High Sierra Topix

Nice photos and a report. Just a little note on Banner that is not in Secor, to my knowledge (you might call it a "variation" on the glacier route). You can (probably) bypass the glacier entirely when you climb it from Lake Catherine. You have a picture looking toward the glacier in your report--the non glacier route can be seen there. Now this was a long time ago (1973), but I recall skirting the east shore from Glacier Pass, then getting to the top of the rounded rock spur the borders the north side of the glacier. I recall we did a diagonal ramp to surmount this. Atop the spur you continue to where it abuts the main peak then make an ascending traverse on the scree/talus, staying above the glacier. This is the part I can't really be sure of in the photos. It is possible that there is enough snow stuck on the slope above the glacier that you might have to do some of that traverse across snow (to stay below the base of some cliffs) in the conditions I see in the photo--it's hard to tell unless one could really see that part of the slope close up. Once the west slope of Banner looms above you it is time to turn and trudge directly up the slope. This route is class 2 with a fair amount of loose crud doing the diagonal traverse. I remember my bro and I seeing how big rocks we could trundle down onto the glacier (don't worry nobody was climbing on it that day). All I know is that we didn't come close to actually walking on the glacier that day. It was a fairly late trip, however (Labor Day weekend) and 1973 may have been a dry year.

Your photos bring back memories of just how amazingly beautiful those sapphire gems are back there: Lake Catherine and the Ritter Lakes have to rank among the most gorgeous in the Sierra (for years I used to consider the Ritter Lakes my very favorite among all).

Shawn, Your pictures are beautiful. That is really a beautiful part of the Sierra. I remember a few years ago reading about Anna & Conrad Rittenbacher story. Lake Catherine looks like a jewel. I also really enjoyed your report.

Kahy....Beautiful pictures! Gosh Garnet Lake is really gorgeous.
Looks like you all had a great trip!
Thank you both for posting the pictures

Great photos and report

Shawn:
Good report and photos . I've long considered Lake Catherine for a BP trip, but from the west via the North Fork San Joaquin.

Great pictures, interesting report.

I'd have made the same decision. Discretion really is the better part of valor.

Thanks again for all the nice comments. My internet connection has been really flaky from the house recently, so here I am at work on Friday afternoon looking at HST.

The community here on HST is really terrific.

Kathy - I really enjoyed looking at your nice pictures.

GB - I saw that variation you describe after returning from the trip (can't recall exactly where tho).

I have posted a few pictures from this trip at http://outdoors.webshots.com/album/553569003EXsQSQ , but more will come next week - I'm in the midst of a 10 day stretch with only 2 days at home - both work days.

Yes, Charles and I made it to Ritter, but it wasn't as easy as I had expected. I guess the rest of you were lucky you didn't try it. First we had to wait patiently (or boringly) for 2 hours for the sun to rise high enough to soften up the snow around the middle Ritter lake. Then we had a hard time with the snow and the route up from the last Ritter Lake to the north ridge. About half way up, on what "should have been" steep talus, the west slope had a lot of high angle snow that was steep and still pretty frozen when we got there. We started front-pointing up but it made me too nervous. We took to a steep rock ridge, which seemed almost as bad, with loose rock and some exposed climbing. Definitely not your mother's class 2 route! We finally made it into a talus chute and gained the ridge, but it was a notch too far south and we had to traverse a ridge north to gain the relatively gentle southeast summit slope. Then it was easy to get to the top. I have almost no idea what the correct class 2 route would have been to replace the class 3 part of our ascent.

The weather and the view were beautiful and we got lots of pictures and browsed the summit registers. But I was too worried about the descent to feel the usual peak bagging euphoria. I swore I wouldn't go back the way we ascended. I was wishing we could go down by way of Ediza Lake. But, from the summit, the way down to Ediza didn't seem that great, so I decided I was willing to go down the class 3 North Face route and hope the steep snow at the bottom wasn't frozen. It was 2 pm. I had plenty of printed route descriptions and pictures, but I was confused in interpreting them. When we got down to the entrance to the top of the "west chute" it looked so bad we thought it was the wrong route, and we ended up dropping a long way down a steep talus chute on what was really the wrong side of the wrong ridge before realizing that the last duck we saw probably marked the correct route. At the top of the correct chute, there was a steep drop down a narrow crack hidden beyond the duck, and after that, it improved. I still thought we were in the wrong chute, and I tried to find a way into the next chute to the west, which would have been a disaster. But Charles insisted on following the faint use track down the chute, which was quite correct. Fortunately the snow at the bottom was softer than the bad stuff we had ascended in the morning, and we cautiously cramponed down it to the saddle, and it was easy after that. If we had gone up this way (after the snow softened) it would have been easy to find the right way.

I think we got back to camp about 5:30-6 PM, and left to hike out at about 6:30. It was dark before we got to the main trail at the east end of Thousand Island Lake.

I had lost my headlamp the day before, and Shawn graciously volunteered to lend me his before we parted ways. It shone faithfully the whole way back. Charles's batteries kept wearing out and I had to lend him my emergency coin-cell light to supplement his fading headlamp. When we got to the "shortcut" near the horse camp, I had a waypoint in my GPS but couldn't find it. I led us down the only trail on my GPS map, which turned out to be a horse trail that went through a muddy bog, and we had to backtrack. We finally followed the main trail all the way back to the parking lot at about 1:30 am.

I thought I might drive home, but at 3 am it was all too easy to check into a motel in Bishop for 6 hours of sleep.

Whew!

The hike up Mt. Davis, the day before, was actually more pleasant, if not quite as much of an accomplishment. The view was beautiful, and the route, once we found the right one, was easy.

whew. I got tired reading that! Congrats on the summits!