Conness, West Ridge

October, 2002

On the third week in October, 2002, my friend Tom came down from Seattle and we were planning some climbing around Tuolumne Meadows.  We had a bit of a glitch hooking up on Friday night, because they had closed all the campgrounds along 120, including Porcupine Flats, our designated meeting spot.  I'm perplexed why they would close down the campgrounds on a Friday, but I guess that's the NPS for you.  Tom was a bit surprised, pleasantly so, when I rolled into Saddlebag Lake campground and woke him up.  I had driven for five hours by myself, so I was motivated to find him. 

 

Saturday, we climbed the N face on Eichorns Pinnacle, partly to acclimatize, partly to measure our speed.  Tom has a condition with his foot that renders it almost immobile, and consequently, felt rusty and hesitant on the rock.  Eichorns Pinnacle was a good, albeit short climb.  The SuperTopo guide advices to advance to the starting pitch from the left, which we did, but it might be better to approach from below, where the weakness continues down and one could rope up and establish an anchor whenever the grade warrants it.  As it was, we ended up doing a short, weird pitch to get to the first belay.  I was leading in boots, and between that and Tom's foot, the rope was probably good on the exposed hand traverse.  There is only one tricky section on that climb, which is almost immediately after the climb starts, before you get to any of the pins promised by the topo. 

 

Afterwards we scrambled up the Muir route to Cathedral summit; a great day in itself.  We knew we had to move a lot faster the next day, but we were both motivated and there was no suggestion that we should reconsider. 

 

Sunday, we got up at four am back at Saddlebag Lake and drove around to Young Lakes, where we started hiking a little after five.  The plan was to do a loop and do the standard descent back to Sawmill, where we had left a car.  This time of year, that's not a bad way to do it, because you can hike in before sunrise on the maintained trail.  We had the moon to boot -- in fact, I only used the flashlight to read signs and for one quick stream crossing.  It's a beautiful sensation to hike or climb pre-dawn with your flashlight off.  You get to experience the very first light as it appears, not on the horizon, but above it; the first thing you notice is that stars are disappearing in the East.

 

The temperature was in the twenties, so it felt good to move.  We got to Young Lakes around eight, where the frost-covered meadows made me long for the Danish January scenery.  (That doesn't happen often).  We filled up our water bottles, popping in the iodine, and headed for the base of Conness.  After a fairly straightforward hike through gentle Sierra woods, we got to a ramp and followed it up to the base of the climb, arriving at 9:20, earlier than we hoped.  The West Ridge of Conness comes into relief when you get up close; you'll see the vertical, huge SW headwall, and the W. Ridge follows this all the way up.  From here, the ridge looks dramatic and intimidating.  The views the other way are spectacular:  Scenic meadows and Lake Roosevelt below us, and countless granite peaks scattered throughout the park.

 

We started way left of the prow, as the SuperTopo suggests, then worked our way right towards the edge of the ridge.  After a couple of pitches, we followed the edge; the climbing and exposure is best here.  After four or five pitches, the ridge overhangs to the right a bit, and when looking over the edge down the SW wall, there is nothing but 1000' of air.  The climbing is terrific.  It's pretty sustained for an alpine climb, hardly blocky at all.  We stretched all the pitches to a full ropelength, and some of them contained 5ft class moves for almost the entire pitch.  We did the first eight pitches belayed, and figured that was about half-way.  Every time it seemed the climbing would ease up, it got back at us.  Even though we did pretty well on time, we realized if we didn't speed up, we would reach the summit at dusk.  The upper half did turn out to be easier, so we started running belays.  The last 300' or so, we unroped and scrambled up 3rd class lose blocks, and summitted a little after 4pm. 

 

It's an amazing experience to be climbing or scrambling on quality granite for seven hours straight.  There were some lose blocks, but in general the rock is solid.  Again, I recommend staying near the edge.  I was a little concerned about some of the towers, but they turned out to have lateral backsides, and at most we had to step down a few feet. 

 

The descent is straightforward, at least if you have light.  This is one disadvantage to doing the loop, because we were not familiar with the descent.  The class-2 ridge down from the summit is interesting; a real sharp ridge with exposure on both sides, but literally a walk-down.  Then we crossed gentle slopes and a small valley, then there is a boulder field that looks uglier than it is.  We then reached the gentle meadows leading down towards Saddlebag Lake, but we were not out of the woods yet, so to speak, because we lost our last daylight here and the trail was faint and discontinuous.  We got separated in the dark; I stopped one place and waited for Tom for 15 minutes, feeling certain that he must pass my field of vision.  When he didn't show, I was going to go look for him, but then realized I had no chance of finding him.  So I continued down.  Eventually, I reached the maintained part of the trail, and it was smooth riding from there, even without light, except for crossing a wide stream in the pitch dark; I had no pride here and bent down on all fours, crawling over some whimpy branches and loose stepping stones. 

 

When I got back to the car, to my surprise and relief, Tom was already there.  I still don't understand how he got around me, but all's well that end's well.

Courtesy of Peter McColgan