August 5th, 2022 – Another year, another Sierra Challenge. This was my 4th year participating, but really my 2nd year doing the full thing. I hadn’t had the best year preparing for the challenge, but I had done my fair share of long days, so I figured I should be alright.

Also of note was that this was the first year the challenge was transferred from Bob Burd to Sean Casserly. Bob was still helping out, but Sean was taking the lead this year. In the spring, I offered to help Sean out with the challenge, and I ended up being tasked with manning the stat sheet. It was going to be a bit stressful to have to update it every day after getting off the trail, but I figured I’d manage.

The adventure started even before reaching the trailhead for Walker Mountain. The Sierra was getting hit by a strong monsoon this year, and sure enough as I was driving over Sonora Pass, I ran into some of the roughest thunderstorms I have ever encountered. The rain was so thick I could barely see even with my wipers on at full blast, and there was lots of boulders/debris in the road that I had to go into the other lane to avoid. It didn’t help that the eastside of Sonora Pass is a very steep and narrow road. The storms scared away most people, so the normally-popular area was completely devoid of people which gave it an eerie feel.

The rain was still coming down hard, as I came down the other side of the pass and continued over to the trailhead. It was quite a ways down a dirt road that thankfully wasn’t too muddy. There were only a few places to pull off the road at the TH, so I was glad that I got there early.

Day 1 was supposed to be an exciting day: Bob had selected a potentially-unclimbed peak for the first day of the challenge. He had only left hints to the location beforehand so as not to reveal the location, but there were enough clues that it was pretty easy for the experienced Sierra peakbagger to determine. Surely nobody had poached the first-ascent in the intervening months?

The peak was purported to have 5th class climbing and require a rope, but that wasn’t looking very doable given the terrible weather conditions. Regardless, I threw my harness and helmet into my pack and dozed off in the back of the Subie around 8:30pm – part of my plan to get more sleep this challenge.

I awoke at 5am to no rain, but no stars either. The forecast had been right, it wasn’t going to clear up. I reasoned there was no way we were going to be able to climb the challenge peak (Ink Rocks South, now that the secret’s out), and this was confirmed when I saw a text from Sean saying that, in lieu of the weather, any peak over 10,000 feet above Burt Canyon qualified as a challenge peak. I figured I’d climb Walker Mountain instead, a local P1K, so I continued getting ready. Eventually, Mike and Sean came up the road for the 6am start time, planning to climb Walker Mountain as well. The weather and rule change had meant people were starting at various times (or not at all), so it was just Mike, Sean, and I heading out at the usual 6am start time. A rather unceremonious way to kick off the 22nd Sierra Challenge.

It wasn’t really raining, but everything was incredibly wet from the downpour the previous day, and it was still quite foggy, giving the area a gothic feel. While the weather didn’t appear to of the thunderstorm variety, we still had to be very careful: the entire day was going to be on exposed ridgelines with nowhere to hide. We were going to be human lightning rods the whole day.

We made our way up the dirt road past a couple homesteads before it narrowed into a trail. Soon after, we left the trail and headed up the ridge. There was some light bushwhacking which made us absolutely drenched. There was no drying off today; it was going to be a wet one.

Though the weather was objectively bad, we were really enjoying ourselves. It’s all about mindset in the mountains: whatever you let bother you is going to bother you and whatever you don’t, won’t. We decided not to let the thick fog and wetness be a problem, which meant we could revel in what a cool experience it was to be up here in such unique weather. The fog gave everything a grey hue, almost as if our vision was fading to black. I thought it was quite sublime.

To get to Walker Mountan, we first had to pass over an intermediary P300, denoted as “Hanging Valley Ridge HP.” As we neared this summit, we could see a couple figures moving up the slopes. We guessed it was Tom and Chris, and this was confirmed when we met them on the summit. Soon enough, Sean came up from behind and we had a merry little band of five headed over to Walker Mountain.

We went down the west side of Hanging Valley HP on a convenient deer/goat?/sheep? trail, and crossed a small saddle before heading up Walker. For some reason, I had the distinct feeling that we were in either a video game or a scene from Lord of the Rings.

After a short 500-foot climb, we were on top of Walker Mountain. Though normally a pretty drab area, the thick clouds kept things interesting and made for some interesting views, especially out towards Ink Rocks South. I was sure glad we hadn’t tried to follow through with our original plan.

Once we stopped moving, we all started to get pretty cold, so we only stayed on top a short while before heading back. Instead of going back over Hanging Valley HP, we decided to take the namesake hanging valley back down to Burt Canyon then follow the trail out. We weren’t sure if this route would work, but it seemed doable from the topo, so we gave it a shot.

The route was initially an easy stroll down the grassy valley, but we soon reached the headwall that made the hanging valley hanging.

While the loose rock meant we had to be sure we didn’t knock boulders on each other’s heads, the headwall was fine, if a bit steep. This deposited us into another hanging valley, this one far larger than the previous one.

We ambled about in the large valley as we made progress towards the headwall of this valley. There was a thick layer of brush between us and the trail, so I went ahead of the group and tried to fight my way through it. It was a sorry affair since the brush was taller than my head and I wasn’t really walking on the ground, more like floating on a few feet of branches. I was trying to find a clear path, but I couldn’t see more than 2-3 feet in front of me, so I was just aimlessly wandering downhill. Fortunately, the slope was pretty steep, so I was able to use gravity to crash through the brush – it would be hellacious to try to go up this. To make matters worse, the brush was wet from the rain, so I got absolutely soaked to the bone. I finally found a hidden little creek that didn’t have much brush, so just stumbled my way down the creek, not caring how wet I got any more.

