Forum Index > Trip Reports > 49 Peaks in 29 Days - June 3 to July 2, 2022
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Gimpilator
infinity/21M



Joined: 12 Oct 2006
Posts: 1684 | TRs | Pics
Location: Edmonds, WA
Gimpilator
infinity/21M
PostMon Jul 04, 2022 2:10 pm 
If you’re interested in only one peak or region, here’s an index so you can scroll directly to that. Sherman Peak - 8656' Fairview Peak - 8303' Desatoya Peak - 9973' Desatoya North Peak - 9965' New Pass Peak - 9002' North Shoshone Peak - 10,313' Job Peak - 8785' Mount Grant - 11,280' Galena Peak - 9400' Mount Siegel - 9451' Adams Peak - 8199' Virginia Peak - 8366' Kumiva Peak - 8220' Mount Rose - 10,776' Church Peak - 10,601' Mount Houghton - 10,490' Tamarack Peak - 9897' Freel Peak - 10,881' Jobs Sister - 10,823' Jobs Peak - 10,633' Ralston Peak - 9235' Hawkins Peak - 10,024' Pyramid Peak - 9983 Mount Hoffmann - 10,850' Cathedral Peak - 10,911 Mount Warren - 12,327' Mount Humphreys - 13,986' Miller Mountain - 8729' Hamaker Mountain - 6580' Aspen Butte - 8208'' Pelican Butte - 8036' Brown Mountain - 7340' Stukel Mountain - 6525' Swan Lake Point - 7260' Gearhart Mountain - 8370' Lookout Rock - 6508' Odell Butte - 7032' Hamner Butte - 7098' Davis Mountain - 6625' Royce Mountain - 6148' Lookout Mountain - 6220' Round Mountain – 5900' Maiden Peak - 7818' Pilot Butte - 4138' Mount Washington - 7794' Black Crater - 7251' Rogers Peak - 3706' Goat Mountain - 4965' Lakeview Peak – 3868' It was too hot to hike in Vegas. Time for the PNW. It seemed like a good idea to get some peaks along the way. I threw a list of 45 mountains together. In hindsight I got 24 of those. The rest was improvised on the fly. June 3 Sherman Peak – 8656' Sort of an average desert peak, approached from the west.
Fairview Peak – 8303' Was able to drive to the saddle between the first two peaks. The road continues to the third and highest, but it looked to steep and loose, so I walked the last mile and a half.
6-4 Desatoya Peak – 9973' On this hike, I met fellow peakbagger Maxton and his peakbagger-in-training son. Nice open country with expansive views. I traversed to the main summit before visiting the north peak.
Desatoya North Peak – 9965' Yep. New Pass Peak – 9002' Drive-up. Excellent road.
6-5 North Shoshone Peak – 10,313' This one feels kind out out there. Probably because it is. I parked near the mouth of the canyon and walked the whole road before coming to the northwest ridge. The original USGS survey tripod still stands, a rare sight.
6-6 Job Peak – 8785' This is an awesome peak. The route is short and steep. It’s a big mountain for the area and a real looker. I was surprised to see Greg Gerlach had been there just a few days before me. We are often crossing paths like that.
Mount Grant – 11,280' I picked up the gate key from the army depot. You have to call a week or two in advanced and pass a criminal background check. I am not a crook. From the parking area, the summit scramble looks excessively loose and down-sloping. The brain wants there to be a different way, maybe traverse around the left. But, no. What you see is the way to go, and it’s better than it looks. The view down to Walker Lake from the top is just wow.
6-7 Galena Peak – 9400' Went over this named lump on the way to the real peak. Mount Siegel – 9451' So the drive around the north side of this mountain to the standard east trail is a no go for most cars. I explored the Dutch Canyon road, starting from the pass above Pine Nut Creek. I was able to make it to 6800 feet, but some washouts and mud puddles abraded my nerves. A good route choice for standard vehicles, but consider stopping before the road deteriorates. Southwest slope and south ridge.
6-8 Adams Peak – 8199' Short hike. Two summits of nearly equal height. The mountain has burned recently, which makes the brush at the end more trivial than it used to be. While the summit has melted, its still waterproof and fully functional.
Virginia Peak – 8366' Drive-up. Afterward I went to search for the oldest known rock art in North America. After studying the satellite maps, I had a pretty good idea of where to look. Some of these petroglyphs have been carbon dated as 14,800 years old.
6-9 Kumiva Peak – 8220' It was sort of becoming too hot for this area, but Kumiva looked so nice, I couldn’t leave it. Many of the mountains in this area have recently had a boom of Mormon Crickets. Sometimes I encountered millions of them at a time. Hard if not impossible to not to step or drive on them. The north route makes use of a series of drainage's and then ascends the north side of the peak. Lot’s of wildflowers.
Mormon crickets
Mormon crickets
Mormon crickets
Mormon crickets
6-10 Mount Rose – 10,776' Easy trail hike. Good views of northern Lake Tahoe. I was on the summit so early in the morning I decided to check out some other nearby peaks before heading down.
summit marmot
summit marmot
poser
poser
Church Peak – 10,601' A little bit of a scramble on the south ridge. There are some very odd rock mounds along the south ridge which remind me of ancient American Native graveyards I’ve seen elsewhere. They don’t appear to be a natural phenomenon.
Mount Houghton – 10,490' Descended to the snow-filled basin northeast of the peak and went up to join the east ridge.
Tamarack Peak – 9897' Up the west ridge and down the east ridge.
6-11 Freel Peak – 10,881' Another good trail hike. This time views of the south portion of Lake Tahoe.
the traverse to Jobs sister and Jobs
the traverse to Jobs sister and Jobs
Jobs Sister – 10,823' Straightforward ridge run from Freel to this peak.
Jobs
Jobs
Jobs Peak – 10,633' To get to Jobs, I had to descend about a thousand feet of steep sand on the east side of Jobs Sister. It made me really glad that I did the loop in a clockwise direction. Near the summit I encountered a very old man who was moving slow, and obviously not a hiker. When I stopped to talk to him he grinned and told me he had been living in the valley below for 50 years looking up at this peak. I told him he was only minutes away from the summit and that he was going to make it. His mountain-stoke was 100 percent and it charged me up with new energy for the descent.
6-12 Severe wind, rain, snow. John Stolk and his friend Ben from Germany were headed to the core Sierras. We joined forces several times during this trip to do peaks together. On this day, despite the bad weather, Ben went to hike Freel solo, which I had done the previous day, and John did years ago. That evening he told us he was actually blown off his feet more than once during the hike. 6-13 Ralston Peak – 9235' This is a great trail hike, and the best summit views of any peak I’ve done in the Tahoe area.

