Mount Clark (via North West Arête)
9/10/16
It was mid-September, and time for another go at Mount Clark. My plan to convince Leo to do Clark with me had worked perfectly. When he been up Snake Dike in Half Dome, I pointed it out to him to show him how cool it looked, and he seemed game to take it on. The catch? He only wanted to do Clark if we attempted it in a day, for the challenge… Last year, I had attempted Clark over Labor Day weekend, and we had a pretty hard time. We were fairly slow-moving, and we got scared off the arete when we had found ourselves on fifth class terrain without any gear.
I understood the desire to do it all car to car (no need to carry heavy overnight gear), but I was a little worried I wouldn’t be able to do the whole thing in one go. It would be over 20 miles (I had estimated about 22 from looking at Bob Burd’s trip report), which isn’t something I’d done very often in my life (and never something I’ve done with so much cross country travel). It would also be around 7000 feet in elevation gain, which I had never done before in a day. BUT, we were just coming off our Eastern Sierra trip, so I figured I was in pretty good shape. I also still had my GPS track from last year, and I remembered the route pretty well, so I figured route finding wouldn’t be much of a problem. Okay, I was sold. Time to give this thing a shot.
We left San Francisco after work on Friday and drove the truck to the Mono Meadows trailhead. We got there around 11:30pm and went straight to sleep, setting an alarm for 4:20am. Oy vey. Neither of us slept very well, but there was no time to lose. We were on the trail by 4:40am.
Taking a break on the hike in.
Sadly, as I had remembered from the year before, the trail drops quite a bit in the first three miles. Wonderful. I had primed Leo for this, so we both knew it was coming, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be pleasant at the end of the day. We made very quick progress hurrying down the trail, until we reached Illilouette Creek. Here, we made sure to be quiet as we passed some tents, since it was 5:40am. From here, the trail thankfully no longer dropped, but actually started to gain a little (though, very, very little over the next three miles).
We made it to the Clark Fork of Illilouette Creek an hour later. In that time, we’d taken off our headlamps and got to start to enjoy some of the scenery. We took a short break here to have some snacks before leaving the trail. There were more backpackers here who were just starting to get up and cook breakfast. I was pretty jealous. After a snack, we got back up and started the cross country portion of our journey.
This is when my memory of the route from last year started to help. The year before, we had stayed near the creek and done some annoying scrambling. Instead, this year, we stayed a couple hundred feet south of the creek, where the terrain is open and we could make progress quickly. We continued for another five or ten minutes in this direction, east, until we finally did indeed need to cross the creek as we approach the dead forest. Last year, we had spent a good hour+ crossing the dead forest, taking an awful route that made us climb over tons of dead trees, sometimes stacked six feet high. This was the most miserable part of all the cross country. This time, I knew that we should do our best to head north, going to the left of the dead forest. That way, we had to climb over far fewer dead trees. We were on the other side of the dead forest in maybe 20 mins, thankful that it was over.
Interesting rock near the arete. (Photo by Leo).
From here, the terrain gets much easier. It’s open forest with soft ground that is still firm enough to walk comfortably on. We continued uphill through the forest, aiming for a saddle between a small hill to the right, and a bigger ridge to the left. I remembered how late in the day it had been when we reached this point the year before, and I was happy with how things were coming along. Maybe this was actually going to happen?!?
From the saddle, we dropped down only slightly to cross the Clark Fork of Illilouette Creek once more, and then headed up to the sandy plateau that’s just before the base of Clark. Again, I was able to improve here as well on the route from last year. Last year we made it up onto the plateau from the south side, which had a bunch of bushwhacking. This year, we headed straight up from the west and had no bushwhacking at all. Success! We crossed the plateau and found ourselves at the base of Clark. It had been relatively painless to get here — I was quite surprised at how well we’d been progressing.
At the same time, we still hadn’t done very much of the elevation gain. This is when we start to gain some serious altitude. Heading up from this plateau is on easy forested terrain that feels solid going up, and is fast to go down. It’s pretty awesome. But, it is pretty steep, so it’s easy to get out of breath. After another snack break (I knew I’d need more energy for this section), we started up the steep slope. We made good progress elevation-wise since it’s so steep, but it was much easier to get out of breath here. After we were about 1500 feet up this slope, it starts to turn more to scrambling. We scrambled up the next few hundred feet, and found ourselves at the foot of the North West Arete, our chosen route.
Clark, in all its glory. (Photo by Leo).
Even though I had been there before, the arete still blew me away. Clark is just such a picturesque, yet burly and intimidating peak. We both took in the view, and then headed over to where we figured we’d catch the arete. We got on top of the ridge, and started climbing over large boulders. In a few spots, we descended back down to the right, and then climbed back up.
Starting up the ridge. (Photo by Leo).
Finally, we reached a section where we wanted to commit to the arete and climb from there on up. I felt pretty nervous because it was so very near this spot that I had fallen the year before, only to have Kao catch me and stop me from falling off the edge. I was really glad that this year we had lugged a rope and some gear up with us (and by we, I mean Leo). We had borrowed a really thin, light rope from a friend Marco for our Eastern Sierra trip that we still hadn’t given back, so it was the perfect choice for this trip (60m but just six pounds!). We got out the gear, and Leo started to lead up. We ended up pitching out about three short pitches in all.
Looking back on the full length of the ridge, which is a mile in total. (Photo by Leo).
The last pitch included the overhung block that had scared me so much the year before from afar. Up close, it looked a lot less daunting, but it still wasn’t something I’m comfortable doing without a rope. I had my climbing shoes with me, so I felt pretty solid on all the terrain, but Leo did everything in only his approach shoes (having left his climbing shoes behind to save weight). I’m probably starting to take for granted how good of a climber Leo is, and how that makes everything so easy for me. Thank you Leo. I need to step up my game and not be spoiled by having a solid leader for every climb I do.