Eventually, I broke through and ended up right on the trail. I turned around and watched the others make their way down the slope. Often they were totally consumed by the brush but every 30 seconds or so, I would see one of them pop up then dive back into the brush; sort of like whack-a-mole only there was no whacking. Once everyone made it down, we took the easy trail back to the trailhead, briefly running into Hunter who had started late to avoid the worst of the weather.

It was only 1:30pm when we returned, so I had plenty of time to gameplan for the next day. I had planned to sleep in my car again tonight, but myself and all of my gear was completely saturated with water as if I had just gone swimming, so I decided to get a motel room in Bridgeport. Fortunately, there was a room at the Bridgeport Inn, so I booked it and whiled away the afternoon drying my gear, getting lunch, and updating the spreadsheet. I was in bed by 7pm in preparation for 5am start the next day.

June 8, 2022 – After climbing Kern Peak, I had come down to Lone Pine to recoup for a couple days. Sean and I were planning on climbing something again, but we didn’t have any concrete plans. We had thrown around the idea of doing Junction Peak above Shepherd’s Pass, but neither of us seemed too excited about it.

While looking at maps, I saw that the Irvine, Mallory, LeConte, and Corcoran looked close together and doable in a day. I knew that Irvine and Mallory were often combined from Meysan Lakes, then from Mallory it was easy to get to the base of LeConte. From LeConte, I knew there was a very convoluted but doable ridge traverse that connected it with Corcoran. Reversing the route back to Meysan Lakes seemed quite arduous, so I wondered if we couldn’t descend cross-country down Tuttle Creek and do a car-to-car shuttle. I had actually climbed Mount Corcoran via Tuttle Creek in the 2021 Sierra Challenge, so despite the fact Tuttle Creek is a rugged 8000-foot trailless descent, I thought I remembered enough to make it a viable route.

I was apprehensive for a few reasons, not the least of which was that I couldn’t find any reports of a route like this being done before (though I’d be willing to be it has), but I pieced the route together on CalTopo and sent it off to Sean. He quickly said yes and thus the plans for this traverse were set.

My dad had come to join me for a couple days amidst my road trip, and we spent the night before this climb at the Tuttle Creek TH where Sean would pick me up the next day.

Tuttle Creek is one of my favorite eastside trailheads. It’s position one canyon down from Whitney Portal means it’s rarely visited, and the fact that the trail disappears after a mile means that it’s upper reaches are even more well-guarded. Despite this (or perhaps because of this remoteness), I was quite nervous, maybe more so than usual before a big day in the mountains. There were lots of unknowns on this route, paramount of which was the “waterfall pitch” on Mount LeConte. It’s a short class 4 pitch that is notorious for holding ice or running water late into the season, hence the name. Given that it was barely June, I thought there was a good chance it was going to still have ice on it. I hoped that the low snow year would mitigate that, but I had no way to know. In addition, the traverse from LeConte to Corcoran is supposedly ridiculously confusing and has turned around many experienced climbers, including Bob Burd. We had good directions from Summitpost, but still, getting stuck during that traverse could lead to a long, cold, waterless night at 13,500 feet. The last big unknown was just the physical difficulty of the route. We were planning to spend several hours at or above 13,000 feet while doing over 10k vert on the day, which seemed like quite daunting numbers.

Despite my nervous state, I managed to actually get some sleep until about 5am when my alarm went off. A few minutes later Sean rumbled up the dirt road and we headed off to the Meysan Lakes TH. After a few minutes to get ready, we were heading up the trail at 6am, a bit of a late start for a big day, but we hoped it was good enough. The first hour was spent meandering 3,500 feet up the mundane trail towards Meysan Lakes and talking about basketball, given the Warriors were in currently in the NBA finals. We were both holding out hope we would get down in time to watch the game that night, but we knew it would be a long shot.

At about 11,300 feet, we left the trail for the NE Ridge of Mount Irvine. We filled up on water here, knowing this was our last chance to get water for potentially the next 7-8 hours. We debated filtering it since we were close to the popular Meysan Lakes, but we decided against it – a little bacteria never hurt anyone, we thought.

There was about 1000 feet of scree and talus we had to slog through to reach the NE ridge proper, and during this time, I got way ahead of Sean. I had been keeping an eye on him below me, but all of a sudden he went out of sight. I was worried something happened to him, so once I reached the ridge, I waited for him. I accidentally fell asleep (easy to do when you’re sleep deprived and woozy from the altitude at 12k feet!), but awoke when he met up with me. He was raving about an alternate 4th class route he did and joked that I missed the best part of the day, but I knew we had a long route ahead, so I was content to have taken the easiest path.

From here, we continued up Mount Irvine’s NE ridge. At this point the day began to feel a little more alpine. While easy class 2/3, the ridge was narrow and perched right above the mayhem of the Whitney zone which gave it an interesting character. It was almost like watching a baseball game from a skyscraper that overlooks the stadium.

Eventually we topped out on Mt. Irvine around 11:35am; 5.5 hours into our day and we were only at our first peak. The views, however, were absolutely stunning. We could see the aforementioned Mt. Whitney as well as a host of other major peaks in the area.

We also could see the ridge we hoped to follow over to Mt. LeConte.

It looked like an awesome set of peaks, but we were already behind schedule and Sean, not adjusted to the altitude, was starting to hurt. He discussed being content with just Irvine and Mallory, but I was confident we’d make it all the way to Corcoran and tried to keep moral high. We had a few bail points, so I wasn’t too worried.

