High Sierra Topix

I'm planning a trip through from Taboose to Lakes Basin via Cartridge to Dumbell, Amphitheatre and out Upper Basin Pass. However looking at the maps I wondered about a likely looking pass between Upper Dumbell and the Lake above Amphitheatre instead of Cataract. Has anyone explored this possibility?

Are you talking about the likely-looking pass almost immediately to the east of upper Dumbell? No, I have not done it, but some of those north facing contours look challenging to me. Either not passable or class 3?

I have always wondered about that too. The entire east facing wall looks pretty ugly on Google Earth. It appears to have downward sloping broken cliffs at the top and loose crud lower. Approaching the pass from the west also looks tedious - lots of either talus on south shore or cliffy on north shore. Cataract Pass looks pretty bad too with the cornice. I did Cataract without the cornice and it went fine. Depending on where you are going after you get down that pass (if you could) I am not sure it would save much. I would also think if it were a better pass than Cataract someone would have done it.

Here is a photo of the east side. Sorry it is such a poor picture. The same cliffy stuff as seen right of the arrow, continues on the section that you cannot see on the photo. It is not a talus gully all the way up.

Yep that's the one. The picture is pretty persuasive. Depending on snow I may wind up going down Cataract Ck itself.

Previous discussion, also in a high snow year: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16711&p=125974#p125974

View from Upper Basin Crossing, September 2013, a low snow year (click to enlarge): Same trip, different angle: September 2017, a high snow year: