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I headed back to Tuolumne Meadows in August. It was cooler than Utah, and much much cooler than the brutal drive across the desert. which was a welcome relief. I stopped at the Mobil on the way, and Kim said they were leaving that afternoon to head up Lyell. Well, that seemed like a good way to start my Tuolumne vacation, so I ransacked my truck for gear, and headed up the trail with the crew. I wasn't acclimated or in shape for long distance hiking with heavy boots. The stop to jump off of rocks into the Tuolumne River was very welcome. Unfortunately there were still plenty of trail miles and elevation to go. After stuffing ourselves with burritos and s'mores (over a campstove, not nearly the gourmet "schmores" of Maple Canyon), we crashed. The next morning we were up before dawn to head up towards Lyell. Eventually we were tromping up the snowfield on the glacier, and we even strapped on crampons when it got steep. They weren't really necessary, but since we had carried them this far... Finally it was onto the rock for the final 4th class scramble to the summit. The highest point in Yosemite, 13,114 feet. After some high quality gorp, we headed down to glissade the steep sun cupped snowfield. From the col, Kim and I headed up to tag the summit of McClure, while the young ones continued on down. We rejoined them sunning on a rock and headed back to pack up camp and down the trail for some 10 foot pounding miles that made me wish I had brought something other than my hefty boots. The swimming hole was a welcome break that seemed to take forever to get to. That night, I could have gone on a SAR (Search And Rescue) to help carry out an injured hiker, but I could barely walk myself.
Within a few days I was back into the swing of Tuolumne. Lounging about the SAR site, sunsets in the meadows, rock climbing, hiking and scrambling... The next mini adventure was the third pillar of Dana. That went fine as far as the climbing went, but on the way down, the skies opened up with hail, rain, and lightning. At first we just hunkered down, but it didn't seem to be letting up, so we just hiked out in the weather. This was a wise decision, as it continued for hours. That weather even prompted me to put up a big blue tarp. It barely rained after that.
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Another weekend a group of us headed up Mt Conness. We went up the north ridge, which has spectacular scrambling up an arete. Then down the mellow east buttress. There was a lot of exposure peering over the edge down the east face.
In the middle of Caroline's birthday party, the call went out for a SAR on Fairview dome to rescue 2 climbers that were benighted on a ledge. They needed extra people to carry all the gear to the top, so I hiked up a 200 meter rope and spent the rest of the night up on top, then helped break stuff down and carry it all back down again. Luckily it was still, so we didn't get too cold while waiting around. It was pretty magical on the summit with shooting stars and half a moon lighting up the surrounding domes and valleys.
The next trip out of the park was down to the palisade region with Kim where we soloed up the Venusian Blind Arete of Temple crag. I didn't bring enough insulation, so I spent some cold nights and didn't get enough sleep. It did make it easier to get up early though. The climb had lots of exposure and good climbing up a stunning peak that I had been wanting to climb ever since I saw it 2 years ago. To top it off, I bootied a camalot out of a crack. I read through the summit register, and it was amazing how many of the people in there I either knew or had climbed with. The next day we hiked out and scrambled up Laurel Mountain. Lots of interesting old waterworn metamorphic rock on that one, although the mess left by the melting snow at the bottom and the endless talus on the top and descent got a bit tedious. We topped it off with a soak in a hot spring with a couple of people that were just full of it (but entertaining nevertheless).
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Mount Humphreys was next. Dave, Kim, and I headed in Saturday afternoon in his Subaru Legacy. As Dave says, "Subaru does not recommend off road driving in the Legacy". Well, I suppose we were technically on a road, but it was pretty rough and rocky. We did make it to a delightful meadow campsite next to aspen trees with a loudmouth (and cold) brook babbling away. A few hours after getting to camp, we saw that the back right tire was flat. DOH!. So we put on the donut spare, and it was really low. We left it jacked up so the pressure wouldn't lower it any more before we had to leave. After a dinner of tortellini, we sacked out below another great field of stars. Alarm set for 2:30 am. We might have missed the alarm (am/pm issue?), but Kim got up anyway, and we were on the way up the road/trail shortly after 3. It was cold 'til we started moving, but soon we had to shed some layers. We were following Peter Croft's directions which are a bit vague, and at one point we were pretty unsure of the where we were, or the way to go. I hadn't spent as much time with the directions, as both of them had been up most of the way the year before, but they went a different way. I spent a fair amount of time staring at the map, the photos of the guidebook on my little camera screen, and the stars, and decided we were one of 2 places. We pressed on up a little scrambly cliff (Kim quote "this doesn't look too bad"), and eventually found ourselves back on route as the sky began to show some light. We got to the start of the climbing around sunrise. Lots of scrambling and steep talus brought us to the summit of peak 13 something, from there we descended the col to the base of the NE arete of Humphreys (using a sling for one move) and the real climbing. Following the vague directions and Kim's "this doesn't look too bad" we went a 5.7 ish way, and Dave wasn't happy with that, so he returned to the col. We continued on up to the 13,986 foot summit complete with summit triceratops (it lives in the register). The descent was relatively uneventful, but awfully long. Then came the real adventure, the drive out. After just a short stretch it felt like the donut was flat too. Oh no. But it still had a bit of air in it, so we rearranged the weight in the back (mostly me), which helped a lot. Then we eased our way out over the rocks, with too much tooth clenching scraping and other bad sounds from below. Then we took a wrong turn, and by the time we saw a shed (that we definitely didn't pass on the way in), we decided maybe this would work. The map had it going off the edge close to the main road, so we pressed on. A long time later there was a clear shot down to the paved road next to the water pipe, but there was a locked gate. We pressed on down a rather frightening ridge, occasionally hopping out to move rocks if we could or to lighten the load and spot. Finally we hit pavement and made it down to Bishop.
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One day I played Sherpa, or maybe porter, and carried a load the seven miles up to Vogelsang High Sierra camp. I earned my money that day, although the views were nice and it was good excercise.
In the climbing arena I ticked off a few more of the classics, including finally redpointing "blues riff", "memo from Lloyd", and "do or fly". A few of the other climbs included "on the lamb", Cathedral peak, "aqua knobby", "inverted staircase", the dike route on Pywiack dome, Mathes Crest (why didn't I do this one sooner?), "blown away", the Rostrum, and "goldfinger" (on top rope).
Other entertainments included a trip to Mammoth (John Bachar benefit slide show, internet, etc.) On the way out I stopped at the Long Valley hot springs for a long soak with a brilliant night sky full of stars.
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Anthony has posted some pics (Mathes Crest among others)