With the time pressure in mind, we made haste off the summit and onwards to Mt. Mallory. Most reports had people dropping far down the west shoulder of Mt. Mallory before coming up south side, but I had read of a route that only dropped down a bit around an intermediary highpoint before ascending the north ridge of Mt. Mallory. Sean seemed game for this, so we decided to try it out. The first bit off Irvine was easy, but then we ran into a bit of trouble trying to get back onto the north ridge. We were supposed to climb to a notch via class 2 gully, but though the notch was obvious, the class 2 gully was not.

Feeling rather impatient given we were already behind schedule, I scrambled up the first chute that I saw. This was a big mistake: from afar it looked alright, but up close it turned out to be an incredibly loose Jenga Tower of Class 4 rock. After one too many dicey moves and lots of rocks knocked down, I topped out of the chute. From there, I could easily see the class 2 chute that we had missed and continued right up to the notch.

To avoid getting hit by rockfall, Sean had waited for me to finish the route before doing it himself. I apologized to him for taking us up a sketchy route, but he just shrugged; I think we were both happy to have avoided the extra elevation gain. Soon enough, we finally reached the large detached pinnacle which marked the “start” of the route.

The route wove around the west side of Mt. Mallory on some narrow, improbable ledges. The climbing was pretty trivial, but we had to be careful not to misstep since there was a big air to our right.

Soon, we were deposited right on the summit. The views were pretty much the same as Irvine, but there were some good airy summit blocks for hero shots.

It hadn’t taken too long to reach Mallory from Irvine, and now we could see that LeConte was just an east boulder hop away. I was still pretty nervous about the waterfall pitch (which is around the corner in the above photo), but at least we were going to have the time to check it out. We again didn’t spend too much time on top and quickly made our way over to LeConte. We only stopped briefly to fill our bottles with snow, but there were lots of dead flies in the snow, so we didn’t get much good water.

As we walked over, Sean tried to convince me to climb a different route on LeConte called the “Pencil Route.” He had read about it in an obscure SPS trip report from the 90s, but was eager to try it since it would avoid the 100-foot descent to reach the Waterfall pitch and was sure to be snow/ice free. It ran right up the face of LeConte which looked quite intimidating to me, so I pulled hard for the Waterfall pitch.

Once we reached the base of LeConte, I told Sean I was just going to go check out the Waterfall pitch to see if it was ice-free, but I think he misunderstood and started following after me. We were too far apart to yell what I was doing, so I just kept going. I dropped 100-feet down a broad scree chute, then crossed over to the next chute when the opportunity presented itself.

From here, I started up the chute that was supposedly going to lead to the summit. It looked rather intimidating, but I just kept moving up slowly and methodically.

Eventually, I reached the waterfall pitch and was overjoyed to see it was snow/ice free. In fact, the entire chute was totally devoid of moisture; a true testament to the awful winter we had.

I waited at the base of the pitch for Sean to make his way up. After enduring the expected ribbing for my unfounded concern about the ice, I started up the pitch. It was awkward as expected, and there was a cheater sling at the top, but neither of us needed it and we got up without too much trouble.

Above this, it was just an easy boulder hop to the top. The highest summit of the day at 13,936′, it was also easily the most impressive. We could see across the heavily-serrated Comb Ridge to the many little moving dots over on Mt. Langley. It was a little crazy to think that our next summit was in the middle of this mess of snow-filled spires and gullies, but I had somehow managed to figure it out solo last year, so I figured between the two of us, we would make do.

I could also look down on Tuttle Creek and Tuttle Peak which I had climbed last year during the Sierra Challenge. My dad, who was relaxing at the Tuttle Creek TH, later told me he could see me on top of Mt. LeConte, almost 9,000 feet above him.

We also had great views across Miter Basin and the Kern River to the Kaweah Range and some Mineral King peaks.

By this point, Sean was getting pretty wiped, but it was actually going to be physically easier to climb Mount Corcoran and descend Tuttle Creek than go back down past Meysan Lakes. So as we had done with the last 2 summits, we left LeConte quickly. Though we had already been on the move for 10 hours, we both were paying full attention to this next section since it was going to easily be the crux of the day.

This section of the Sierra Crest is known as Comb Ridge. The traverse along it to Mount Corcoran really is a miracle of geology and routefinding. In the span of less than half a mile, we crossed no fewer than 8 gullies and gained/lost probably close to 700 feet.

Somehow, the climbing was never very hard, and we managed to follow the route perfectly. It truly was an unreal landscape: we passed under improbably stacked towers of rocks and scooted along ledges with dizzying drops down to Miter Basin. It’s places like this that make it hard to feel the magic at Disneyland anymore. I wish more people could have these experiences up in the alpine, but I digress.

Though we were making good progress, Sean was started to get hit by altitude sickness and was feeling pretty woozy. There was one dire moment at the crux of the traverse when Sean was a bit off route and climbing short class 4 pitch. A fighter jet from the nearby China Lake Naval Base broke the sound barrier right over our heads at the same time that one of Sean’s key handholds broke off. For a few seconds, I swear the entire mountain was shaking from the sonic booms, and I desperately looked over at Sean to make sure he stayed attached to the mountain. Once the shockwaves passed, he climbed up to meet me and we continued on, both quite shaken up.

Sean began to complain that his heart felt like it was skipping beats, and he felt really off. I was getting a little worried that something serious was going on, but I figured it was just the altitude and would pass as we descended. I offered to carry his pack and poles, but Sean declined and powered through it.

