Tenaya-Matthes-Cathedral Traverse

Heading for our last stop—Cathedral Peak

Limited by my injured wrist and smoke from the Rough Fire, Dale and I explored our options. He'd done most of the low-5th class climbs in the region. Thankfully, he hadn't yet linked up "The Big Three" in Tuolumne (a.k.a. The Triple Crown).

We got up at 6am in Mammoth Lakes, ate a quick breakfast, and hit the road. We were hiking around the lake below Tenaya around 8am. The approach went quickly and we bypassed some of the lower slab bits by hiking up to the saddle on the left. We soloed most of the climb except for a few moves in the middle and then the finish. I didn't want to take chances with a bum wrist.

We enjoyed summit views at about 9:40am and then set off for the Matthes Crest, about 3.5 miles away and over the pass between Tresidder Peak and Columbia Finger. We were roped up and heading up the first entry pitch of the Matthes Crest at 11:45am. From the crest, things were pretty straightforward and we didn't rope up again until gaining the first tower, where we down climbed and then gained the second tower. My wrist hurt a bit, but was manageable. We were at the summit by 1:45pm and kept moving along the ridge, exiting the technical difficulties and taking the rope off around 3pm.

It was an easy scramble off the North end of the ridge and we quickly went over the Echo Peaks col, then down toward Cathedral. We roped up at the base at about 4:30pm. The climbing was really fun and went quickly in simul-climbing blocks with our 30m rope. We reached the summit before 6pm and then descended to the West, past Cathedral Lakes, and down the standard approach for Medlicott Dome, reaching the road right at dark.

Thankfully, a car going North picked Dale up and drove him back the 2 miles to our car at Tenaya Lake. We went straight to the Mobil and enjoyed some dinner, live music, and celebratory beers. Awesome day.

East Buttress on Mount Whitney

Fill yer hand!

The start to our week in the Sierra was what we hoped would be "Operation Unfinished Business," heading up to the Whitney zone and getting on the Harding Route on Keeler Needle as well as Western Front on Russell—the classic lines we hadn't yet completed up there. We approached Iceberg Lake on Saturday, taking our time and enjoying a beautiful sunset before a windy, chilly night. We woke at 5am on Sunday and headed for Keeler after a quick breakfast, reaching the base of the first pitch at about 6:30am.

The first pitch went well, but on the second pitch, a wrist injury from late May started to hurt a bit. We decided to try the third pitch, with overhanging 10b twin cracks. As I was pulling those moves, my wrist became too painful to grip, got swollen, and made my thumb go numb. It would have been crazy to keep going, so we did 3 raps back to the start and one more to get past the snow. We sulked back to camp at Iceberg and I proceeded to sleep for the next 16 hours, trying to get my altitude headache to go away and generally feeling down.

On Monday, we decided to get on the East Buttress of Whitney as a consolation prize. We'd climbed the East Buttress and the East Face in a day back in 2012 and both had fond memories of the buttress. We left camp around 9:30am after a leisurely breakfast and some conversation with fellow climbers. We soloed the first bit and then simul-climbed the rest of the way to the top, enjoying awesome rock and fun movement throughout. What a fun climb. We topped out about 3 hours later, had a snack and took in the view, and then descended to Iceberg for some (brief) lake swimming before packing up and hiking out, with the help of some whiskey, to the car. The burrito truck was open in Lone Pine and really capped off an awesome day.

Dale reminded me of a great climbing quote: "The goal is to come home safe, friends, and successful, in that order." While we didn't succeed in climbing either of our desired routes, we did prioritize appropriately and had a good time regardless.