trail route by Finch Lake to Morgan Pass on day 2. This is a standard class 2 talus pass with funky sharp-edged metamorphic talus (this is my 2nd time over this pass and I still don’t know where the class 3 is that is referred to as far back as the 1972 Smatko Climbers Guide—there are innumerable completely class 2 options, including the 3 different variations I’ve done (one in 1996 and two on this trip). I don’t know what it is about this talus. It is not scary loose (Kaweah Pass) or scary steep and loose (Lucy’s Foot Pass, Pants Pass), but there is something tedious and awkward about it. On top of this, I discovered how poor the grip and stability of my Vasques was compared to my Asolos. Ouch. I have more scabs than you can count on my shins that testify to this. In addition, I went into this trip much too lean, as Judy had fretted and warned me about. In spite of attempts to add back weight before the trip, I went in several pounds below my standard base weight instead of my usual several over. This combo made me more wobbly and less stable toward the end of the ascent. In any case, on the way up I surveyed pass no.2 which we’d do on day 2: the shoulder north of Bear Creek Spire—Cox Col es ist nicht! (more later on this other “old school” route). My view confirmed my memories about the details of crossing this 13120+ elev. class 2 high point in 1986 with my dad (backpacking to Lake Italy to climb Gabb and Hilgard). Cresting Peppermint Pass under the breathtaking prow of Bear Creek Spire, we descended more amazingly tedious class 2 talus to Spire Lake, our camp of day 1. This is a pretty bleak place to find a camping spot and I can’t say our campsite was ideal (this is why Judy and I camped at Split Lake below in 1996), but it sufficed, and the views from this lake are hard to beat if you like the most ruggedly alpine High Sierra backdrop. Day 2 8/3/15 “Day of the Three Passes” Spire Lake to White Bear Lake.
OK, the title here is overly dramatic (yes, I too resort to hyperbole, now and then) and inspired by the legendary chapter XXVII title in Three Kingdoms (“Beautiful beard (Guan Yu) rides on a solitary journey and slays six captains at five passes”); the truth is vastly short of the inspiration in every respect.
Waking up to the stunning sunrise on Bear Creek Spire over Spire Lake, we finished breakfast, broke camp and trudged/limped back up Spire Pass. We had both figured out that some of our less-than-expected hiking speed of day 1 was attributed to not eating enough, so we resolved to munch more while hiking. We had heard voices the afternoon/evening before and had initially been puzzled as to why we never saw anyone. We reasoned that we must have heard folks who were doing technical routes on Bear Creek Spire, a hypothesis that appeared stronger based on what we observed on this morning. First we heard and then saw folks at Peppermint Pass but they were already ascending the NE arête of Bear Creek Spire when we reached the pass. We then spotted two more hikers who were trudging up the miserable scree/talus cone below Cox Col (first low point N of Bear Creek Spire). We initially figured these folks were doing some really poor route choices to cross the crest, but these two quickly proved us wrong by moving onto the great N buttress of Bear Creek Spire.
In the meantime, I aimed for highpoint 13120+ north of Bear Creek Spire instead of the so-called Cox Col (12960+) that I understand has a rather unsavory reputation for crummy rock on the E side. I’d always figured I’d crossed here in 1986 because of something in the Voge (1965?) or Smatko (1972) or Roper (1976) Climber’s guide, but I can’t find anything in any book about this route when I reviewed these references during writing this. I presume that (1) I (or my dad) had heard about this route in the 70’s from Loma Prieta Sierra Club folk or (2) (very likely) I followed this route in 1986 by inspecting the topo map because the eastern gradient is much less steep here than anywhere north or south, including “Cox Col”. Now a bit of an aside… For those that know me (including my ancient Climber.org posts on “Corrections to Secor”) you might get the impression that I enjoy bashing RJ. I don’t. RJ isn’t the problem. His is the finest guidebook ever written on the subject, by far. The problem is folks’ slavish following of everything in RJ’s book. In fact many complain that RJ doesn’t give enough detail (see Roper, for contrast). If one goes off trail, be it off trail backpacking or peak bagging, it is imperative to have descent terrain reading skills (not just topo map but finer scale on-spot terrain reading), or class 2 easily becomes class 3 or worse (or class 2 easy becomes class 2 miserable in this case). Don’t ask for the beta, folks, read the ---king terrain. Sorry I had to vent. The 56-year-old curmudgeon is leaking out.