After the crux, we finally met up with the route I had taken to Corcoran last year, and I led us around to an broad, inconspicuous gully that took us to the top of Corcoran.

Usually, after the crux of a climb, I turn into an annoying little chatterbox overflowing with stoke and waxing poetic about the amazing climb we just had, but I could tell Sean might have pushed me off the mountain if I started doing that, so I just kept quiet and tried to be encouraging. Soon enough, we were relaxing on top, making for my 2nd ascent of Mount Corcoran in under 9 months – I wonder if that’s been done before.

Looking back, it was truly mind blowing where we had just come from.

After being “on” all day with the strenuous routefinding, I could finally relax on top of Corcoran since the route we were descending was going to be familiar. I found my entry from last year in the register, noting that Travis and Nathan had been up here in April on their SPS FKT. Those guys are just in a different league than us.

I also took a moment to photograph the historic Galen Rowell signature from 1970 when he traversed the entirety of Comb Ridge.

Though the route was familiar, it wasn’t exactly trivial, so with darkness fast approaching, we made our way down. The plan was to take a broad chute just north of Corcoran into the Tuttle Creek drainage then follow that downhill for 8,000 feet to the trailhead. We went back down the summit gully, said goodbye to our views west of the crest and dropped down the large east-facing chute.

I tried to be lazy and drop into the chute in the same place I had last year, but there was a snowbank in the top of the chute that blocked my progress. It felt too silly to break out the ice axe and crampons for 5 feet of snow, so I just climbed back out of the chute and went down another entry. During this debacle, Sean got pretty far ahead of me, so I was by myself coming down the chute.

It was just as loose and shitty as last year, but at least there was some remaining snow in the bottom that made for a ~400-foot glissade. It was quite bumpy and gave me a few bruises on my butt, but it was better than twisting an ankle in the sun-cupped snow.

Now, all that remained was a horrendous trot over glacial vomit and miles of ankle-twisting bushwhacking. But first we had to look back on Corcoran and our descent – it’s one of my favorite views in all of the Sierra.

I led us over newly-exposed moraine to a hidden creek that I found last year where we filled up on water. We were both quite dehydrated between the altitude and rationing water, so we greedily drank the fresh glacial water. Our energy was low, but morale was high since it was looking like we would be able to complete the day.

I continued guiding us down the canyon, weaving around the large waterfall that has forced many a climber to backtrack.

I kept telling Sean how the descent was going to be so cruiser, and I really believed this myself, but in reality my view was totally skewed. When I had descended this last year, I was incredibly strong after an entire summer in the Sierra and was buzzing with the success of finishing the Sierra Challenge. With neither of those things to propel us forward, the descent dragged on and on. I felt a little bad for sandbagging Sean so hard.

For some reason I remembered the trail appearing higher up the canyon, but it never came to fruition until we were about 1,000 feet lower than I remembered seeing it. It was starting to get late and the sun was setting, but at least we now had some semblance of a trail to follow.

We soon came to the Stone Ashram and spent a quick moment exploring it since Sean had never seen it before.

Now we had a really good trail to follow back to the cars, but this too seemed to drag on forever. With success guaranteed and the endorphins at full blast, I again felt the urge to excitedly reminisce on our days’ success, but Sean was in no mood. He was questioning out loud why we continue to put ourselves through so much pain in the mountains, but I knew he would later thank me for making him traverse all four peaks (which he did 🙂 ) As we neared the cars, my dad walked a bit up the road to meet us with some cold drinks and provide a morale boost for the last 0.5 miles to the end.

And finally, nearly 16 hours later, we had completed our goal of traversing four 13ers in one day. We quickly packed up our cars and headed down into Lone Pine for some dinner, but the only thing open was a taco stand. I ordered a burrito and wolfed it down before realizing how spicy it was. Combined with my dehydration, my body decided it had had enough for one day, and I very nearly threw it all up in the middle of the main street of Lone Pine. Whoops.

After retrieving Sean’s car from Whitney Portal, we parted ways – him back to Kern Lake where he was staying and myself up towards Bridgeport to meet another friend for more adventures. I only got as far as Tom’s place, though, before I got uncontrollably sleepy, so I pulled off and got a few Zs in the back of the Subaru, not even bothering to change or clean up at all. I was that tired. It had been a good day, one of the best I’ve ever had in the mountains.

This year was quite busy for me on a personal level, but I still managed to get up to lots of shenanigans in the mountains. So, kind of like how Spotify Wrapped summarizes your music tastes, here’s what I’ll remember from this year in the mountains.

Winter/Spring

I started the year as a second-semester senior in high school, which means college apps are done and classes don’t matter. It was a little busier than I imagined, but I’m still very pleased with how much mountain time I got in.

Jobs Peak

I always like to spend at least one day in the winter climbing a Tahoe OGUL Peak and this year it was Jobs Peak. I went with my dad which meant our paces were very different and the 17-mile day ended up taking 11 hours, but it was still a really fun time. Once I get much better at skiing, I’d like to replace snowshoeing with skiing, but unfortunately, that’s a few years off, at the very least.

Diablo Range Night Hikes – 1,2,3

The Diablo Range is far and away my favorite local range, but unfortunately many of the most interesting peaks are on private property. This has led to the practice of night-hiking them during full moons, so one can hike around without needing a headlamp. I fully acknowledge the dubious ethics of hikes like this, but nonetheless, I really enjoy traipsing around these mountains at night. It’s a whole different experience than daytime; your senses are heightened, every noise is potentially cause for concern, and you feel incredibly connected to nature. Coupled with the fact that many of these private property peaks don’t have established routes or trails and you get a very “primal” experience.

