Wednesday, July 29th:Rest Day in Reno

After reorganizing the gear we had tiredly thrown in the car the night before, we made our way towards Hirobi Sushi in Reno.  We made a quick stop at a small coffee shop along the way, and arrived at Hirobi around 11:00.  Hirboi was AMAZING!  For $18 each, we had all-you-can-eat made-to-order sushi, along with appetizers, warm sake, and a desert.  Carlos, our sushi chef was awesome.  He became as excited to make us sushi as we were to eat it.  Before leaving he even told us that if we were ever in Reno again we could stay with him and his wife.  Oddly, this is not the first time we have had people give us offers like that!  

Bellies full of deliciousness, we headed to Sierra Trading Post to browse for deals on outdoors gear/clothing before we parked ourselves at some tables outside to utilize the free Wi-Fi. We booked a hotel room at one of the casinos for the night, excited to shower, relax in the hot tub, and sleep in a real bed.

Tuesday, July 28th: Cathedral Peak

When our alarms went off, we silenced them and went back to sleep.  It was cold, we were tired and sore, and we only had 6 pitches of climbing and a few downhill miles to walk when we were done.  We enjoyed a lazy morning, eating breakfast, drinking coffee, and packing up camp.  

Eventually, we made our way towards Cathedral Peak, stopping along the way to filter water for the rest of the day.  We stashed our packs in the trees below the climb before scrambling up to the start.  There were several parties already on the wall, so it took a few minutes to decide where we wanted to begin.  Cathedral Peak has many variations of routes on it, which provide many opportunities for faster parties to pass slower parties before arriving at the bottleneck right before the summit. 

As Dave led the way, we made good time and passed several parties along the way.  After two full-rope length pitches we found ourselves at the chimney.  The chimney, which often has a line of parties waiting for it, was about to be ours to climb.  After two more short pitches, we found ourselves on a large, comfortable ledge.  The ledge was large enough for all of us to lay on!  We ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as we waited for the climbers ahead of us to climb the next pitch.  About a half hour after reaching the ledge, Dave was able to start up the next pitch.  Alex had only fed out about 50ft of rope when Dave came to a stop.  It sounded like he had hit a traffic jam.  As another party showed up on the ledge next to ours, they said we were VERY close to the summit.  As the time passed, the sunny ledge turned to a shaded one, and Alex and Doug needed to put on extra layers of clothing… this meant a puffy for Alex and a shirt for Doug.  Alex sat on the ledge, with Dave on belay, for an hour and a half before it was finally time for her to climb.  He must not have been far from the summit because very little rope was fed out before he called “Off belay!”  By this time, six other people were queued up behind us. 

As Alex made her way up the pitch, she popped up over a block to see Dave sitting on the airy summit across a several foot gap from her.  The summit was small, capable of holding no more than four people at a time.  Back in the sun, the temperatures quickly changed, and Alex was roasting in her puffy and couldn’t wait to take it off again.  Dave explained that we had to wait for so long because the party ahead, two guys and a 12-year-old boy, found themselves on the summit with the bolt used to rappel missing.  Apparently, this bolt gets chopped periodically, but the downclimb off the summit isn’t too bad.  The party, however, seemed uncomfortable with the situation and spent a good deal of time discussing what they were going to do.  Dave let them alone, but intervened to help when they were going to lower the boy off a single nut.  Dave offered his help, moved to the summit, added another nut, and backed it up with more gear to assist the party.  After Doug arrived at the summit, we took a quick picture before Dave rappelled down, followed by Alex.  Doug cleaned the cams, before rappelling down himself. 

 We didn't get the summit pics we were hoping for due to the line waiting behind us!

Below the summit, we began negotiating our way along the descent ledges on the back of the peak.  Apparently, sitting on the ledge for 2 hours made Doug rammy.  He tried to convince us that we should still climb the Eichorn Pinnacle, a formation on the peak we originally were going to climb, but Alex and Dave had written off since it was now 4:30.  We thought he was being ridiculous, it was late, we were tired, hungry, and still had to hike out.  There was still hope that we could drive out of the park in time to get the fish tacos at The Mobil we had been talking about with other parties on the climb!  After a few minutes of debate, he conceded, and we made our way off the traversing ledges to the scramble up and around the peak to the front side.

