The standard Cathedral Range traverse involves tagging 15 named summits in the Cathedral Range: Unicorn Peak, Cockscomb, Matthes Crest, Echo Ridge, all 9 Echo Peaks, Cathedral Peak, and Eichorn Pinnacle.
After driving most of the night from CO, I started jogging up the trail from the Cathedral Lakes trailhead at 10:06am on June 23, 2002. I took the Budd Lake turnoff, then after a few minutes I headed off the trail toward Unicorn Peak. After an uneventful climb up crappy 5.easy rock on the east face, I reached the summit, and promptly headed over to the bump between Unicorn and Cockscomb, then over to Cockcomb itself. I climbed up the 5.6 East Face on kitty litter rock, then downclimbed the Class 4 West Face.
From there, I jogged over to the North Side of Matthes Crest, and traversed to the south on the surreal North Ridge all the way to the high point. The ridge was like a thin, steep snow cornice -- but made of rock. Unfortunately, like on most of the other peaks in the area, the rock was very crumbly. From the high point, I downclimbed a mid 5th class crack down past some rappel anchors and over some loose 4th class rock to the base of the west side.
I then hiked toward Echo Ridge and climbed about 80 ft of 5.7 on fantastic rock. After mantling onto the ridge, I hiked a short distance east to the summit.
Next on the agenda were the Echo Peaks. I hiked west then scrambled up the Class 3 north side of #8. From there I hiked south through Wilts Col to the southwest side of #9 (5.7). This is the easiest route to the summit of #9. I decided that I wasn't interested in free-soloing up and down on loose orange knobs, so I decided to take a slightly harder, but more secure way up via some cracks and blocks to the left of the normal route. I pulled a roof, then climbed up and rejoined the normal route for the last 25 ft. I followed the sharp hand crack to the summit. As far as I could tell, the last time the register was signed was September, 2001. Not too many people climb this one. I downclimbed, then quickly bagged numbers 7, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, and 4 in that order (I think). The climbing was never harder than Class 4.
I then jogged over to the SE Buttress (5.6) of Cathedral Peak, climbed that, then traversed over to the 5.4 North Face of Eichorn pinnacle and bagged that too. From there, I hiked back to my car, arriving at 6:27. This made for a 8 hour and 21 minute car to car time.
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Yosemite National Park