I was lucky enough to go on three of these hikes this year, each one to some very interesting landscapes. On the first, I got what I believe is a probable first ascent of Rutan Rock after an extremely chossy class 4 scramble right before the rain unleashed on us. On the second, I climbed two peaks, Black Mountain and Mount Day, towering above the South Bay that I have wanted to climb for some years now. And on the last, I tagged along with a friend to climb some peaks for a list he is working on which kept me out until 5 am on my birthday, but it was oh-so-worth it.

Now that I’m in San Diego during the spring, I doubt I’ll do many of these for a few years, but I’m looking forward to the next chance I get.

Rabbit Peak Traverse

For Spring Break, I went down to visit my grandmother in Palm Springs. This was my first visit down there as someone interested in getting off the beaten path, so there were lots to explore. I spent most of the week doing shorter peaks near her condo, but on the last day, I went down to the Santa Rosa Mountains to climb Rabbit Peak. By itself, it’s around 22 miles and 8000 vert, but it gets hyped up like it’s Everest or something. I got super psyched out and was pretty nervous going into it, but it ended up being quite easy and I had plenty of energy to traverse to several other peaks to make it a 27-mile, 10.5 vert day. Though I eclipsed it several times later in the year, that was my biggest day ever and I was shocked at how good I felt. I was barely sore afterward and the entire day felt cruiser. This definitely broke down a sort of mental barrier for me and allowed me to tackle bigger days later in the year.

As for the Santa Rosas, though, I loved the variety of the terrain; I got cactus, pine trees, snow, and palm trees all in the span of 13 hours. I’ve got some ideas about other traverses in this range, so I imagine I’ll be back soon!

Ventana Double Cone in a Day

Above the Big Sur coastline lie the Santa Lucia Mountains. Hoards of tourists flock to Big Sur every year, but very few take the time to brave the dense brush and harsh conditions of the Santa Lucias. Ventana Double Cone is a sort of mythical summit in the range, 15 miles from the nearest trailhead. At one time a good trail ran to the top to service a fire lookout, but it has since fallen into severe disrepair and made access very difficult. To make matters worse, the Forest Service has stopped maintaining trails in the Northern Ventana Wilderness, so a small band of vigilantes and “Ventanaphiles” have taken it upon themselves to keep access alive.

While I was in the desert, I had to decline an invite for a 3-day backpacking trip to this peak, but when they reported that trail conditions were as good as they had been in the last 20 years, one thing led to another and I ended up day hiking the peak (along with nearby Uncle Sam Mountain) with Mike Toffey. It was a pretty surreal day since I honestly had resigned myself to never summitting this peak. Trail conditions did end up being quite good, though I would imagine they have already deteriorated given how fast the brush grows back.

And 2 weeks after my biggest day ever, I wound up eclipsing it with this hike coming in at 34 miles and 9000 vert. Again, I wasn’t sore after this day either which gave me lots of confidence for the summer.

Summer

Because I was going from the semester system to the quarter system, I had an extended summer break of about 4 months. But while winter/spring was quite productive, I was honestly a little disappointed with how little I did during the summer. I missed about 1.5 months of time in the Sierra and lots of fitness between a Fiji trip and a bout with COVID. But even when I was back, sort of like Klay’s mental block coming back from back-to-back leg injuries (ok not at all like Klay), I got into a bad headspace that kept me from truly getting after it as much as I would have liked. Excuses and negativity aside, I still made lots of fun memories and got up 17 new SPS peaks during the summer.

Half Dome

I always like to start off the summer with a road trip, but this year was my first time going out without my dad. It was a little scary to be living out of my car, alone, for 2 weeks, but I think I learned a lot about myself and I’m glad I stuck it out.

The first peak of the trip was Half Dome with Zee, my friend from the Sierra Challenge. He got the permits in the annual lottery and was kind enough to invite me along. Because we were going on Memorial Day and expected huge crowds, we started at 2 am to get up the cables before it was busy. Our plan worked perfectly and we had the top to ourselves for an amazing sunrise. I can easily see how huge crowds and hot temps can take away this peak’s appeal, but I had a really fun time.

Vogelsang to Parsons Traverse

The next day I set out solo to complete a traverse of some peaks in Yosemite High Country. At the start, I was cold (20-degree temps), alone (Zee had gone home), and scared (because I had no idea if the route I wanted would go). I also didn’t know what early-season snow conditions would look like at 12,000 feet, but I stuck it out and was rewarded with an absolute stunner of a day, being the first person to climb all these peaks in 2022.

It was a blast to bust out the ice axe and crampons to climb up Vogelsang and link together some bomber glissades throughout the day. It ended up being a beefy 25-mile day and between the early season snow climbing, scrambling, and route-finding, I felt like a real mountaineer.

BEAR ATTACK (and Kearsarge Peak)

Normally this peak wouldn’t have made the cut as something to feature, but the circumstances of how I came to climb Kearsarge Peak are rather amusing and worth writing down. I was at Whitney Portal to attempt an ambitious traverse, but I was awoken at 2 am to a bear dragging my pack out of the bear box and away into the night. I got into a standoff with the bear (who was far too comfortable with humans) and eventually got him to leave after shouting and throwing rocks at him. But as he retreated, he took my pack with him. I had left my wallet in there so I didn’t forget it in the morning, but now I had no money or driver’s license. After searching to no avail in the dark, I went back to sleep and when it opened, found the owner of the Whitney Portal Store to search with. He knew where the bears usually dragged stuff, and we found my pack in a few minutes. It had a big rip in the side and all the food was eaten, but my wallet was intact.