Eichorn Pinnacle

Back at our packs, we had a snack, relaxed for a few minutes, and loaded the climbing gear into our bags.  Doug lead us towards the trailhead, navigating through the woods and along the creek until it met up with the trail.  We moved quickly despite our heavy packs and tired bodies.  Within an hour we found ourselves back at the trailhead.  Joyously, we dropped our packs, exchanged approach shoes for flipflops, and removed our dirty, sweaty clothes.   As we reorganized, the guys with the young boy appeared, somehow they wound up behind us.  They thanked Dave again for his help before heading out.  Once our car was packed up, we headed toward The Mobil.

At The Mobil, we each had an order of fish tacos, and shared an Asian salmon salad, and an order of fries.  Ice cream also followed to round out our meal.  The party with the boy was also at The Mobil, and we wound up talking with them until about 9:00PM.  Back in the car, we drove towards Reno, stopping at a national forest dispersed camping area to sleep for the night.  

Monday, July 27th: Matthes Crest Traverse

We woke at 5:30AM, and left the warmth of our sleeping bags to get ready for our climb.  We donned hats and gloves as we ate our oatmeal, drank our coffee, and made final preparations to our packs.  By 7:00AM we were ready to leave camp.  Doug left a few minutes ahead of us to stash a bear bin with our dinner ingredients, stove, and fishing gear in the meadow between our climb and our camp.  Despite Alex and Dave’s discontentment with the idea of heading down to the lake after climbing, Doug still stashed all the gear.  We knew it was going to be a long day on the rock and would likely just want to get back to camp, eat, and sleep. 

Down the slabs and scree from camp and then over the meadow, and through the woods to talus fields we went.  We found ourselves at the start of the south end of the ridge, but we were Doug-less.  We decided to rope up and figured he would soon appear.  Almost on cue, we spotted him working his way up the talus field to us.  Alex put Dave on belay, and he started up the first of three vertical pitches to gain the ridge around 8:00AM.  After gaining the 500 foot tall ridge via the enjoyable starting pitches, we began simulclimbing our way along the ridge, at times setting anchors to transfer gear from 3^rd to leader, and at times putting each other on belay. 

The climbing was awesome and provided amazing views, while being often exposed, exciting, and mentally exhausting.  It was very different from our typical climbing; often finding ourselves having to down climb the rollercoaster ridge or navigate along the knife-edge ridge.

 

LOOK, MOM! I USE SUNBLOCK! 

Around 2:00PM, we found ourselves in the vicinity of the North and South Summits.  At the time, we were not sure if we had passed the South Summit, but spied some rappel stations below.  The common descent point is the North Summit, but since we saw an out, we decided to take it it rather than continuing on to the rock ahead that looked sketchy.   We were all tired and hungry, so we opted to downclimb to the first rap station below.  Dave down-lead to the tree/bush rappel, followed by Alex, and Doug took up the tail cleaning the gear as he went.   Two double rope rappels landed us all on the scree field at the base of the wall.  We carefully navigated our way down the loose scree and into the meadow where Doug had stashed dinner. 

The idea of walking down to the lake to fish, and then having to walk alllll they way back up to camp did not appeal to our tired and hungry bodies, so we convinced Doug to start making dinner right there.  It may have taken forever to make, but two hours later Doug provided us with a delicious, filling dinner or cream-chipped-bacon with potatoes, onions and garlic.  Alex and Dave may have snuck a few pieces of bacon while the meal was in process, but what hungry person can resists a pile of freshly cooked crunchy bacon?

As soon as dinner was ready, Doug retreated to sleep on a boulder without even eating.  Apparently his stomach was angry with him for something he consumed.  Meanwhile, Alex and Dave feasted on an adjacent boulder, feeling bad for Doug.  He really must not be feeling well, who could resist this meal? 

After cleaning up the dinner dishes, and packing up all the gear, Alex and Dave woke Doug around 7:30PM, letting him know it was time to walk back to camp.  He just wanted to lie there for a bit longer, so Alex and Dave gathered his gear and made their way back to camp with it.  Though the walk was not far, after our long day, the uphill seemed brutal.  As we cleaned up gear and prepared for sleep, a tired, pale looking Doug appeared.  Fortunate for him, he was now ready to enjoy his dinner and was soon looking and feeling much better.   Exhausted from our day, we all were in bed before sunset.

