Adventure in the Lost Sierras! Trip Report

Much of the specific location information is being purposefully left out. With so much going on in the Yosemite and Tahoe areas and with the surge of social media tourism bogging up our wildlands for ego’s sake, I feel compelled to keep the Northern Sierras wild. If you are interested in actual information, reach out to me and I’ll tell you enough information to feel confident that you’ll find something to climb, but not so much that you lose the adventure of it all. If you know the area, you’ll probably be able to figure some of this out yourself. 

My friend Matt has been talking about scouting out a particular route up an interesting and craggy peak in the Northern Sierra Nevada mountains for the past two years. We knew that to climb here in good conditions required the perfect timing of roads being open for summer and snow still being on the mountain (at least where we needed it to be). With somewhat short notice, it seemed that the only weekend with these particular conditions met was this past one. It also happened to be the same weekend as my daughter’s birthday and I was scheduled to work Friday night. I spoke with my daughter and got her blessing to leave with the promise that I would try to get back early enough to have dinner with her on her birthday (Sunday) and I took a mental health day off at work (climbing is my therapy after all) and we made hasty plans to leave late Friday morning. 

I got off work at 6:30am on Friday and went to bed at 7:30 for 2 sweet hours of sleep before getting up, throwing the last few things into my pack, and setting off. Matt got burritos to eat for the drive up and we enjoyed good conversation and beautiful views along the way. A wrong turn up a weird mountain road and a little rocky track driving and we were at our parking spot as close as was feasible. We started hiking and soon noticed that from our viewpoint, it seemed that the only way to get to our base camp location was to traverse through an entire hillside of Snowbrush? Heather? I don’t know. It’s a bush that looks pretty from far away but was really painful to travel through. Oh yeah, I was wearing shorts and trail runners, choosing to stay cool on the way up (big mistake). I didn’t quite notice how bad my legs were cut up until I got home (photo at the end). Anyway, We ended up spending 50 miserable minutes going nearly a mile through bushes on a steep hillside and with packs on our backs, reminding each other that at least we were out doing what we had been wanting for a while and with amazing views of alpine lakes and a sawtooth ridgeline. 

Once we got past the bushes, we still had a creek to cross that was raging since it was 70 degrees and sunny on top of the snow covered slopes. We rigged up an accessory rope to zipline our heavy packs across the water and jumped over the creek which would have taken us for a ride if we had slipped. A few minutes later we were at our campsite atop a flat-ish granite slab. I set my tent up facing the lake below us for that perfect instagram camping shot (that I forgot to take) and we headed up a little higher to set some tracks to follow in the dark the next day and to scope out the route. The top of the route would not be visible until we were directly under it, but all signs said we could get up somehow. This mountainside is a sort of “choose your own adventure” with a bunch of ways to traverse and climb to the top. Matt had been up one route before but was hoping a different side of the mountain would “go”. We’d find out the next morning if it did. Tired, cut up, and already a little sore from the bushy hike, we ate and went to bed before the sun had set. 

At 3am our alarms went off and we wriggled out of bed. We made coffee, got our stuff set up, and set off at 4. Setting the tracks the night before helped a lot and set us at a good pace to get up to some of the landmarks we had noted for our proposed route. There are two prominent rocky crags with a thin couloir up the middle. We happily and aptly referred to this as “the butt” and going up the shoot in the middle (or, “the crack”) made for some fun jokes along the way. Since my parents are the only ones who read my blog regularly, I will refrain from making too many crass jokes, lest my readership fall from 2 to 0. In the butt, there was a rock wedged in that blocked the way but we couldn’t tell from below if there was a good way to climb up and around the rock, so since it was a steep section with a runout slope of hundreds of feet, we decided that Matt would belay me while I climbed up to see about passing the rock. When I got up to the rock, I found that a small waterfall was pouring off the climber’s left side and into a pool at least a couple feet deep directly under the rock. In fact, where I stopped to look was complete slush and water was pouring down my arms while I assessed if it was passable. There looked like a climbable crack to the right, but with a very steep approach and no way to make a sturdy belay platform or use pickets in the slush, it didn’t seem like a great option. I climbed down and let Matt find a way around the butt.

We climbed up and around, belaying each other through a particularly spicy mixed (rock and snow) section requiring some creative climbing moves and European-style sling protection from Matt since he was leading but I had all the rock protection in my pack. We took a quick breather, exchanged and reset some gear, and headed up above the butt to see if all that work would pay off. When we crested the next ridge, we were met with three perfectly “in” couloirs! The hidden couloir that we had planned looked great from across the small bowl we were at the edge of and to the left looked like a shorter couloir that would put you at the top of another ridge, eventually dumping into the hidden couloir. To the right was a couloir that topped out with what looked like a completely vertical section that forms cornices. The cornice this year was strewn across the floor of the bowl in front of us. The site was a little ominous, showing how dangerous it could have been to be up here if the cornice was hanging off the mountain, but as luck would have it, that danger was gone (sort of). We decided that the left went the wrong way, the right looked like a bigger risk (although fun) and would dump us in a weird place on the top, but the hidden one looked great. It was, after all, our main objective. We decided to shoot the middle.

We swapped leads and crested the couloir which was beautiful, in the shade, and basically in perfect condition. Topping out gave us the amazing view of the top of the mountain ahead, and a traversable snow path leading directly where we wanted to go. I lead the last section, choosing to take the more interesting route directly to the base of the stairs that lead to the top of the cliffy summit; the other option was safer but would mean ending our climbing journey with a walk to the bottom of the stairs (boring way to end an amazing climb). Matt stayed back and got these awesome photos of me. 

The snow was slushy on the top, but sticky underneath making it seem like it shouldn’t be as secure as it felt. I knew Matt probably felt like it looked less stable, but I called to him and told him that the snow below was secure. Just in case, I made sure to move to a place where I could watch him cross the slope which had a runout of probably 1000 feet. It was the perfect mix of spice and ice, getting the heart pumping while feeling secure. What a way to summit a mountain. We climbed the stairs to the top and sat down for some food and to take in the views. 

The phrase of the day was “it goes”, meaning the route is climbable. It had been, for the past 2 years, a question of whether it would go. We gained a lot of knowledge of the area, worked really well as a climbing team, and had a complete blast with a true alpine objective and only the beta (climbing information) that we could get from pictures, maps, and memory. It goes indeed. 

The climb down is usually a slog. You’re tired, grumpy, dehydrated, and only motivated to get back quickly so you can rest. That being said, when you climb in a place that is super steep, you really have to keep your head. We had climbed over 2700 feet in .98 miles (as the crow flies) or an average of a 52% grade. Matt knew the area well and guided us down around a beautiful frozen lake and we made good time, with a little adventure here and there (mostly falling through thin snow or crossing sketchy snow bridges over little streams). The day was an absolute joy. 

We decided to get back that night and make our families happy. We’d accomplished what we set out to do, were tired, and my legs were starting to sting. We found a better way around the lake than going through the bushes, and though it wasn’t easy, or really anything I would try to take my family through, it was much better than getting sliced up and beat up in the bushes. We got back to the car, grabbed some beer and burgers, explored a brewery real quick on a quest for a pint glass, and drove back home to Reno. 

Oh yeah, this is what my legs looked like. 

Note: Photos taken by myself and Matt Dryden.