JD, Liz, and Renee had plans in the mountains for the weekend (10/04,05/2014) and I planned to join them for the fun. Saturday morning early I drove up to Convict Lake to meet up with everyone. I hadn't heard from them in a few days and was running late so I was a little worried they either had changed plans or would start without me, but they were running late themselves and we met up in the parking lot. I joined a row of photographers getting pics across the lake but without a tripod it wasn't a good effort in the early morning. Soon we were hiking up the trail towards the NE gully of Mt Laurel. I had attempted this earlier in the year with Julie but we went the wrong way and made it a little harder and scarier than necessary. This time I hoped to go the correct way. We had some most excellent scrambling up mostly clean and solid - although a little water polished - rock. My Evolv Maximus boots worked excellently and I didn't feel the need to change into climbing shoes like some of the others did. Above the initial steep drainage we cut to the left and passed another party with a rope. Lots more scrambling and then some scree/talus brought us to the summit ridge and shortly the 11,812 ft (3,600M) summit.
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From there we headed back to the south and dropped down to the col between Laurel and Bloody and then up the seemingly endless ridge to Bloody Mtn. We even went to the west summit (in the mistaken belief it was the higher one) before backtracking to the true 12,522ft (3,817m) summit. Then we returned back down down down to the col and did a long rising traverse around Laurel to the N side. Unfortunately some of that was pretty hateful loose scree and talus. I appreciated my trekking poles here. Then we re-joined the normal descent from Laurel and eventually hit the 1000 feet or so of soft scree trail descent. Here I appreciated both the high tops of my boots, mini-gaiters, and my poles. We got back to the vehicles just about dark. Next stop, pizza, then the CoG for showers and sleeping.
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Sunday morning we got up early - 4 am early. We were hiking from N lake by 5 and made decent but not crazy time up to Piute Pass where we took a hard right and headed across the basin to Humphreys. For the ascent we went up the chockstone couloir which wasn't too bad but did feature a few sections with scary loose talus (particularly right above the chockstone where it felt a bit like being in the top half of an hourglass). More slogging brought us to the base of the summit pyramid with nice views down the north couloir. We switched into climbing shoes (except I already had my sticky approach shoes on) and headed up. The snow in the bottom of a gully and cold rock made things harder, but knowing the "right" way to go made things a lot easier than my 2012 ascent. The views from the 13,986 ft (4,263m) summit were most excellent as usual.
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For the descent Liz and Renee did 2 short raps while JD and I did the downclimb (which unusually felt easier than the ascent). Then we switched footwear as necessary and headed down trying to follow scree. Unfortunately a lot of it was either scree on solid rock (scary) or really hard packed (scary) or loose talus (scary). We opted to follow the majority of the footprints diagonaling down to the south instead of returning to the chockstone couloir. This was the right choice and we made pretty good time back to the base of the mountain. From there we just had to head across the basin and back down from Piute Pass (we did cut the corner a bit). As we got down a nearly full moon rose over the mountains to the east. This combined with the golden aspen leaves made things pretty scenic. We got back to the car around 6 pm and headed back to town. All in all a quite successful weekend.
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I've got plenty more pics, but I figured I should put this up and if I get more pics up here that will be even better.