Ice Climbing at Lee Vining and June Lake

View Album

Headed out to Lee Vining with the mountaineering club for some ice climbing. We got a big hotel suite split across about ten people.

The first day we headed out to Lee Vining canyon and climbed at Chouinard Falls. The second day a smaller group of us headed out to June Lake to climb at Horsetail Falls. We shifted our focus on to a north facing alpine route when the ice at Horsetail was clearly unstable. Read full post...

The second day at June Lake ended up being a lot of fun. The route we found had a water ice slope (with a crevasse at the bottom) which led up to a steep hard snow slope, followed by another section of vertical water ice.

Tom led the first section, followed by Will and then Ray, each progressively setting an anchor higher on the climb and then lowering or rappelling down. At the end of the day, Will built a v-thread and cleaned all the screws at the top anchor before rappelling down the route.

Mt. Tallac N Bowl

View Album

Kevin, my dad and I hit the trail before sunrise (5am) with the intent of easing our ascent on a frozen snowpack. Our route up was from spring creek road to the south ridge. Read full post...

We reached the summit by noon and started looking at different descent options (there are a lot). After scoping out the cross--which looked serious but good--we decided on the north bowl.

The descent was perfect. About 3500 vertical feet in perfect powder, constant sluffs on the steeper slopes but a generally stable snowpack. The top of the bowl is wide open and drops you onto another slope with light tree coverage. At the bottom of the bowl, we stayed to our left on the ridge and finished only minutes from the car.