Tom Grundy's Mt Emerson 2019 Page

I went up Mt Emerson twice in 2019, once July 12 - which is most of what is on this page, and once before the first storm on October 26th.

July 12, 2019 Renee had the day free and wanted to train for her upcoming 14ers trip as well as test out some gear, so we headed up Mt Emerson for a bit of trail plus scramblng. We power hiked with a little jogging up to the base. There was still a decent sized snow patch and water was running down the regular start, so we went to the left a little. This was a little more "interesting" climbing. Soon we were back on track. We had to deviate from time to time to avoid the snow and wet areas though. For a while in the middle things seemed unfamiliar to me - probably because the normal way was covered in snow and we deviated a bit. But the scrambling never got more than solid 4th class after the start.

Renee on the spicy opening moves

near where we traversed back onto the route (Renee pic)

Renee in the middle of the SE face

I head up the edge of some slabs (Renee pic)

panorama across the shallow trough

some interesting scrambling around the snow

The final S Ridge to the summit features some excellent knife edge arete scrambling and of course the views from the top are good. It took us about 4 hours to go from the parking lot to the summit. We spent about 30 minutes on top.

sky pilot flowers on the ridge

Renee on the final ridge

Renee on the "knife edge"

I take pics from the summit (Renee pic)

360 degree summit panorama

One advantage of the snow was we got to glissade a bit on the descent. Then we jogged a fair bit once we were back on the trail. The descent and trail took about 2 hours.

glissading down the snow (Renee pic)

Renee jogs down the trail

Oct 26, 2019 This was the last sunny warm day for a while, so I wanted to do something but didn't actually decide until pretty late. I rode the motorcycle up to N Lake. Then rushed up the trail and went as fast as I could on the climb (~1 hr on the trail, ~2 hours on the climb, one hour down, and another hour on the trail back to the motorcycle. I started later than I thought and the days were definitely getting shorter. By then it was getting dark so I rode rather conservatively (scared of deer) back to Bishop.

later in the day view from the summit over Checkered Demon to Mt Humphreys

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