In any case, we didn’t have to lose much elevation (at most 200’) off of Peppermint Pass to bypass the junkpile below Cox Col, then worked up mixed slabs, sand, stable solid granite talus blocks to Pt 13120+. On the easy W side there were some tracks and a cairn, but the most prominent tracks led to the low point (ie Cox Col). Descending the west side, you have to do a bit of side stepping partway down to avoid a big drop off then “follow the green” (to quote Old Ranger—see post viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12225) to the easy slopes above Lake Italy. We paused to snack along Lake Italy and then at Brown Bear Lake, before finishing with the steep class 2 White Bear Pass, with another “follow the green” plus some talus and slabs. In fact, this trip revisited much of the route of their superb “Circle of Gold, Follow the Green” trip of 2014 (see URL above). It was late when we cleared our third pass, so we camped in a nice sandy campsite near White Bear Lake.
Note: this is a long post, so I apologize in advance for the length and the likely profusion of typos and grammatical slip ups. Nowadays folks are saturated with hyperbole. It’s not good enough to be good. A star is commonplace and a superstar is what a star once was. People are math intolerant, so they invent absurd terms such as “110 percent”. I’m not into this BS. I will say that this was an excellent trip and I mean it. Why? Great off trail backpacking (primary focus of trip) and one singular moment of High Sierra fishing—one hour--of what folks such as me dream about but may never get to experience. Is this “my best High Sierra trip ever:? No. Why? Because this wasn’t one I did with my wife (who was my partner on my very best ones). OK, is this my best High Sierra trip w/o my wife or dad (not to forget my peak bagging trips with my dad from the late 60’s to late 80’s)? Dunno. Has some serious competition (Tunechuck 2008 comes to mind for fishing, Mordor I (2001), and Mordor II (2002) exceed it in off trail theatrics. Time will tell, and this will be measured only in my own memory. Day 1 of this trip coincided with my 56th birthday and in this respect this trip resembles the 2014 Lost Lakes-Algers trip and the 2008 Tunechuck trip in that I celebrated a birthday on the trip. Note fishing folks: owing to that one hour I am a bit more vague about location specifics than usual—If you want to read about the fishing, skip to the end, because I’ve had to make the fishing part non-chronologic for good reason. As regular readers know, I don’t worry as much about spot burn and such as most, but… Anyhow I’m sorry, but don’t bother to PM on the specifics unless you are able to provide me with a senior level (ie full professor) geology faculty position at the academic institution(s) of my choice in the SF Bay Area.
Prelude (“Day minus 1”). August 1, 2015. The plan was to go out of Little Lakes Valley, but I couldn’t reserve a wilderness permit for Aug. 2 entry, so I figured to drive up to Mammoth on the 1st with arrival not long after 11am to swap my reservation (entry from Pine Creek for a grueling day 1 up Morgan Creek) for a walkup LLV permit. I left Fresno later than usual because my son Lee (13) wanted to do a pancake breakfast for my birthday, for which I would be absent for. It was a fine breakfast, following up on his awesome kitchen performance on Friday in which he baked a German chocolate cake beyond anything I’ve ever had because he had heard the family legends of my memorable 10th birthday which I celebrated at Monarch Lake (Mineral King) in 1969 after bagging Sawtooth Peak on a Sierra Club trip—an adult trip member happened to have a Sarah Lee German Chocolate cake that he shared with me for my birthday. Yes Lee is a phenomenal young chef, but back to the story…
In spite of the late start, I made Mammoth at about 1130 am, only half hour after the walk up permits for the next day became available. As hoped, I was able to swap my Pine Creek entry for the Little Lakes Valley permit. This was not as easy at is sounds. The entire regular wilderness permit staff was out sick or otherwise absent at the Mammoth RS, so a very nice, well-intentioned newbie was attempting to operate the system with minimal success. As the time ticked away, I imagined folks snagging my spots from the Bishop RS. Fortunately, with a fine team effort the Mammoth folks were able to get the permit done and I had cut the elevation gain in half for day 1. In the meantime, my redoubtable death march buddy, Todd (alumni of many of my favorite trips, most recently the Dana Mdws-Kuna Pass-Lost Lakes-Algers trip of 2014 and Tunechuck 2008), arrived.
