On Wednesday, August 31st, we had a simple plan. Climb the Northwest Arete of North Peak and continue on to the North Ridge of Mt. Conness. I had done it about a decade ago with Pat Kolker and didn't remember anything unusual about it. There are two towers on the North Ridge that require rappelling to continue, which sounds straight forward. Rappelling means going straight down with gravity. Needless to say we summited. However, it ended with hours of climbing in the dark and a descent in darkness on a very non-moonlit night. And a headlamp that whose batteries were dead halfway down the trail. Luckily, it could have been colder (it was warm enough). The trip went like this: we left the Valley at 5am. We started hiking at 7am. We summited North Peak at 11am. We spent around 5 hours on the 3 different rappels throughout the afternoon. We summited Mt. Conness around 11pm. We finally got to refill our water at Alpine Lake on the descent at 1230am. We reached the car parked at Saddlebag Lake at 330am. And I drove us back to the Valley, getting home at 530am. I sold the trip as being 8-9 hours- maybe next time. (We now, and forever, will remember the direction of each rappel on the climb.) The top three postcards are from the first half, North Peak. The bottom three are from the second half, Mt. Conness. After the second tower I put away my camera while we got serious because it was getting late. Enjoy these snapshots.
Up and down the south side of the valley is what Bryan S. and I did yesterday to begin my training for the half-ironman next July. Up the 4-Mile trail and down the Pohono Trail towards the Tunnel View where a detour down the old stagecoach road took us to the Bridalveil Falls parking lot. We then hopped on our bicycles for the ride several miles back to the car. A loop as they say, and the map shows. Above are a few snapshots from yesterday. As you can see the weather is a mighty fine sunny and holding at a pleasant California temperature. The top postcard is Bryan on the rim while I stood over at Taft Point. The second postcard was taken from the other direction while a professional slacklining photo shoot was occurring and I was told to "SHHHH" as I walked by by spectators from the midwest or central valley (we couldn't ell the difference- bad joke.) The last view is back towards the valley and you can see Sentinal Rock off in the distance where we began the trail hours before. Enjoy some new photographs finally, because I enjoyed taking them.