I love the ridge. (Photo by Leo).
Leo led the last pitch over the overhung block, and belayed me up. There, we found ourselves on top of the craziest ridge I’ve ever been on. And I’m saying that after having recently done the West Ridge on Mount Conness, the East Arete on Mount Humphreys, and the North East Ridge on Bear Creek Spire. It. Was. Awesome.
Leo on the best ridge.
Every block between us and the summit seemed crazy. The exposure on both sides of the ridge was formidable. The views were stunning. This ridge was everything I could have possibly wanted in a ridge. We gathered up the rope and continued along the ridge, taking tons of photos because it was just too good not to. My fear from the exposure definitely made me scared with every move I did, no matter if it was easy or hard, but I continued on up. We had to backtrack at one part, having dropped slightly to the left and not finding a way to climb back up, so we turned back and made sure to stay on the very top of the ridge until we made it to the very summit of the peak.
Clark is the best mountain. I love you, Clark.
Wow. We were on top of Clark. The mountain that had defeated me the year before. And it was even more incredible than I had expected. You just can’t know how awesome it is on top of that ridge from only staring at it from down below.
Summit views. You can spot the Minarets! (Photo by Leo).
We looked through the summit register and ate our lunches. We made it to the summit around 1:45pm. Not setting any records, but very respectable. Even though the forecast had said 0% chance of precipitation, there were many dark clouds in the sky now. I knew storms were expected more south in the Sierra, but didn’t think they’d make it up here. I figured we should get going, not just because of the chance of storms, but also because we still were only halfway through our hike… Also, while we had thought it would be only be 22 mi, it was definitely going to be 24 mi, since it had been 12 mi just to get to the summit.
Another ridge photo, because, as I might have mentioned, I love this ridge.
We reversed our steps back down the ridge until we got to wear the ridge became more vertical. We had to down climb an easy fifth class section, which was a bit unnerving for me. Leo made sure to point out where I should put my feet as I came down. From there, I noticed a large horn that looked perfect for a rappel station, and I was surprised that there wasn’t one there already. We had some extra slings and cordelette with us, as well as some rappel rings, so I suggested we make use of them and set up a rappel station. Turns out, neither of us had ever done that before, so we were both a little excited to do it, despite the fact that it would mean we would leave gear. It would have been possible for us to down climb further and potentially find an existing rappel station, but we decided to just go for it. Leo tied his cordelette around the horn, passing a single rap ring through it, and we both rappelled down. Our rope was long enough to get us into the gully formed by the arete and the peak.
Summit selfie, as always.
Down in the gully, there was a bit of scrambling, followed by easy, sandy slopes to get us back down. We continued down, down veering towards the direction we had come up. After descending close to a thousand feet, we reached the nice forested terrain. This made the going quite quick, and we cruised down until we reached the sandy plateau. Terrain that had taken us hours to come up had been a breeze to reverse.
Cool perspective on the ridge. (Photo by Leo).
By the time we reached the plateau, both of us were glad to have a break from downhill terrain, which can be tiring on your knees. We headed across the plateau, crossed the creek, and reached the saddle we had past earlier in the day. The whole time, the clouds were getting darker and moving closer. We started to feel an occasional rain drop, but nothing very alarming. We just kept moving, wanting to get ourselves back to the trail.
Golden hour light on Mount Starr King. (Photo by Leo).
Next, we reached the dead forest. We didn’t pass it quite as quickly this time, now much more tired than we had been in the morning. Still, we made decent time, and it was nothing but joy once it was over. We were now within ten minutes of the trail! When we reached the trail, we took a longer break to snack. I had been hoping to fill water here, but my water filtration drops had somehow all leaked from their container earlier in the day, so we were stuck with the water we had carried in. Thankfully, Leo had brought four liters with him, which was enough to get us through the day, combined with my two and a half liters. I still took the opportunity to soak my feet in the stream for a few minutes before took on the last six mi back to the trailhead, since my feet were starting to ache. It was nearing 6pm now, and even though we had made it back to the trailhead before dark (good), we still had a ways to go (bad).
Hiking into the sunset. (Photo by Leo).
The next six miles were pretty uneventful. Despite how tired we were, we made good time. The clouds definitely turned into a storm, but we got lucky and somehow weren’t hit by it in any significant way. We did hear thunder echoing behind us though for the whole hike back. Once we reached Illilouette Creek, we saw many backpackers and chatted with a few who had asked us where we’d been. From there, it was a miserable three miles of interspersed uphill back to the car. The one saving grace was how gorgeous the sunset was mixed with the storm clouds. The light all around us, hitting Starr King, and even hitting the peaks in the Clark Range, was incredible.
Looking back at Clark through the storm clouds. (Photo by Leo).
In our last climb up the trailhead (it gains 300 ft in the last third of a mile — whoever made this trail is just mean), it finally started raining legitimately, which kept us pushing to the car. We made it to the car by 8:15pm (having hiked the last 20 mins by headlamp), and started driving to the valley immediately, hoping to get some pizza at Curry Village. We made it in time (they didn’t close till 10pm), and enjoyed the mediocre pizza quite thoroughly. Once we were done eating, I was exhausted, but we knew we couldn’t sleep in the valley without having a very high chance of getting caught. Leo somehow had the energy to drive us all the way out of the park, where we slept one of the most wonderful sleeps just outside the west entrance. It had been an incredible day, topped with an incredible sleep. The next day we just relaxed in the river by the valley, content with the one massive peak we had taken on the day before. I think I could get used to this one mega hard day, one relaxing day trip style.
Incredible sunset colors. (Photo by Leo).