Or should I say,  Mt.Coldness!

 

Some notes: This trip took place November 9th-10th. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, so I only had my phone camera to take pictures.

This trip, my climbing partner was Susan. Here’s a picture of her:

Susan and I met on mountain project. After meeting up a couple times at LinkedIn in sunnyvale, we discussed planes on different trips we could do. We had first settled on doing north peak + conness combo, but that seemed like a big undertaking. Then we decided on Mt. Conness West Ridge. We again originally wanted to do the approach from Young lakes, camping overnight one night at the lakes. But that had closed 120 to overnight camping at this time. So, we were stuck doing the approach from Saddlebag lake/campground.

These Friday evening drives out to the Sierras are draining on me, and don’t work too swell when you have to wake up early(think 4 or 5 am) the next morning. So we did something different this time: We decided to leave Friday *morning*, work from Oakdale(specifically a starbucks), and then do the rest of of drive around 4pm.

This worked out really well. We found a nice starbucks with wifi and tables. Here’s the location:

For future trips I think I’ll split up the drive like this. It makes the drive a bit easier by both splitting it up and missing the bay area friday evening traffic.

That night, we opted to sleep in my car. It was a bit cramped, and honestly, I think two people is pushing it when sleeping in the back of the car. The thing that makes it so hard is that we usually have big bags of stuff, and there’s really nowhere to put them when the seats and pushed all the way forward. I was going to get a roof top box for my car to solve that problem, but the garage I park in couldn’t fit it.

But I digress.

In the parking lot, we frustratingly untangled some rope:

Susan is a big fan of olive bread, so we got some of that as well:

And I got a burrito that was bigger than my face:

We then drove down to saddlebag lake and camped. That evening there were a bunch of people…partying? outside of our car. They kept me up for a couple hours just laughing their asses off. Who was laughing and at what and in the middle of the winter in a parking lot…beats me.

That morning, we woke up at I think around 4ish am. We were out on the trail by 5.

It was. FUCK. ING. COLD. I had my small mitts on and my snow pants and two layers of jackets. I had to keep my hands in my pocket for the first hour of the hike because it was so cold. I think Susan had long johns on as she was cold in.

We took lots of pictures on the hike. This one was my favorite one. Thanks Susan!

Here’s Susan:

Approach to conness:

A cool picture of me Susan took:

More hiking and hiking, and we reached the ridge of Mt Conness. A little below the ridge, three was a small wind-break shelter that we hung out in for a bit:

Now, this route is weird, because you get to a ridge/plateau near the top of mt conness. You can see the summit and it’s about a 20 minute walk to the top. However, instead of going to the top, you walk across the plateau, go down the the other side of the mountain, and the climb back up the west ridge.

 

Here’s a picture of the plateau(not from me). You can see the summit on the right, and we walked down on the left side to the west approach of the summit:

It’s a bit contrived I know(which is why we originally wanted to do the approach from young lakes), but hey, climbers always make contrived routes!

After walking across the plateu and going down a bit, I took a picture of the harding route:

The Harding route is interesting. According to Susan, a guy tried to solo it many years ago and died on it. Because it was during the summer, the blood stains stained the rock and could be found by the climbers the next season around. Also, Peter Croft onsight solo’d it, which is insane.

It’s a 5.10c trad route, so I have no plans on doing it anytime soon.

After that, we continued on our way down. It was lots of rock scrambling. Susan berated me for going ahead of her, rightfully so. I was anxious to get to the bottom of the route so I was scouting ahead. I was only about100-200 yards ahead of her, however I should really stuck with her the whole time. At one point she fell and hurt her hip a bit and I felt bad not being there to help.

 

Finally, have going too far down, and getting confused where the route starts (“at the base of the toe, right where all the scree is”, or something along those lines is what the guidebook said), we finally found the start.

Here’s a picture of Susan near the start:

The route started out low class 5. It looked pretty easy, so Susan and I started soloing up. A bit of the way up, I reached some harder level 5 stuff. Susan was off to my right. I couldn’t get over to her, so I was forced to down climb. This shit was really fucking unpleasant. I was cursing the whole way down, pissed at myself for overestimating my abilities. I was in my approach shoes which made it really hard. Eventually I reached susan and we setup a belay.

I used a bunch of nuts for the anchor. Susan lead the first pitch. By this time, another party had joined us. They were starting from below us, but we were a bit slow getting setup and changed into our climbing shoes, so they quickly passed us on the left.

Now here’s the scary part.