After grabbing a quick lunch (breakfast burritos) at Stellar Coffee, we headed to the Sherwin Lake trailhead for a quickie warmup dayhike. As predicted by NOAA, the weather looked threatening. It was already clouding over and booming elsewhere. My first target was this unnamed golden trout lake near the Sherwin Lakes. Although but a quarter mile from the trail, the topography and forestation make this hard to find. Well, it’s also hard to find because..,it is NOT a lake (see photo), but rather a reed-infested swamp with open water accessible only to some sort of fishing amphibian. We then struggled back through the complex topography (multiple glacial moraines, if there are any geo-geeks reading this) to the Sherwins. These lakes were way down in water level, but I saw some rises, but by now the heavens had cut loose. It really dumped. I attempted to fish but my casts returned no results, so I then moved to another Sherwin. Here I need to back up and report an equipment issue that would plague me throughout the trip. The night before I took off I noticed that my prized Asolo 520s had an issue with a partly delaminating sole. I had to take my “2nd string” Vasques that weigh the same but have decidedly less stability on rough ground and deficient friction grip. The latter failed on a rock surface that couldn’t have been more than 5 degrees inclined (not an exaggeration—I know this from years of using Photoshop). The fall wound up completely breaking the foundation of the fishing reel (ie the part that attaches the reel to the rod), ending the little dayhike before I could really sample the fish population of the Sherwins. Did this mean a shopping run to a sporting goods store in Mammoth or Bishop? No, because in order to save time, I had brought a completely separate dayhike “unit” (daypack plus fishing gear) which was Lee’s. Now I need to buy Lee another reel. After walking/jogging down to the cars, we drove to North Lake, where we left Todd’s car, then we drove back to Bishop, had a very nice dinner at El Ranchito, walking there and back in surprisingly heavy rain, then checked into our room at Best Western.
Day 1 Little Lakes Valley to Spire Lake. Sunday 8/2/2015. When checking into the Best Western the evening before I was pleasantly surprised to hear that their free hot breakfast was served from 6 am, which facilitated an early kickoff. The early takeoff also avoided the construction delays on the Rock Creek road. My aging (2001, 137k miles) but still very spry Sentra took us to the Mosquito Flat kickoff point where we easily secured a parking spot. The weather report had looked ominous for days 1 and 2 with 60 percent chance of precip for day 1 and 20 percent for day 2. I had fretted about this because of the high passes we planned to cross. However, it seemed as all of that moisture condensed and dumped on Saturday. We saw the vestiges of that downpour everywhere. The weather didn’t even get close to dumping on us for the entire trip, as it turned out.
We made our way out up Little Lakes Valley with the usual classic views—they never get old. I killed only two mosquitoes on this part of the hike (one of which was accidentally consumed when it flew into my mouth)—I wouldn’t get another kill until late in day 4 in what ranks as the most bug-free trip I’ve ever done this time of year. At the upper end of Little Lakes Valley we left the trail and headed up past Gem Lakes to Dade Lake with a typical sand, rock, and greenery sort of ascent (class 1 with a smidge of class 2). At Dade Lake, the work really began to get to Peppermint Pass. I had gone over this to Spire Lake with my wife, Judy, in 1996 on a “routine overnighter”—maybe not so routine because I pulled a lower body muscle pull that I sustained on the ascent (2 yr recovery time) on which we exited via another off trail route by Finch Lake to Morgan Pass on day 2. This is a standard class 2 talus pass with funky sharp-edged metamorphic talus (this is my 2nd time over this pass and I still don’t know where the class 3 is that is referred to as far back as the 1972 Smatko Climbers Guide—there are innumerable completely class 2 options, including the 3 different variations I’ve done (one in 1996 and two on this trip). I don’t know what it is about this talus. It is not scary loose (Kaweah Pass) or scary steep and loose (Lucy’s Foot Pass, Pants Pass), but there is something tedious and awkward about it. On top of this, I discovered how poor the grip and stability of my Vasques was compared to my Asolos. Ouch. I have more scabs than you can count on my shins that testify to this. In addition, I went into this trip much too lean, as Judy had fretted and warned me about. In spite of attempts to add back weight before the trip, I went in several pounds below my standard base weight instead of my usual several over. This combo made me more wobbly and less stable toward the end of the ascent. In any case, on the way up I surveyed pass no.2 which we’d do on day 2: the shoulder north of Bear Creek Spire—Cox Col es ist nicht! (more later on this other “old school” route). My view confirmed my memories about the details of crossing this 13120+ elev. class 2 high point in 1986 with my dad (backpacking to Lake Italy to climb Gabb and Hilgard). Cresting Peppermint Pass under the breathtaking prow of Bear Creek Spire, we descended more amazingly tedious class 2 talus to Spire Lake, our camp of day 1. This is a pretty bleak place to find a camping spot and I can’t say our campsite was ideal (this is why Judy and I camped at Split Lake below in 1996), but it sufficed, and the views from this lake are hard to beat if you like the most ruggedly alpine High Sierra backdrop. Day 2 8/3/15 “Day of the Three Passes” Spire Lake to White Bear Lake.