By the time I got all my gear back, it was nearly 9 am and there was no time to do my planned traverse, so I went over and climbed Kearsarge Peak, Dragon Jaw Peak, and Sardine Peak. It was kind of mundane, but I’m glad I still got a peak for the day.

Kern Peak

This was mostly a long trail hike with Sean Casserly, but it was memorable for just being a really pretty and cruiser day in the mountains. I enjoyed the views and strolling through the amazingly green Southern Sierra meadows. We also free-soloed Indianhead by a really fun 5.4 route on the NE corner that we had no prior beta on. This chill 27-mile day solidified my newfound ability to regularly do >25 miles without any problems.

Mount Irvine, Mount Mallory, Mount LeConte, and Corcoran Peak

This was the last climb I did on my beginning-of-summer road trip and it turned out to be one of my favorites of the whole summer. Sean C and I did a point-to-point from Meysan Lakes to Tuttle Creek while traversing over four 13ers in the middle. It’s probably the most adventurous and gutsy day I’ve done, especially since I just concocted the route on Caltopo and didn’t know of any prior ascents. It included several pitches of class 4, an incredibly convoluted traverse between LeConte and Corcoran, and an 8000-foot descent down the trailless Tuttle Creek Canyon. I won’t even attempt to summarize the day (it has its own post here) and just leave some pictures here.

Peeler Lake Backpacking

To cap off my road trip, I took my best friend from high school on his first backpacking trip. There were no peaks and the route was entirely trail, but it was pretty awesome to show somebody the High Sierra that I love so much.

Red Slate Mountain, Mount Izaak Walton, and Red & White Mountain

After such a good start to the summer, it was, unfortunately, another 1.5 months before I got back into the High Sierra. My fitness had taken a big hit from getting COVID, so this was supposed to be a chill, one-night backpacking trip to climb Mount Izaak Walton and ease back into things. But as I probably should know by now, I have a difficult time chilling. So, when I ran into Travis Soares during his SPS FKT, he was easily able to convince me to ditch my overnight plans and climb these 3 peaks with him.

It was pretty cool to witness a little slice of Sierra Nevada mountaineering history and I really enjoyed the company of Travis. That’s not even to mention the peaks we climbed which were super fun in their own right! Though, I was sore for a few days afterward since I did not expect to be doing 28 miles and nearly 10k of vert with a 30lb pack for much of it.

Whorl Mountain

This was a quick trip from where my family’s cabin in Truckee, where I spent July. I had been to the Horse Creek drainage once before while climbing Matterhorn Peak, so I knew how pretty it was and I had been excited to go back ever since. It ended up being a spectacular day with a cool chockstone the size of a car that I had to crawl underneath in order to reach the summit.

Sierra Challenge

This was the 2nd year (out of 4 total) that I participated in the full Sierra Challenge and it ended up being the mountain-related highlight of my year. The comradery that comes from suffering up the same obscure peak as everyone else for 10 days straight is truly unmatched. I unfortunately suffered an ankle injury on day 3 that kept me from making a run at the yellow jersey, but I had an amazing time nonetheless and managed to climb 9/10 peaks. I need to make a whole post dedicated to just the Sierra Challenge, but for now, I’ll just post one picture from each day and links to the tracks.

• Day 1: Walker Mountain
• Day 2: Price Peak
• Day 3: Inter-Red Peak
• Day 5: Piute Crags
• Day 6: Donkey Peak
• Day 7: Giraud Peak
• Day 8: Table Mountain
• Day 9: Mount Torchbearer
• Day 10: Bullfrog Meadow Peak

Tenaya Canyon

A few weeks after the challenge, my buddy Dylan, who I spent much of the challenge with, invited me to do some canyoneering with a descent down Tenaya Canyon. It runs from Tenaya Lake in the Yosemite High Country all the way down Yosemite Valley. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it ended up being one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. We got to rappel down a waterfall into a pool of water that we had to swim across, WTF??? It was amazing to find so much solitude and adventure right next to the zoo of tourists that is Yosemite Valley.

A descent is not to be taken lightly, though, as we went past another party that was in the middle of a rescue after somebody had gotten off route and fallen over 100 feet. I believe they made it out alright, but it was a somber reminder of the thin line between a fun day in the mountains and a trip to the emergency room, or worse.

Fall/Winter

I arrived at UCSD in the fall and quickly realized that without a car, I didn’t have much access to the mountains. I was also quite busy, as one might expect for their first quarter of college, but I managed to get just enough adventure to stay sane.

Woodside Ramble 50k

I quickly realized that road running was probably going to be my main way to stay in shape while at college. I didn’t have a way to get to any interesting mountains, so I just started running a lot. So much so that I decided to sign up for an ultramarathon, so I could have some motivation to keep running. I wrote about most of my experiences in another post, so I won’t spend much time rehashing what I already wrote there, but I will say that the ultra as a whole was a very positive experience. I’m really glad I did it and I’d recommend anybody who’s on the fence about doing one (as I was for a few years), to just jump into it.

Since this is a year-in-review post, though, what I will remember from this time is all the great runs I had around San Diego/La Jolla, so here are some of my favorite photos.

Disaster on the Slopes of San Gorgonio – 1,2,3,4

During my first quarter, I started working as a guide for Outback Adventures, an organization on campus that leads outdoor trips for students and faculty. As part of the interview process, the prospective guides went backpacking for 3 days on Mount San Gorgonio. There was a storm coming in that weekend, and I expressed my concerns beforehand (even telling my dad “if I were leading this, I wouldn’t go on this trip”), but since we were going to be “guided” by 2 older students, I foolishly blew off my own concerns.

