Camping in Mammoth - part 2

Saturday 8/2: Hiking to Shadow Lake

So Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny. We had a nice leisurely breakfast with the other folks in camp, but couldn't convince any of the rest of to join us. The plan was to hike 3.5 miles up to Shadow lake and back. We had some thought that if we were feeling good and making good time (since we didn't get started until 11am) that we might continue on to Lake Ediza a bit further along and a bit further up.

This is the meadow at the start of the hike - the mountains we were hiking into would be just a bit farther left in this photo.



About 4-5 years ago I started hiking with poles. I found that they were a great help with my balance - especially with things like crossing rivers, and that it let me take some pressure off my legs both going up and down hill.

The hike to Shadow Lake has three distinct stages it starts out at about 8200ft, goes relatively flat for about 1 mile, drops to 8000ft over about .5 a mile, goes flat for .75 mile or so, and then goes up up up to 8700ft in the last 1.25 mile or so.

Since I knew that there was going to be a lot of up (and therefore also a lot of down, I opted to bring my sticks. You can see me and my poles (and some gorgeous scenery) below:


By the time we got to shadow two hours later I was feeling tired, but not 'done'. The climb from the bottom of the valley to shadow had been harder than I felt it should be given my gains in strength and endurance, and our pace (my pace really, since Daniel is a born billy goat) had slowed considerably.

We spent a lovely few minutes on a large sun warmed rock jutting out into the lake. Refueled a bit, rested a bit, stretched a bit. I have to say that the weather was absolutely perfect, and as long as you were in the sun, there was a pleasant lack of mosquitoes and flies.


We consulted the map, and it looked like Lake Ediza was about 2 miles further on - and only 500ft further elevation gain, so I decided that I'd like to push on for that (It was never a question for Daniel ;-) ). Since there wasn't going to be a lot of 'up' for the rest of the hike, and because I was starting to feel like they were at least as much of a hindrance as a help, I decided to put my hiking sticks away for the rest of the trip to Ediza and back - fully expecting to pull them out to descend from Shadow.

To my great pleasure, I discovered that I was much faster without them, not only on the flat parts but also going up and coming down hill. Daniel said it was like I had taken my training wheels off. LOL - and it actually felt a lot like that. The strength and endurance I have gained with CF finally made the appearance I was expecting it to. I was definitely faster and stronger and nimbler than I have ever been hiking. It was so much fun!

We got to Ediza around 2:30 - turns out it's closer to 2.5 miles than 2.



Once we got there we did some burpees (after all it WAS day 20 of the burpee challenge and where better to do them than near a beautiful alpine lake) and had lunch.

The first set of Burpees is @ Lake Ediza - the second is on our return to Shadow lake. You'll notice a slight camera shake in Daniel's set of burpees @ Shadow Lake - the photographer was attacked by a bug ....

Part way back down to Shadow from Ediza I started developing a headache. :-( I tried fending it off with food and plenty of water, but it was getting pretty insistent by the time we reached shadow. I tried adding Ibuprofen and electrolyte tablets to the mix once we stopped and rested (and did more burpees), and they kept the headache more or less at bay until we got back to camp, but it quickly bloomed into a full-fledged migraine. It was a bummer of a way to end a day that had gone so well and been such a personal triumph.

It had taken Daniel and me 2 hours to reach Shadow lake on the way up, with me using my poles. On the way back down - and pole-less, it only took an hour and a half. We were concerned about the possibility of missing dinner, so Daniel was setting a pretty fast pace on the way home - but I was able to keep up the whole way back. Our GPS device shows a little pause sign every time we stopped to take a rest - and the only pause between shadow and the end of the trail was when we came to an unfamiliar turn off in the trail and had to stop to figure out which way to go. This was not a pace I ever could have maintained at the end of a 12 mile hike - with (some) energy to spare at the end of it - a year ago.

If you click on the picture below, you'll get a link to the GPS data from our hike. you can view the basic info with Firefox or IE, but the Map Player function only works in IE. You can choose your background in the Map Player, and I think the most interesting one is the topo.


