Bear Creek Spire Attempt

[lizolas]

Bear Creek Spire – Lessons Not According to Plan

September 8-10, 2017

Eventually I’m going to stop noting that things didn’t go according to plan and just leave the general assumption that whatever plan I had for the trip was much more ambitious than I ended up being. After proposing Bear Creek Spire to Joshua as a way to learn more than we wanted to again, we decided to try for a 3-day backpacking trip rather than car-to-car in a day as is the popular way to do it among people who comfortable free solo all or almost all of it. At this point we’ve become fairly aware that we’re so much slower than the people who write guides that their timing guidelines are useless to us. Joshua, Josiah, and I all took Friday off so we could leave Thursday after work and attempt to get a same-day entry permit on Friday morning, thinking that was more likely to be available than a Saturday permit.

We left the Bay Area from my house in Sunnyvale shortly after 7 and headed into the traffic jam that is 680 northbound. With a quick stop for dinner around 9, we continued on toward Yosemite. At a traffic signal for construction currently making a one-lane bridge, a car in the opposing direction evidently decided that nobody was likely to be on the other side and they could run the red. Fortunately there was no collision, and they had to back up around the curve to their side as we laughed at their poor judgement.

We camped in Ellery Camp (Ellery Lakes? Several signs couldn’t seem to agree on the name) Campground on the other side of the park - $22 per night for a tiny site and pit toilets – around 9500’ elevation. I slept fine, but the guys didn’t get much sleep and attributed their problems to the high elevation compared to our sea level start.

In the morning, Joshua exited their tent and made some kind of amused/shocked noise, but wouldn’t explain what it was and said it was better if we discovered ourselves. I guess it was, based on his satisfaction with my reaction to seeing all the stuff we’d left on the picnic table covered in frost. So much for his “it won’t get below freezing” in response to me wondering if I should get a sleeping bag liner. It warmed as the sun came up, and we packed up and headed down the pass to see if the Mammoth Lakes Ranger Station had any permits left for us. As it turned out, they had 4 available for Friday entry, so we took 3 and rented a bear can, then went in search of breakfast.

Our frosty gear on the picnic table where we left it the previous night after moving scented items to the bear box

After breakfast we sat in a small shopping plaza parking lot and sorted gear to be packed. The largest pack I had was only 46L while theirs were 65L and 80L. I tried to compensate somewhat by storing my tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad all on the outside of the pack, but still ended up taking mostly my own stuff and relatively little of the group gear – narrowed down to 2 sets of nuts, tricams, all our alpine draws, and a 35m rope plus the bear can.

Looking up the trail from the parking lot

Trailhead parking lot yard sale that shouldn’t be surprising, given our usual level of preparedness

With a stated start time of noon, we were only an hour behind when we set off up the Rock Creek trail at 1:07 pm. The hike was beautiful and uneventful for the first 4 miles. Steadily somewhat uphill and beginning around 10,200’ it was challenging, but we kept a slow pace and took occasional breaks. After 4 miles, we came to the “steep talus” described in the guidebook and slowed down to a crawl as we picked our way up a neverending pile of rocks.

I find that hiking poles are immensely helpful for traveling over Class 2 terrain – mostly walking, but with more rocks than plain trail, so it’s helpful to have a couple extra points for balance on the ground. For one-step-at-a-time contemplative talus climbing, I felt like my poles were doing less than my hands would have, but they also weren’t interfering to the point that I wanted to make the group stop so I could put them away.

The trail starts out pretty flat, winding through a series of gorgeous lakes and meadows

Toward the end, the trail gets a bit steeper.

After the steep part, it was still the same texture of talus and boulders, but a gentler incline. We made our way through it, frequently wondering aloud when we would be at Dade Lake – our intended campsite, recommended by the guidebook. We eventually arrived for a total hike of 5.1 miles and 1650’ of gain. There were several tent areas already constructed, with a slight windbreak rock wall and ground cleared of large rocks. We found one just large enough for our two tents and set up camp.

Two issues arose while we cooked dinner. First, Josiah asked whether the partial small can of fuel was all we had for the weekend. It was. Joshua had thought he’d get scolded for bringing an extra one, so we had one that he’d measured to be half full (we could at least have brought the full one, though). He swore it would be sufficient, but Josiah wasn’t so sure, and used his GPS to text Colin and Elaine asking them to bring extra fuel if they came up to meet us. Additionally, it started snowing. Now it was definitely out of the “well above freezing” weather I’d been promised, both by Joshua and by weather reports indicating that around 11,500’ it should be mid-40s through the night. We quickly put the rain flies on our tents before returning to dinner, with which I was having much more success than the guys.

