| Day 4 of 60 Miler Trip Report |
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| Day 4 of 60 Miler   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: California, United States, North America Lat/Lon: 37.77750°N / 119.3483°W Date Climbed/Hiked: Jul 16, 2003 | Page By: Brett A Created/Edited: Oct 22, 2003 / Object ID: 169132 Hits: 713 Loading... Page Score: 0% - 0 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
...Continued
On day 3 of the trip we left the Lyell Fork of the Merced in the morning and headed North. The trail through here has great views to the West if you find a clearing in the trees. We saw the first other person we had seen in two days right after lunch but saw no one else for the rest of the day. Arriving at Lewis Creek, we found a great place to sleep out on smooth granite above the creek and as today was a short hiking day, we had plenty of time to swim and ride a great bare-ass slide in the creek. Later we watched the sun set over El Capitan in the distance.
The next morning we started somewhat late as it was another short mileage day. We headed East up Lewis Creek, our destination being Vogelsang Lake. For the first time of the trip, clouds were moving in indicating the beginning of the storm cycle. I estimated that it would rain within 3 days (it turned out I was right). We began seeing many more people coming the other way, doing the High Sierra Camp circle. Around noon we arrived at the bottom of the steep section and began the short but arduous climb to Vogelsang Pass. I led the way to the top where we dropped our packs and ate lunch.
We had originally planned to ascend Vogelsang Peak from the pass but looking at the route and the large granite spires we scouted a different route. We decided to descend the pass on a route more towards Vogelsang Lake to the North. 9 scouts and 1 adult decided to go for the peak so we got our packs and headed down. We shortly left the trail and stayed high going for the gully below the North side of the East face of the peak. We dropped our packs there and headed up the gully. We stayed to the left of the snow field and ascended the rocks to the top of the gully and the bottom of the face. We picked a line to the left side of the face and started up.
The rock was mostly class 2 but we didn't pick the best line so we encounterd a little bit of easy class 3 climbing. Near the top it got more difficult as there was some loose rock and snow. We finally got to the ridge with clouds streaming overhead going East. Once we decided they weren't thunder clouds we proceeded south towards the summit. The climbing is basically a walk up from here. The summit block has a bit of exposure on the East side and is a little bit narrow but we managed to fit 10 people on top. We found the summit register on the northernmost of the two adjacent bumps, but they both seem to be the same height. We left after about 10 minutes and headed back down.
The descent of the face was a little bit easier as we found a better route. As we spread out on the face, someone suddenly set a bowling ball sized rock loose at the top of the gully next to me. There was one other person at the bottom of that gully. The kid at the top decided not to say anything despite my earler lecture on what to do in this situation, so as I saw the rock barreling towards the other guy I yelled "ROCK". He looked up and ducked behind a boulder just in time and the rock missed his head by a matter of inches. That's what you get when you take 9 boy scouts up a mountain. We safely made it back to the packs where we proceeded to hike to our camp on the North side of Vogelsang Lake. Once again we camped in the same spot as we had 4 years earlier which was interesting. We had reached the halfway point of our trek.
Continued with Banner Peak...
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Yosemite National Park