And here is a link to the rest of our photos from the trip: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=48056&id=713406614&ref=mf


My headache didn't really subside until we got home. Daniel was an absolute hero and drove the entire 6 hours home and let me sleep, which apparently was just what my headache wanted to make it go away. But it definitely put a sour note at the end of an otherwise very enjoyable, very successful camping trip. Having had such a nice respite from my day-to-day grind sure made it hard to go back to work today (Monday).

Camping in Mammoth

Big eventful weekend. We left home at about 4:45 on Thursday, sat in traffic basically from 580/13 interchange all the way through Tracy. We finally got to I-5 at 6:30pm. Ick. However the rest of the drive was relatively traffic free, and I had Freakonomics on my IPod which turned out to be a great way to pass the time. We finally got to our campsite at about 11:30pm. Fortunately, Daniel's parents took our tent up with them (they went up a day before we did) and had already set it up for us, so all we had to do was put our sleeping bag in it and go to sleep.

Friday 8/1: Climbing @ Horseshoe Slabs



I will admit that I was somewhat apprehensive about our first unassisted outdoor climbing experience. But Daniel had read through the book of climbs for the area and found a place where the routes were relatively easy to access the tops of, and the climbs were mostly slab - which is what, so far, I have found I like best. Some, but not all of the routes had bolts. Other routes, you have to create an anchor from the trees and/or boulders at the top.

We chose a route that was listed as a 5.7, which did not have bolts. The original plan was for Daniel to go up and set the anchor and I would stay below (since scrambling around at the top makes me nervous) but since we had to create the anchor ourselves, and since the scramble to the top didn't look too bad, we both went up.

The rule for top-rope anchors is that they be EARNEST (Equalized, Angle, Redundant, Non-Extending, Solid, Timely)

• Equalized means it should put an equal amount of pressure on each arm of the anchor
• Angle means that the two widest arms of the anchor should not be greater than 120 degrees
• Redundant means that there should be a back-up for every part of the anchor so that if something fails, you don't die.
• Non-Extending means that if one of the two (or three) arms of the anchor were to fail, the position of rope shouldn't drop more than 5-6 inches. So that you don't put undue stress on the remaining pieces of the anchor or your rope (or the climber!)
• Solid means that the bolts or trees or rocks you build your anchor on should be solid - no dead trees, hollow rocks, rusty or spinning bolts, etc.
• Timely - done relatively quickly - this is the least important - but it helps to make a good acronym ;-)
  

There was a sturdy, live, tree right at the top of the route which was a given as an anchor option, but in order to meet the 'Redundant' requirement, we needed a second anchor option. Fortunately there was a large Solid boulder just at the base of the tree on the side opposite the wall face (ie: the tree was between the boulder and the edge).



It took us a long time, and several experiments with varying different types of gear, but we finally got an anchor we were both quite happy with - so we figure we ended up with an EARNES anchor ... everything but Timely ;-) that should get better with practice. Unfortunately we forgot to take a picture of the anchor once we were done. But here is the rock face we climbed with our rope on it:



Unfortunately - since it was only the two of us - we don't have any action shots of us climbing :-(

But we each did two climbs on this one rope - one pretty straightforward 5.7 up the right side along that crack that's visible in the picture above. It was fun, but there were no cruxes or any particularly hard spots. It was a nice way to start climbing ( and to make sure our anchor really was going to hold us!)

The second climb we did was to the left of the rope along the MUCH tinier little crack you can see just to the left of the rope - it wasn't listed in our climbing book, so we don't know the rating - but we're guessing 5.8 5.9 - at least for the part right at the beginning of the climb - where there were basically NO features on the wall - just these teeny tiny little finger holds, and some slight slight variations in the texture of the rock to use as foot holds. For me it was a bit of a scramble. The fun thing with slab climbing is that as long as you keep your butt out away from the wall, gravity does most of the work of keeping you on the wall, but as soon as I tried to lift my weight up at all in order to get to the next handhold, my feet would slip out from under me - but little by little, I inched my way up, and finally made it to a place with better hand-holds and foot holds. after that, the climb was again pretty straightforward.

Unfortunately, we'd gotten kind of a late start to the day, and since it had taken so long to set the anchor - those two climbs were all we had time for. But it was definitely fun, and I feel more confident re: our anchor setting abilities, so I will look forward to more outdoor climbing.

K - Bed time - I'll post Saturday's activities tomorrow.