Post-storm sunset behind the mountains

Somewhere in the Steep Talus, Joshua had started feeling sick and decided to take half a Diamox plus ibuprofen. By the time we got to camp, he was feeling better, but Josiah was feeling pretty sick and didn’t want to take medication so that he could keep his headache as a “health indicator.” After failing to finish his portion of dinner, he eventually did take some Diamox as well, and then we went to bed with no particular plan for the morning besides “See how we feel at 5.” I slept maybe an hour or two the whole night, spending most of it shivering in my thin, warm-weather tent and 25 degree sleeping bag. I wore all the layers I had, even putting my Zions back on, but it still wasn’t enough. Apparently the guys sharing a better tent with two people’s bodies to heat it had no such issues.

I watched the sun rise before anyone else got up. I bet I could’ve free soloed the Northeast ridge before they even noticed I was gone….

At 5 am, we all seemed to feel somewhat uncertain about our abilities even on the 5.easy Northeast Ridge route, so we opted to sleep a little longer and then do something else. We ruled out Mt Gabb – on my list of CA prominent peaks to climb – as too far away, and decided to just take the BCS descent route (or Ulrichs Route) up as far as we had the time and desire for. Supposedly mostly Class 3, we wouldn’t have to do any roped climbing, although I brought my climbing shoes in case of downclimbing anything sketchier than my plain hiking boots could handle (the others had stickier approach shoes). Joshua looked askance at me, then brought his, too. One more item to add to our “slow and heavy (but prepared for anything)” packing list.

It takes a very long time for the sun to get over mountains and reach campsites in topographical depressions.

At this point, I was feeling a little vindicated about wanting to bring crampons and an ice axe along. I hadn’t, since neither of the others owned them – anywhere impassable to them would mean me turning back with them anyway – but had we all had some along, it would have gone more easily. The first part on hard, flat snow went fine, although as the slope increased I had to bail off into the talus before they did. We could have climbed straight up on snow if we’d had snow gear, but lacking such, we started up the talus of the main ridge on the route. There was some discussion about which way to go – Joshua preferred some gentle looking slabs, but Josiah led us farther to the left of a ridge.

The view back out the valley we came in, from part way up the ridge

Throughout the climb, we tried to be deliberate in our decisions about safety, starting with Joshua asking us to continually consider whether we’d be comfortable downclimbing what we were going up. Eventually I mentioned that with the high chance of dislodging rocks, we should put helmets on. When it became obvious that we weren’t likely to summit early in the day, I asked about setting a turn-around time. We decided on 1 pm, to both give us plenty of chance to get back before dark, and try to keep us off of high, exposed areas for the usual Sierra afternoon thunderstorms. I was having doubts that our descent would be any faster than the ascent on all the scrambling parts. We discussed objectives and decided that at the very least, we’d like to shoot for 13,000’ as Joshua had never been over 13k “under his own power” before.

View toward Mt Tom from somewhere on the climb up to the ridge

Bear Creek Spire, so near and yet so far

Josiah looking at our former objective

I got to feel a little vindicated about my aversion to poles on Class 3. I’d put mine away and was having a much easier time of hands-and-feet scrambling than the guys were with poles-and-feet scrambling (the one time the entire weekend that I was going faster than Josiah). A bit later, I convinced them to put their poles away, and a couple moves after starting again from that break, Joshua was going up a move where a rock slipped out from under his foot but his hands saved him from falling (not a terribly dangerous fall, he would just have slid back down a few feet and maybe run into me).

Some of the steeper portion of the snow - nothing too bad, just disconcerting with inadequate shoes

“Things I Don’t Want to Downclimb” for $400: what is “A steep snowfield, wearing nothing but loose, flexible hiking boots?” I thought about waiting there for them to come back, but decided I could at least try to follow the kicked-in steps. Although I’d been higher than 13,000’ a couple times, I also liked the idea of that as a goal. A fall there would have been more bruises and scrapes than anything dangerous, especially since Joshua positioned himself “so if you fall, we’ll both get a little hurt rather than you getting a lot hurt.” I made it up the steep part (barely) onto the flatter section, which proved a little more difficult to cross than I’d expected. While the guys stuck to the snow, I angled for some protruding rocks as fast as I could, then used those to climb the last portion of snow to the continuation of talus above the snow. At this point the rocks were somewhat loose, even larger pieces I’d expect to be more stable. We were within a couple hundred vertical feet of our goal now, and continued up toward the ridgeline which was now looking a lot more attainable than it had an hour before.