To make a very long story short(er), our group was ridiculously slow and a hail/lightning storm hit when we were on an exposed hillside at 9800 feet as it was getting dark. After waiting out the lightning (which was less than 100 feet away), several members of our group began to show signs of hypothermia. We spent a couple of hours tending to them until they regained consciousness, then we tried to make a beeline back to the cars, but as we descended, another person from the party collapsed in the middle of the trail. By now it was pitch black, 20 degrees, and still snowing, so the decision was made for myself and a few other people to run down the mountain to get help while a group stayed on the mountain to ride out the night. We made it back to the TH at 2 am and called SAR. Our supposed guides did not have a working GPS (quite appalling), so I had to relay the coordinates of the stuck group to SAR from Strava and the Caltopo app.

We then spent the night in the nearby Sheriff’s office and in the morning, hiked back up to retrieve all of the gear we had left on the mountain. On our way up, we met the other group coming down with members of SAR. Thankfully, they had all survived the night, though the girl who had collapsed earlier was being carried down in a stretcher. Once we reached the gear, we each had to carry down about 60-70lbs of gear 7 miles back to the TH. The girl in the stretcher was taken to the hospital and was discharged that night after some IVs and medicine.

This whole experience was quite jarring. Throughout the past couple of years, I have been on hundreds of personal outdoors trips, many with a much higher level of objective danger than this, but I have never had any major problems, until this trip. Between the wet, cold conditions and lack of sufficient clothing by many people, I was genuinely worried somebody was going to die on the mountain that night. What aggravates me most, though, is that this was entirely preventable; I knew the weather was going to be dangerous, but I trusted that somebody else was going to take care of me because it was technically a “guided” trip. I firmly believe that we never should have even been on the mountain that weekend. Though I am now a guide for Outback myself, I need to reevaluate my relationship with them, and group trips in general, going forward.

Martinez Mountain FKT

Right at the beginning of winter break, I again stayed with my grandma in Palm Springs for a few days, this time aiming to get my first FKT. I chose a really cool route up to Martinez Mountain that started from the bottom of the Coachella Valley and climbed almost 7000 feet up to its summit. That it wasn’t the standard route for the peak added a lot to its appeal. I ended up doing the 18 miles and 6700 vert in 4:40 and wrote about it here. I had an absolute blast on this day and I foresee myself attempting more FKTs in the future.

Mount Rose

After learning how to ski at Tahoe Donner, I capped off the year with a winter ascent of Mount Rose. I totally misjudged the snow conditions and ended up post-holing for several miles, but I made it! It’s always special to enjoy such a popular peak during the winter when there are no crowds at all.

Looking Ahead…

This post ended up being a lot longer than I imagined, but I suppose that means I got up lots of fun stuff this year. I spent a lot of time building fitness and perfecting the long Sierra day hike/scramble in 2022, so in 2023, I want to start using my strong base to branch out into new kinds of adventures, like trad climbing, more technical mountaineering, and even harder day hikes (Black Kaweah in a day, anyone?). I find that setting specific goals stress me out too much, so instead, I’ll set intentions that will guide me in the direction of what I want to achieve. So, here are some mountain-related intentions for the year ahead:

• Prioritize new stuff – If someone invites me to climb a Cascade Volcano, it might not help me reach 20 SPS peaks for the year, but it’s a new experience I should value.
• Get better at rock climbing – I started frequenting the climbing gym in the last few months of 2022, and I really have started to enjoy working on strength compared to just cardio
• Keep running – I really enjoyed the last few months of running a lot, so I’d like to continue that
• Plan trips ahead of time – I like to plan things last minute for flexibility, but it’s undeniable that planning ahead can help me do better trips with more people
• Have fun – I sometimes take this stuff too seriously, but it’s all just an attempt to enjoy the mountains in any way I can. After all, as the late great MF DOOM once said, “It’s all just a big scam to make yall eat pig ham.”

About a week ago, I ran the Woodside Ramble 50k which was my first foray into the ultramarathon distance, defined as anything longer than a marathon. As someone more accustomed to long off-trail hikes than running, it was an interesting way to “round out” my skills and spurred some new observations. In order to temper my bad habit of needlessly rambling, I’ll try to organize this into some sort of structure.

Background

I suppose I should start with some background. It feels weird to give a starting date for when I began hiking since it can be such a low-commitment activity, but the summer of 2019 feels like a good place to start. That’s when I “discovered” the High Sierra, mountaineering, long-distance running, and that really rad people do really rad things by combining all three. I didn’t have the chops to manage the running part yet, but I kept trying to get after it in the mountains every chance I could get. Over time, I got pretty decent at the long, often off-trail/scrambly nature of Sierra peakbagging. I also went farther in my day hikes, eclipsing the marathon distance 6 times this year, often with over 10,000 feet of elevation gain.

At the same time, I was also trying to somehow turn myself into a runner. My parents had forced me into cross-country in high school and I was terrible at it. I was either pitifully slow or injured my first couple years, but I started running on my own during the covid lockdowns in November 2020. I was still pretty slow, but at least I was enjoying it and not getting injured anymore. I managed a kind of respectable 18:32 5k time that year, but I didn’t really care that much; what I really wanted to do was to be able to run trails with lots of elevation gain. I kept running off and on for the next couple years, mostly to supplement my peakbagging/mountaineering goals in the Sierra, but I never got that good.

