Tom Grundy's 2025 Sierra Challenge Day 4 Mount Mills Page

2025-08-04, The actual Challenge Peak was Mount Abbot which I climbed with Iris in 2020. The alternate we decided to do was Mount Mills which was on the Challenge in 2008. The standard route up once was a snow couloir but now is a loose sandy gully most of the season. We were hoping that nobody would be ahead and above us. We started with the crowd from Mosquito Flats at 6 am but soon people got spread out a bit. We traversed along the edge of Ruby Lake and then followed the stream up from there rather than taking a more direct line up the talus. I don't know if this was easier or quicker. We left the valley near the head of Mills Lake and started uphill. By now there were 6 of us heading to Mills, and based on that Chris, Iris, and I headed off towards the ridge to try to scramble up that rather than join the crowd in the sandy loose chute.

on the shore of Mills Lake with the others ahead
Abbot to the left, Mills to the right

glacial polish on the rocks
Treasure Peak center and left, Dade to the right, Abbot far right

We headed up to the base of the ridge at a likely spot. It looked like if we could make it up the first steep part we could then follow a more broken zone up and left towards where the ridge headed steeply uphill to Mills. At first the scrambling was pretty easy, but soon we hit a few harder parts. I employed a fist jam and wide stemming to get up one vertical part and then slung a chain of slings over a horn and lowered it to help the others - or at least provide something to grab if things went badly. There were a few more harder bits but nothing that hard and we made it up to the ridge crest just at the start of the steep part we were aiming for. The dropoff down on the west side was quite dramatic.

Chris H hiking up the slope
little dots above and behind him on the snow are people heading up Abbot

Iris almost to where we started scrambling

Iris scrambling up - stemming

Chris scrambling up - more offwidth climbing

view down into 4th Recess

people on the distant summit of Mount Abbot

zoomed in on the distant summit of Abbot

Iris and Chris scrambling up

We continued up the ridge mostly on the lower angled east side up to the top. I could see the other 3 approaching the summit ahead of us. At the top we discovered a steep dropoff to a notch. Iris and I managed a stemming downclimb to get past it and another downclimb to get onto the normal route up. Chris went down on the east side which was probably easier but involved a lot more down and then back up.

Iris below where we climbed down

a tiny Chris scrambling down on the right side of the sub-peak
(you can't really see him at this scale just below the long sunlit face on the ridge)

The going was much easier from here to the summit where we joined the others briefly before they started down. We relaxed a bit because we were tired and to give them time to clear the chute before we started sending stuff down it. Then we headed down, sometimes traveling next to each other and other times taking turns to go past a particularly loose section. The final chockstone wasn't too bad, but we had to wait for the stream of sand and gravel to stop before heading down. Then we bombed down the scree to the talus below to clear the fall zone for Chris. We followed the talus and slopes down to Mills Lake where we opted to swim. Iris and I just went in and out, but Chris loaded up his backpack and swam the length of the lake. We dressed and walked to where he was getting out - and discovering that his waterproof pack had a small hole in it - fortunately only soaking his windbreaker and not his hiking clothes which were higher in the pack.

panorama from near the summit of Mount Mills - a tiny Zee is barely visible just left of where Abbot is behind Mills, peaks to the right of Mills are Abbot and Gabb and much lower is Recess Peak

Iris approaching one of the many chockstones on the descent

typical view down the crappy gully

once she got over the shock Iris enjoyed the water

and even did a "little mermaid" hair splash

Chris swimming the length of the lake

We continued down the drainage and Chris headed off to climb Lookout Peak as a bonus, I probably should have joined him in this effort, but I have already climbed it and was feeling lazy. We continued down to Ruby Lake where a fisherman pushed out of the Willows - it was Jeff. We talked to him a bit and then continued around the lake to talk to Jim a bit before heading down the now fairly crowded trail and back to the trailhead.

Jeff fishing in Ruby Lake

We drove down the hill to Bishop and started doing chores - laundry, eating, packing, etc. We were going to drive up to N Lake to sleep, but decided to just sleep at home and drive up in the morning.

Total for the day 1 peak, 1 swim. Garmin said 9.3 mi and 3374 ft of elevation gain and a lot of scrambling.

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