Been too many non-climbing threads recently. What did ya'll do this past weekend? I'll kick it off.

I went backpacking with a bunch of friends. Luckily one was a climber, and was willing to laden himself with chalk, shoes and a harness for the oh-so-long two-day hike out to Island Lake in Dinkey Lakes Wilderness. I lugged out the rope and a small rack.

The first taste of the wilderness: Night hiking under a (practically) full moon to Mystery lake, roughly midnight-to-1am timeframe on Friday night (looong drive from the bay area).

The next day, since we had to hike a oh-so-far 4 miles or so to Island Lake, and we arrived at our campsite by noon (even with 9 people in our group!), we were forced to climb, what with the Three Sisters calling out to us from just above the campsite and all (oh the horror!).


After the long scramble up, we found something climbable. Some nice fingers on sharp granite, a few hand jams, and before I knew it the difficulties on the first pitch were done with (about 30 feet up a slightly-right-leaning block with a bit of a finger crack behind it before topping out onto the prominent ramp). Yo, this shiz fun!


As you can see, my buddy forgot his helmet. No big deal since I found him this spacious-alcove-with-a-view to chill in while I tossed rocks down from P2. Dude man, check it out!.


P2 kept it real, starting with pulling over that roof we're sittin' under. After an aborted attempt trending left immediately over the roof (I couldn't find good pro), I went straight up for a while, then wandered across a blocky ledgy type feature before finding something else to throw myself at. I found a nice lichen covered horizontal finger crack / lieback / mantle for the topout. Oh yeah!


From there, we scrambled across all the summits of all Three Sisters, ending on the tallest one where we found a summit register and so recorded Mounting a Sister 2 Pitches, 5.8.

Yar!