OK, the title here is overly dramatic (yes, I too resort to hyperbole, now and then) and inspired by the legendary chapter XXVII title in Three Kingdoms (“Beautiful beard (Guan Yu) rides on a solitary journey and slays six captains at five passes”); the truth is vastly short of the inspiration in every respect.
Waking up to the stunning sunrise on Bear Creek Spire over Spire Lake, we finished breakfast, broke camp and trudged/limped back up Spire Pass. We had both figured out that some of our less-than-expected hiking speed of day 1 was attributed to not eating enough, so we resolved to munch more while hiking. We had heard voices the afternoon/evening before and had initially been puzzled as to why we never saw anyone. We reasoned that we must have heard folks who were doing technical routes on Bear Creek Spire, a hypothesis that appeared stronger based on what we observed on this morning. First we heard and then saw folks at Peppermint Pass but they were already ascending the NE arête of Bear Creek Spire when we reached the pass. We then spotted two more hikers who were trudging up the miserable scree/talus cone below Cox Col (first low point N of Bear Creek Spire). We initially figured these folks were doing some really poor route choices to cross the crest, but these two quickly proved us wrong by moving onto the great N buttress of Bear Creek Spire.
In the meantime, I aimed for highpoint 13120+ north of Bear Creek Spire instead of the so-called Cox Col (12960+) that I understand has a rather unsavory reputation for crummy rock on the E side. I’d always figured I’d crossed here in 1986 because of something in the Voge (1965?) or Smatko (1972) or Roper (1976) Climber’s guide, but I can’t find anything in any book about this route when I reviewed these references during writing this. I presume that (1) I (or my dad) had heard about this route in the 70’s from Loma Prieta Sierra Club folk or (2) (very likely) I followed this route in 1986 by inspecting the topo map because the eastern gradient is much less steep here than anywhere north or south, including “Cox Col”. Now a bit of an aside… For those that know me (including my ancient Climber.org posts on “Corrections to Secor”) you might get the impression that I enjoy bashing RJ. I don’t. RJ isn’t the problem. His is the finest guidebook ever written on the subject, by far. The problem is folks’ slavish following of everything in RJ’s book. In fact many complain that RJ doesn’t give enough detail (see Roper, for contrast). If one goes off trail, be it off trail backpacking or peak bagging, it is imperative to have descent terrain reading skills (not just topo map but finer scale on-spot terrain reading), or class 2 easily becomes class 3 or worse (or class 2 easy becomes class 2 miserable in this case). Don’t ask for the beta, folks, read the ---king terrain. Sorry I had to vent. The 56-year-old curmudgeon is leaking out.
In any case, we didn’t have to lose much elevation (at most 200’) off of Peppermint Pass to bypass the junkpile below Cox Col, then worked up mixed slabs, sand, stable solid granite talus blocks to Pt 13120+. On the easy W side there were some tracks and a cairn, but the most prominent tracks led to the low point (ie Cox Col). Descending the west side, you have to do a bit of side stepping partway down to avoid a big drop off then “follow the green” (to quote Old Ranger—see post viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12225) to the easy slopes above Lake Italy. We paused to snack along Lake Italy and then at Brown Bear Lake, before finishing with the steep class 2 White Bear Pass, with another “follow the green” plus some talus and slabs. In fact, this trip revisited much of the route of their superb “Circle of Gold, Follow the Green” trip of 2014 (see URL above). It was late when we cleared our third pass, so we camped in a nice sandy campsite near White Bear Lake.