Panorama of the view east including Bear Creek Spire to the south

At 12:50, we came over the narrow ridgeline, with Bear Creek Spire to our left, Mts. Dade and Abbot to our right, and Mts. Gabb and Hilgard across Gabbot Pass beneath us. We were just over 13,000 feet at a nice symmetrical 13,031’ – mission accomplished. We stayed for about half an hour eating snacks and enjoying the view, then started back down as the sky gradually turned darker with clouds.

View along the ridgeline toward Mt Abbott

The clouds beginning to gather were fluffy, friendly white clouds, but it was a late summer afternoon in the Sierra, so we knew they’d likely turn darker soon.

On the way down we stayed to the climber’s right side of the snow, which allowed us to get onto some talus sooner, rather than downclimbing the snow we ascended

I never did get to find out it my pessimism about descent time was justified. Beginning at the snowfield just below the ridgeline, we glissaded everywhere it was safe to do so without axes for arrest. We found a way down and to the other side of the initial portion, so we didn’t have to downclimb the steep, hard snow we’d kicked our way up. We then cut as direct a line as we could do the snow at the bottom of Cox Col. Josiah went first to test it, and Joshua and I followed after he demonstrated that it was a gentle enough slope to descend in a controlled manner even without anything but our own limbs to slow us down. The sun-cupped snow surface allowed plenty of opportunities to slow or stop if desired.

I took about 8000 pictures of the view in the direction of the trail to Dade Lake

A bit more talus and we were at the bottom of the Ulrichs Route ridge and back to the “approach” part. At this point, the next snow looked doable, but required a curve in the path, and started out so steep that Josiah and Joshua both had to immediately turn over and use their elbows to arrest as well as they could. I decided to skirt the steep portion and rejoin them by starting at the top of a straight shot down a less steep side. This might have been a good idea except that in trying to avoid the wet slabs, I went too far and ended up staring down into a bergschrund with a thin layer of snow over a 10’ drop onto rocks and darkness. I traversed back a bit and found a more stable looking launch spot.

At this point, Joshua and I were a little sick of glissading, for all the time it had saved us. Lacking Josiah’s foresight in bringing waterproof pants (again, I didn’t bring softshell pants because why would I need them for anything I wasn’t using crampons and an ice axe for?), we were sliding down snow in Zions, which are water resistant at best. Fortunately I’d at least brought other pants for sleeping in (insufficient as they were), but those were the only pants Joshua had with him at all. While Josiah glissaded a very uncontrolled (but straight down to a flattening, clear area at the bottom) final descent, Joshua and I opted to take a slightly longer route through the talus. At the bottom, we paused a few minutes for pictures in front of the lake, then walked back around the flat portion of snow to our camp just as it started to rain.

Looking across Dade Lake to our campsite (not actually visible, as we’d camped a ways back from the water)

Back at camp, I sat on a rock and ate half of my bad life choice avocado and crackers. It started to rain harder than the sprinkle we’d had before, and I sat in the rain/hail a while longer before deciding to move somewhere more sheltered after I cleared my things off the rock. We cooked dinner under the slight overhang of the rock by our tents, and while we stayed pretty dry, my legs got soaked where I was on the end.

Sure enough, the friendly clouds began to turn more ominous

View from under kitchen rock

With their freeze-dried meals, there hadn’t been much space left in the bear can, so I just brought potatoes for both nights as the packages are substantially smaller. When I let the others try them while their food was cooking, they decided that potatoes were a great idea and they should have had those, particularly Josiah who thought he might have been able to eat mild-flavored potatoes even though he couldn’t stomach the more strongly flavored Thai dinner the night before. At some point toward the end of dinner I started feeling sick. Not altitude, just like I’d eaten something that disagreed with me. Unusual, since all I’d eaten was my boring potatoes plus the avocado and crackers. As near as I can tell, it might have just been from shivering excessively while trying to digest, as it persisted through the night but diminished substantially within a couple hours of eating.

