Labor Day weekend. Pavel's and my first attempt of the ridge with our significant others. One 30m rope and a few cams between the four of us. Holy canoly, this ridge is huge!! Down we go from its half point. Four hour epic descent brings us to the somewhat firm ground... This photo from Sixty Lakes Basin is the only thing I can show for.
 |
 |
|
 |
||
 |
 |
Approach
Two weeks later Pavel and I find ourselves hiking for 13+ miles over three high passes into Kings Canyon's Sixty Lakes Basin, again. This time the weather is not so good, 50 mph wind gusts and cooold! Finally (7.5 hours later) we get there and settle for a good night of sleep. I wake up the next morning and check my thermometer... 14F! We convince ourselves that we should get out of our sleping bags when the temperature rises a bit. It does indeed rise to 27F when it is time for us to leave. Thanks to the balmy weather, we take all our clothes with us on the climb. We would thank that decision later!
Climb
After a couple of hours of scrambling, we get to the ridge. At last, we can rope up and start simul-climbing. Here we are, moving together over beautiful and clean granite at the beginning of a gorgeous Indian summer day. Unbelieavably, it gets warm!
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
Traversing, more traversing, a little bit more traversing... damn, that thing is long! Finally, we can see our objective. It should not take us longer than a few more hours to get to the plateau before the final rise to the summit ridge!
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
A couple of hours stretch to six. Pavel runs out of water. I start to run out of energy. We are running out of day light. "Dude, we may have to bivy...?" "At least we have all our clothes with us!" "Let's worry about it when we get there". On the East/NE Ridge plateau at last with our route behind us. It is almost 6pm. From here it should be but a simple stroll to the summit via the easy East Ridge (Grade I, 5.4 according to a well known guidebook). Yay, we may make it down from the summit before it gets dark!
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
Easy stroll!? We belay again and climb steep 5.7-5.8 cracks to gain the summit ridge. Grade I? 5.4? A classic obscure Sierra sandbag. Two more moderate pitches... this final rise to the summit seems longer than we thought!! Crap...
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
Not happy campers!
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
After spending eleven cold and dark hours on a small granite shelf that overhangs the SE Face, we are still alive and almost kicking. Thankfully we took all our clothes with us and the night is not nearly as cold as the one before. Still below freezing though :(. Sun rolls out and blasts the peak in front us with a glorious alpenglow. Shivering and with wooden hands, we continue for three more moderate pitches to the summit. Twenty six hours since we left our camp, we are on the top of Mt. Clarence King!
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
Epilogue
Down the South Face we go. Back to the camp at noon. Food and hour-long power nap recover some of our energy. Reluctantly, we pack and head back to the trailhead at 2:30pm. Somehow we manage to cover 13 miles and nearly 4000' that separate us from civilization and not puking. Back to the car at 10pm. In the Bay Area at 5am. I still have time to take a hot shower before rushing to the office to attend my first meeting of the day!
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
