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Northwest Slope
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Northwest Slope 

Page Type: Route

Location: California, United States, North America

Lat/Lon: 36.56170°N / 118.224°W

Route Type: Slog / Scramble

Time Required: Less than two hours

Difficulty: Class 2-3

Route Quality: 
 - 1 Votes
 

 

Page By: wallpirate

Created/Edited: Nov 2, 2003 / Nov 2, 2003

Object ID: 159268

Hits: 2626 

Page Score: 87.25% - 4 Votes 

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Approach


Take the Meysan Lakes trail from Whitney Portal. The trailhead actually leaves from the lower campground which you must walk through to get to. Follow the sign from the campground through the summer homes to the trailhead. Hike up the Meysan Creek drainage to the Grass Lakes at about 11000'. From here you can see the northwest face of Lone Pine Peak, but you will have walked much further up the drainage (west) than the highest peak on the mountain. Much of the face is steep rock but the western portion of the face where it connects to the ridge joining it to Mt. LeConte becomes lower angle with scree chutes. It should be easy to find the one wide chute filled with sand and scree that shoots up to the top of the ridge. Cross over the drainage to the scree slope and start slogging.

Route Description


Go straight up. Secor says the left side of the chute is filled with talus rather than sand which makes for easier going but it didn't seem to be that different to me. I scrambled up the rock on the right of the gully in a smaller chute to avoid the sand slog, which saved some time. It's easy 3rd class. Once you get to the summit ridge / plateau, don't go straight for the highest peak you see to your east. The ridge undulates and the high point is actually far down the ridge. Stay low on the plateau and traverse the slope east until you see the actual peak, then hike up to it rather than getting duped into traversing the ridge crest up and down like I did. For some reason, I could not find the summit register on any of the little peaks I traversed nor the actual summit. Anyone seen it?

Essential Gear


Something to distract you from the limbo of slogging up endless sand / scree.

Miscellaneous Info


If you have information about this route that doesn't pertain to any of the other sections, please add it here.

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