Sunday, July 26th: Prepping and Hiking to the Cathedral Range

Sunday was prepped to be a busy day.  We wanted to get some climbing done in the morning, we needed to organize and pack our gear, and we needed to hike to Echo Lakes to set up camp (about 4 miles).  Our desire to climb West Cracks must have rubbed off, because this was now Doug's choice for the day, though we thought it was a bit much with everything else we needed to accomplish.  After waking and packing up our campsite, it was still cold (30’s) at 7:00AM.  Crack climbs are no fun with freezing hands, so we decided to drive to the Tuolumne Store picnic tables, make pancakes, and have coffee.  There was a lot of smoke in the air, even filling up some valley areas.  We later learned this was not a local fire, but smoke blowing in from a fire in Nevada.

After eating, we decided to just head over to Pothole Dome, do a few topropes, and then pack up.  Since Alex and Dave had climbed there before, we setup at the 2^nd area, so we would have something different to climb on.  After Alex ran a few lines, Dave jumped on next and decided to climb like a lizard, running, jumping, bounding, and scurrying both vertically and horizontally along the slabs.  After Doug had his turn at it and cleaned up the anchors, we headed back to the car.  We stopped at the store again for some cream cheese for our lunch.

We drove up the road to an large pull-off, laid down a tarp, and starting organizing gear for a backpacking/fishing/climbing trip.  The plan was to hike from the Cathedral Lakes Trailhead to the climbers trail that would take us past Budd Lake and set up camp near Echo Lake.  We would fish along the way, either at Budd Lake or Echo Lake. 

We moved to the trailhead, stashed our extra food bins in the food lockers, and hit the trail around 2:00 PM.  Despite the fairly short length and moderate terrain, we were moving slow and stopping often.  Dave and Doug had ridiculous packs on their backs that slowed them to a pace that was quite relaxed for Alex with her reasonable pack.  Alex took pleasure and enjoyed this rare hiking moment.  Soon after the trail turned to flat granite slabs, we met a park ranger and a volunteer and talked to them for a bit.  They had been out at Budd Lake eradicating an invasive species in the lake… trout.   I guess we won’t be fishing there!  They also suggested a sushi restaurant in Reno that has great all-you-can-eat sushi.  This sounded like a great rest day activity for Wednesday!  We could drive three hours for that… and maybe even get a hotel… showers and laundry would be fantastic!

We continued on our way; soon find ourselves at Budd Lake.  We dropped our packs to take a short break, and consult the map.  At this point the trail we had been following along a creek faded away and we just needed to head in the direction of the not yet visible Matthes Crest and Echo Lake.  From where we sat, we could see Cathedral Peak and hear the climbers on it shouting commands to each other.   Doug led us along the edge of the Echo Peaks, and soon we were in a meadow.  Matthes Crest should be coming into view any time now!

 

As both Matthes Crest and Echo Lake came into view, we decided we would camp up on the ridge, rather than make the walk all the way down to the lake.  Dave and Doug were particularly beaten up by the hike, and this would be a good location for us.  By not walking down to the lake to set up camp, we would not have to walk back up the loose scree with heavy packs in two days.  There was brief discussion about fishing… but the lake seemed farther than our tired legs wanted to go.   We picked a sheltered area amongst some trees to protect us from the wind and allow Doug to set up his hammock.  As Alex and Dave went to retrieve water, Doug began to prepare dinner. 

It sounded like an odd combination: pasta, cantaloupe, tomatillos, onions, garlic, and white wine, but we trusted Doug he makes awesome camp food… he’s only let us down once! This past winter, while we were snowshoeing to Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks, Doug prepared us a dinner of pasta and salmon at our lean-to.  Unfortunately, he was unable to find packets of salmon, so instead brought a sketchy looking can of it.  Worst. Dinner. Ever. It was so terrible we could not eat it; it tasted bad and was full of bones.  Luckily for us we had enough other things along to eat instead. 

Doug succeeded in making a delicious dinner, and after our bellies were as full as they were going to get… not full enough… we prepared our packs with food and gear for climbing the Matthes Crest the following morning.  Before heading to bed for the night, we spent some time taking pictures of the fantastic sunset views we had from our camp.

Alex and Dave settled into their tent, while Doug settled in under his tarp.  We all figured he would stay warmer in the 30-something-degree night chill on the ground with the tarp than hanging in a hammock.