High Sierra Topix

Bill, Iris, and I went up to Mount Wallace on Saturday. We originally planned to try for Haeckel as well, but I was too slow for that itinerary to work, and we all wanted to avoid navigating down the ridge in the dark. I think they probably wouldn't have done it with the snow on the class 3 ledges anyway. We traveled about 7 miles to Moonlight Lake, dropped our packs, then went another 5 miles (roundtrip) to Mount Wallace. We used ice axe and crampons in the bowl below the tarn which sits between Wallace and Haeckel. I had never hiked with such fast hikers before so I learned a lot about my limits in terms of pace and also mental endurance. We were moving for about 13 hours, which is not my longest day ever, but I felt I pushed hard for the whole 13 hours to keep up with my incredible companions. They were wonderful... waiting for me, encouraging me to keep moving when they saw that I could, giving me constant verbal confirmation, joking and singing along the way, and basically refusing to split up. All in all, I think everyone enjoyed themselves, and I got an education too.

Moonlight Lake:


View of Hungry Packer Lake from our first climb up to the ridge above:


Echo Lake, 11602' still frozen:


View of Haeckel from the bowl below the tarn:


Bill's photo of the way up to Wallace from the tarn:


View of Haeckel and the tarn as we descend Wallace:

Thank you for sharing this TR and photo's, really shows the snow status in the upper parts of the basin. Did you get a peak at Moonlight Falls by any chance? How is the flow?

Does Moonlight Falls flow down out of Moonlight Lake? I'm not sure I saw any falls around there, but maybe we didn't get close enough. There is a beautiful waterfall flowing into Hungry Packer, you can see in the distance in the photo above. It looks small, but we were really far away, it was huge and flowing strong. Of course the pictures never do these things justice. All the water crossings took a lot of care. There were times we had to take our packs off to get over something.

Flows out of Moonlight Lake: https://www.google.com/search?q=moonlig ... DkAQsAQIIw

That's an impressive trip! Thanks for the TR. I was in Sabrina Basin with my daughters over the weekend too. Will post Moonlight Falls pics after I sort out my photos.

Rockyroad,

PM sent.

I attempted Mt. Haeckel in 2009. I hit Haeckel-Wallace col amid 40mph winds. Decided the col was cool, then descended.

Haha Jim, the col was cool. You're just full of goodies.

Very nice!