As the leader of the other group was climbing up, he was making good progress. He was trying to find the route, and tried one way, backtracked a bit, then tried another way.

Then he fell.

I sorta saw it in slow motion. He fell what looked like 5 feet, and then slowed down, and then bounched slowly off his back on a ledge. Luckily he was going slowly and was wearing a backpack, so that absorbed most of the impact. He gear held.

“Thank god for good gear placements!” or something along those lines he said. “You should buy your belayer a beer!” I yelled out to him.

But seriously, WHAT THE FUCK. We were on low class 5 stuff, with ledges and shit all over. NOT a good place to fall. And REALLY EASY terrian regardless. Probably low class 5 stuff That guy had no business being up here taking falls. I had no business being up here etiher probably.

So that was freaking scary.

Anyways Susan continued leading the first pitch. There was a point or two were I thought she would fall, but she made it through just fine. We got to a ledge.

And then I lead the next pitch.

I racked up, said “on belay”, “climbing” and I was off.

And I fucking flew up that route.

I had never felt so good leading something in my life. I was literally running up the route. Stemming this, Lie-backing that, a jam or two sprinkled in. Susan said something like “you were a rope gun” on that route. And I felt amazing.

Near the top of the pitch, I got stuck on this section with face holds and not much pro. I tried placing a cam and it just pulled right out when I tugged on it. I tried pacing a nut, which was marginal at best as well. I put the cam back in in a position that didn’t pull out(but I wasn’t confident in), and I was about to head up. Luckily Susan and I had radios on so I think I asked her where I was supposed to go. She said there was a ledge to my left. When I looked down and to my left, I saw the ledge she was talking about. So I downclimbed the 5 feet or so to get to that ledge and moved over.

After that, a bit more easy climbing, and we got to the top of that pitch.

After looking back on the top, I think I might have combined pitches 2 and 3 in my super pitch. It was so good though I didn’t want to stop. I feel a bit bad for stealing Susan’s pitch, but there really weren’t any great places to stop before the place I stopped at.

After that Susan followed me up. I think I climbed it faster than she followed it; more of a testament to the speed I went up than anything.

And that was the only two technical pitches we did. Everything else was basically solo’d or roped. Susan showed me a cool way to coil the rope so we could walk with it between us. I forgot what it was called but it’s basically what you use when you simul climb.

After that it was a lot of low class 5 soloing to the top. At this point, Susan was really feeling the altitude and slowing down a bit. But honestly I have never seen someone persevere through pain as much as she did. We slowly worked our way up the easy 5th class stuff, taking pictures along the way:

Note you can see how smokey it looks; this is when the Camp fires were going on, and I guess the smoke made it all the way to the valley. I thought we’d be clear of the smoke, but noppppe.

There were a few class 5 moves sprinkled in on the soloing. It kept it interesting.

Here’s a  video of us on the knife ridge.

This ridge was amazing because it truly was a “knife ridge”. Off to our right was the harding route, which basically is a straight drop to the ground. Again, apologize for not having any pictures.

Around this time we see a free soloer passing us. He seems like he’s having a blast, and we exchange pleasantries.

Finally we make it to the top. It’s around 4 pm at this point, so we’ve been up for a good 12 hours. Susan’s feeling like crap, we’r both cold, so we spend a few minutes on the peak and make our way down. Here’s a pano from the top:

We make our way down. We stop again at the wind shelter on the other side of the plateu, and Susan and I change into better clothes. Susan pulls out her handwarmers which I’m extremely jealous of.

At around this point it basically goes completely dark. We turn on our headlamps.

At this point I also remark that the group we had been climbing with, we still hadn’t seem them up to this point. I was a bit worried from them; we never saw them coming up, or coming down in our headlamps.

Susan and I spend the next few hours navigating in the dark. Patience is running thin and we’re both uncomfortable and just want to be done. Finally at around 9pm, we roll back into our camp, done with the adventure. Yippie! Susan and I both agree to get a hotel for the night rather than spending another night in the cold of my car.

The next day we wake up, sort gear, get a delicious breakfast, talk a bit about future plans, and drive home. We weren’t really feeling climbing that day, both of us exhausted and satisfied with the adventure the day before.

Susan I had a great time on this trip, and I’m looking forward to tackling many more sierra peaks this coming season!

Summary

Route: Mt Conness, West Ridge, 5.6 Grade IV

Pitches: 2-3, many pitches low 5 solo

Distance: 8ish miles

Time: 5 am to 9 pm, 16 hours

Fun type: Type 2+ fun

Coldness level: ExTrEmE