Day 2 - Leonard Minaret
Leonard Minaret is a class 4-5 pinnacle in the Ansel Adams Wilderness west of Mammoth Lakes. Most folks found the rating a bit too spicy and opted for Ritter, Banner, or Volcanic Ridge. Seven of them took off around 5:30am heading to Ritter/Banner, so I'm not sure how that all worked out, but I think at least five made it to Banner's summit. Three folks attempted Clyde Minaret but turned back due to lack of crampons/axe. Two of those ended up joining three others at the summit of Volcanic Ridge.
There were seven (Tom G, Sean, Jonathan, Michael, Adam, Ron H, myself) heading to Leonard. We got to Ediza Lake in two hours and then headed more or less directly to the SE side of Leonard. We had trouble making out the several routes described by Secor on the South and SE sides, so we sort of made it up as we went along. The class 4 rating is definitely old school and I would probably put it at 5.4 or 5.5 today. It was a very exciting climb with great exposure that took us something like an hour and half to negotiate (minus Sean who was 40 minutes or more ahead of us). We used the rope on only one short section of about 20ft for one of our party - had we pitched the whole thing out we'd probably still be up there. The register dated to 1992 but had less than a dozen entries - this was probably the least visited Minaret I've been to. Ron was about an hour behind us getting to the base of Leonard, and we saw him on the talus below while the rest of us were on top. He started up just before the lot of us had descended, but ended up turning around before getting to the top. Sean and Tom went on to climb both Turner and Jensen Minarets after descending Leonard, and still managed to get back to the TH barely an hour after the rest of us. Overall, a very enjoyable day. The rain held off until 3pm, allowing about half of us to get back without getting wet. Tomorrow may be a bit tougher weather-wise since we're going over Lamarck Col. We'll keep our fingers crossed...