Alright if I don’t cut things off now, I’ll start telling my life story. Basically the TLDR is that I approached this ultra as a bad runner and an alright hiker.

1. Long hikes help with ultras, but they aren’t the same

With my experience doing similarly lengthed hikes, I sort of thought an ultra would be easy; if I can stay out in the mountains for 15 hours a day, surely a 6-7 hour day can’t be that bad. Right? Wrong. The problem lies in the fact that running is hard. Like really hard. Subconsciously, I kind of already thought I had completed an ultramarathon after my 33-mile dayhike to Ventana Double Cone in Big Sur–what would the difference have been if I had just jogged a bit of it like an ultra race? A lot, actually.

As I probably should know by now, running is a lot harder than hiking. With hiking, once you reach a certain level of fitness, it feels like you can go forever; it’s such low impact that even with lots of vertical, your legs don’t get that fatigued. But for running, at least where I am at with it, I most definitely cannot go forever. My legs started to hurt after just a few miles and from miles 20-25, my underbutt (not joking) was screaming in pain as I hobbled along. Ultrarunning seems to be much more about pain management whereas hiking is about boredom/overall fatigue management.

That being said, the experience of long hikes helped my mental game a lot. Rather than the race dragging on, it almost felt fast since the miles were going by way quicker than a slow 30-mile hike. Also, being accustomed to doing >5000 vert in a day without much thought was definitely helpful. One guy that I ran with for a few miles had much faster 5K/10 times and a much higher weekly mileage than me, but he ran 90% of his miles on flat roads. So while he absolutely lit it up on the flats and downhills, he struggled a lot on the uphills and I ended up beating him by 6 minutes.

Overall, though, the hardest part for me was the lack of breaks in a race. I’m sure everyone takes ultras differently, but in my mind, this was a race and I wanted to go as fast as possible. If I reached a pretty viewpoint, I couldn’t stop and take it in for a few minutes, I had to keep moving. I did walk some hills, which felt like breaks, but I’d estimate I ran probably 90% of the race (albeit slowly!).

2. Nutrition is hard

Nutrition during long hikes isn’t that hard. Pretty much the only thing I have to worry about is eating enough, which isn’t hard when I can bring deli sandwiches or gas station sushi or cheese and salami, or even leftover pizza slices.

Nutrition while running is a whole different ballgame, though. It’s very hard for my body to digest “real” meals while actively running, so I have to rely on artificial gels and powders with maltodextrin that my body can easily digest. During this race, I consumed 17mL of tailwind per 6 miles, one GU gel every hour, and Oreos, stroopwafels, bananas, and salt sticks at aid stations as needed.

But just because my body can digest them while running doesn’t mean my body likes them. My biggest mistake in this race was consuming way too much sugar. Just about everything that I brought had at least a good amount of sugar in it. After the first 10 miles, I felt queasy the rest of the race and kept having burps that were dangerously close to turning into throwing up. I should have brought less sugar and more salt, but I wasn’t necessarily deficient in salt, so I feel like more salt and less sugar could have just given me new problems. Always things to tinker with on future long runs.

3. Running lots of miles is fun

To prep for this ultra, I had my most consistent and “intense” stretch of running. I ran consistently for about 3 months, averaging 30ish miles per week for the first month then 40-60 miles per week in the last 2 months. It was really cool to feel the changes in my body from this extra running; new muscles started to appear that I never knew I had and I felt myself get noticeably faster.

All this running also gave some amazing structure to my life, especially given it was my first quarter of college at UCSD. There were so many new variables (living alone for the first time, new classes, making new friends, etc.) that often my morning run was the only consistent thing from week to week. And because I was running so much and had no car, I got to know the surrounding area on foot a lot better. I’m really lucky to live less than a mile from the ocean and some of my favorite runs were in Torrey Pines State Preserve. Though I might take a step back from such high mileage and focus on climbing (!) a bit more this next quarter, I’ll definitely be trying to keep up the consistent running.

4. Ultras have good vibes

I’ve been a little intimidated by running races so far because road races seem like they’re full of hyper-competitive people who only care about their mile splits and PRs. By contrast, the supposedly laid-back nature of ultra-running was what got me interested in ultras in the first place.

And sure enough, in the first half mile, I heard a couple of people behind me talking about how pretty the redwoods were and reminding themselves to go slow so they could enjoy the course without bonking. I knew then that I was in the right kind of race. There’s also lots of comradery among runners in an ultra. At the mile 20 aid station after a brutal climb, I was about to puke from the aforementioned excess sugar consumption, so I asked the aid station volunteer if he had any tips for managing it. Without hesitating, a nearby runner who overheard me offered up some antacid pills (ostensibly Pepto Bismal). It was such a kind thing to do and we ended up leapfrogging with each other for the last 10ish miles of the race. I doubt an interaction like that would have ever happened without the slower pace and grueling nature of an ultra.

In Conclusion…

Things I already knew were cool: mountains, trail running, vert, nature, and people who like those things. Things I now know are also cool: ultras, people who run ultras, and Mountain Dew at mile 25 of a race.

I think I still prefer the low-pressure nature of just going out on big adventures with friends rather than racing, but I also know lots of the pressure surrounding an ultra is self-imposed. I’m not committing to another ultra, but I don’t have access to many other forms of adventure for the next several months and now I know I can successfully train for an ultra at college, so who knows what I’ll get up to? But I do know that whatever the next adventure, it will naturally require lots of fitness. So, quite literally, onwards and upwards!

postscript: this is easily the most coherent and somewhat concise thing I’ve written in a blog format – my third iteration of trying to write about the mountains on the internet is off to a good start!