| Another Sawtooth Affair Trip Report |
Geography Parents  Loading... Trip Reports
| Another Sawtooth Affair   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: California, United States, North America Lat/Lon: 36.45400°N / 118.554°W Date Climbed/Hiked: Jul 2, 2005 | Page By: derelict Created/Edited: Jul 5, 2005 / Object ID: 170181 Hits: 454 Loading... Page Score: 0% - 0 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
I picked up Tristan “brother-n-law” and Rob “Tristans friend” at 5am Saturday morning July 2nd. Our goal for this day was to bag Sawtooth peak, a peak I had already touched but was happy to do again. We arrived at the Sawtooth pass trailhead around 7am and began our walk. I suggested that we use the old Sawtooth pass trail once we reach Groundhog meadow, but Rob thought we would be ok on the standard trail, despite my misgivings about the snow on that route. Sure enough we encountered snow about 20 minutes past Groundhog meadow. This was the beginning of what was to become an endless sea of white, or so it seemed. Eventually we all strapped tools to our feet; Rob with his MSR snowshoes, Tristan with his instep-crampons, and me with my Trango mountain crampons. Rob ditched his snowshoes soon after and both him and Tristan followed as I broke trail. The grade at some points was quite steep. Were one to slide down, I fear death would be almost certain with the rocks and snags hundreds of feet below. This was my first time using crampons and what a useful tool they are! Anyhow, we eventually made it to Monarch lake and had our lunch there. The snow had significantly slowed our progress as it was about 12pm. I kicked myself for not being more assertive about the alternate route. After lunch we donned our packs and started making our way up toward Glacier pass. I prefer climbing to Glacier pass and then traversing toward Sawtooth pass, rather than climbing the sandy switchbacks strait to Sawtooth pass. While climbing toward Glacier pass on grass, dirt, and rock, I had a little slip. I guess I must have put too much weight on one of my snowpoles because it slipped and somehow my feet completely came out from under me. Picture a body horizontal in the air about 3 feet above earth, I rolled in the air and impacted against a sharp rock with the back area of my ribcage. I could not breath or speak for about 10 seconds, but slowly realized that at least my legs and arms were not broken. As I am writing this report, I still don’t know if I have broken or bruised my ribs, but I can barely move without them shooting pain down the side of my body. So now my ribs are bugging me, but I am a stubborn bastard and wont let these guys climb this peak without me! Rob makes Glacier pass first looking rather healthy, I arrived about 3 minutes later, and then Tristan behind me about 10 minutes after that. Tristan is obviously feeling the effects of the altitude by this point and I can see a look of doubt in his eyes. We chilled at Glacier pass for about 10-15 minutes and decided to leave our packs there before hiking the rest of the way to the pass and the peak. About halfway between Glacier pass and Sawtooth pass Tristan shouted that he doesn’t think hes gonna make it. I urged him to push on at least to Sawtooth pass because the views even from there were grand. Now we are all at Sawtooth pass and this is where Tristan wants to wait while Rob and myself attempt to bag the peak. I told Tristan we would be about an hour. My ribs are bugging the s&(t outta me but not enough to stop me. So I start walking “with Rob close behind” toward the peak. I made the mistake of hugging the ridge a little too closely and this made for some unnecessary scrambling. I was using GPS to navigate and I was not worried about getting lost, basically one just needs to head for the highpoint here. I began to notice Rob slowing down a bit. I tried to pace myself a little slower but at one point I got onto a roll and did not look back for 20 minutes. When I did look back I was just below the peak and Rob was out of sight. I tried calling to him in several different pitches but no response was returned. I am worried about this guy even though hes a runner and does some technical climbing, where the hell is he??? I climbed the last 20 feet and tagged the summit with wind blowing like crazy. Clouds had rolled in and stole my precious view. I didn’t see the register “just like last time” but I admit I did not look real hard because I wanted to see what happened to Rob. I shouted from the peak to Tristan a few times hoping he could see me straddling the summit fin. After about 10 minutes of scrambling back down I came across Rob huddling by a large boulder. He told me that he decided to not to go any further because he was feeling the altitude and was also a little dehydrated. I was just glad he was ok, well mostly ok, I hear from Tristan later that Rob told him he puked twice on the mountain while I was climbing above, hehe. Remember how I told Tristan we would be about an hour…well it was now going on 2 hours since we left him at the pass. We were almost back at the pass when I heard a high pitch shout “Hey you guyyyyyyyyyyyysssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” or something like that. I could see Tristans light blue shirt across the mountain about 200yards from where we stood. He said that my poles and Robs water bottle were still at the pass. Rob traversed strait across toward Tristan while I climbed back toward the pass the retrieve our stuff. When I got back down to where they were we were all a mess. Tristan said he was extremely worried about us because of the fact that I told him it would be only an hour from pass to peak and back. Tristan said he went a little crazy by himself on the pass muttering things like “Im screwed man, Im screwed” to himself and thinking he would have to get back to the trailhead by himself. Tristan is still quite new to this hobby and his anguish was understood…kinda ;-) It is getting darker by the second so we jam down to Glacier pass to retrieve our backpacks and hightailed it down to Monarch creek where we picked up the old Sawtooth pass trail which we should have ascended on. The mood was all around happier now. Everyone was feeling better with the elevation loss, with the exception of my ribs. The old trail provided for some very nice scenery, something like what I envision an Irish or Scottish countryside to look like.We had just enough time to reach the car without pulling out my headlamp. From car to car this trip was 13 hours. My excuse is the snow and im stickin` to it. I posted my photos from this hike here:click
|
|
Sequoia/Kings Canyon NP