We finished dinner, quickly packed up, and got into our tents to escape the rain and hail that was still falling. I was again wearing all my layers except my wet pants, plus Josiah’s fleece pants, and still shivering quite hard. At some point it stopped raining/hailing, and our neighbors from the other camp came over to say hi. We talked to them about what we’d done and what they were planning to do (also NE Ridge) the next day, weather permitting. Since they were gone when we got up the next morning, I assume they decided the day was clear enough and they were going for it.

The small accumulation of snow between our tents

I spent another very cold night in my tent, and I don’t think I really slept at all, although I did lie still enough for Fitbit to report some sleeping. We had decided the night before that since Colin and Elaine hadn’t showed up – presumably turned back by the weather, which was confirmed by a note on the car in the parking lot – we would abandon plans for Pyramid Peak on Sunday and instead pack up at a somewhat leisurely pace and head out. “Leisurely” ended up being slightly more fast-paced than that, as I think we were all cold and tired and ready to be back somewhere less uncomfortable. I suggested 7 as a wake-up time, and Joshua set his alarm for 6:32 (sunrise). Around 4 am, everyone was awake at once, and Josiah sounded excited to go try the Northeast Ridge that day. Joshua and I felt like we hadn’t slept enough for that, and besides, we’d discussed the day before that we still had 6 hours of driving, plus other travel stops, to get back home, and they both had to work Monday.

We got up at 6:30, and despite my optimistic idea that we’d be packed and ready to go within an hour, especially given our mostly cold breakfast, it was 8:15 when we finally had our packs loaded and set off back down to the trail. The stove did, in fact, run out of fuel while boiling the last amount of water for someone’s oatmeal or tea.

All packed up and ready to go

On the way out, I felt like my routefinding skills through talus were improving at least somewhat. I certainly didn’t have all the good ideas, but none of the sections I people followed me through turned out to be horrible. It took us about 3:15 to get back to the trailhead. We arrived just before 11:30, which is when we’d expected to finish. For the majority of the hike on the trail (4 miles), we were going Fish Taco Speed.

The Neverending Talus took almost as long going down as coming up, but was at least marginally less strenuous on the way down

Lessons Learned:

• I either know more about goats than I give myself credit for, or else I worry more about things than anyone else does. I felt like I was likely to want a warmer sleeping setup and snow gear given the frequent presence of snow in the High Sierra. Nothing besides my wallet would have been negatively affected had I chosen to get an extra sleeping bag liner, and my pack would only have been a bit heavier with crampons and an axe. Regardless of what anyone else is bringing, I want snow gear anywhere in the High Sierra, even if it’s the end of summer.


• If I’m going somewhere I should take a water/windproof top layer, I should also have a pants layer. Maybe moreso for overnight trips than dayhikes. For walking in rain, a jacket would likely be sufficient, but as I learned sitting around at camp, it also gets completely miserable if your top half is shielded but your legs are getting soaked.


• Maybe I just sleep cold, maybe it was a lot colder than we thought, but at least on this trip, I needed a warmer sleep setup. The second night when Josiah let me borrow his fleece pants to sleep in, I was still cold, but nowhere near as bad as the first night. Until I own a 0 degree bag, I should probably get a liner for colder trips as well, and bring extra warm clothes for sleeping.


• Avocados are not the right food for slow climbers. When I developed that habit, it was with Henrique, and we always ended up sitting around either before or after a climb for at least half an hour, with plenty of time for a leisurely snack. On these recent trips where my group moves a lot more slowly and can’t take such long breaks, I need to find other food.


• Before pursuing difficult summits, I need to spend a lot more time on easy to moderate things developing general fitness and comfort on these kinds of terrain.


• Instant mashed potatoes are the best backpacking food.


• Consider constraints like a bear can when packing food for a trip.


• On one hand, I’m tempted to admonish myself about taking vacation time to fail to summit, although in this case I think we still learned plenty and had a good time even if we didn’t meet our original goal.


• I didn’t have an issue with it, but sleeping lower might be a good general rule for acclimating better. Lee Vining would have been a good option for an intermediate night’s sleep.


• We were fortunate enough to think about our fuel situation and conserve it, but we did indeed run out boiling the last water for tea Sunday morning. Given the amount of enjoyment the hot (or warm, at least) food added to the discomfort, for future trips it would be wise to make sure there’s sufficient fuel to cook for all the people present for the entire trip.