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Gimpilator
infinity/21M



Joined: 12 Oct 2006
Posts: 1684 | TRs | Pics
Location: Edmonds, WA
Gimpilator
infinity/21M
PostMon Jul 04, 2022 2:10 pm 
Hawkins Peak – 10,024' Ben and I drove the road system as high as you can go and hiked/scrambled the remaining few hundred feet to the summit.
6-14 Pyramid Peak – 9983' Sort of a long trail hike. 90 percent of the route has burned recently. The top part is a lengthy ridge of big talus.
another poser
another poser
Lover's Leap
Lover's Leap
6-15 Mount Hoffmann – 10,850' Chandler contacted me and said he was sick of all the rain. He decided to come down and meet me for a few days. I let him pick the peaks and routes. We hiked up Hoffmann, which had good scrambling to the top, but pretty bad mosquitoes the whole way. This was my 1000th P1000ft.
Half Dome down there
Half Dome down there
Cathedral Peak – 10,911’ I had assumed that we would do the standard scramble route on Cathedral, but Chandler wanted to climb the NE buttress which is 5 pitches. Sure, why not. I dusted off the climbing shoes, which are now so old the rubber is cracking off.
On the trail, some cute girls from New York couldn’t get enough of talking to us. They were excited to meet some "real" climbers. lol.gif I think my next strategy to meet an outdoor women will be to strap a rope on my pack and go marching around the parking lot in Yosemite.
After several miles of sweaty approach, we came to the base of the climb. There were some other parties on the wall, which helped us see the where the route goes. Since I’m really just a hiker, I never thought I’d be doing multi-pitch in Yosemite. The rock quality was superb. What do you expect? There was a wide variety of types of climbing. I found that I still enjoy cracks and chimneys, while slabby pitches, not so much.
splitter!
splitter!
photo by Chandler
photo by Chandler
photo by Chandler
photo by Chandler
photo by Chandler
photo by Chandler
Chandler led everything with confidence. It’s been amazing to watch younger guys like Josh, Fletcher, Chandler over the years. Whether it’s high-altitude glaciers, technical rock, or establishing new routes in the rugged Washington back-country, they spend time building on experiences and skills until they can do stuff which I can’t do. I look up to these guys and feel privileged to know them, and also a sense of pride, having seen where they started from.
photo by Chandler
photo by Chandler
photo by Chandler
photo by Chandler
I was pretty tired when I got to the top. There was some strange magic going on in my brain, having faced the climb, survived, and enjoyed it supreme. Taking in the views felt even more transcendent than the normal walk-up.
6-16 Mount Warren – 12,327' Chandler stayed an extra day to do one more peak. This would be his highest summit to date, but he frequently flies higher on the updrafts while paragliding. You leave the lower creek trail and ascend forested slopes to the alpine. Then ascend a southwest gully to an upper basin and final east ridge.
The wind was a whipping. The gully formed a compression zone and the gusts that hit us were over 60mph. One of them blew me into some sharp talus and I cut my thumb deeply open. While getting some bandages out of my pack, I sprayed blood all over the place. Later on when Chandler saw my pack, he said “that’s so metal”. It’s official. There are now youngsters with phrases I don’t fully understand.
Mono Lake
Mono Lake
6-17 More extreme wind, rain and snow. 6-18 Driving, shopping and packing day. Meet up with John and Ben. June 19-21 Mount Humphreys – 13,986' On day one we hiked to Piute Lake and made camp there.
On summit day we went over the pass and across the plateau to the rotten southwest face. There are a few different ways to gain the upper west ridge. We chose the far left gully. It’s steep and rotten. A chockstone is avoided by a smaller side gully on the far left. Near the top of that, crawl under another chockstone. Be cautious of loose rock everywhere.
The upper portion of the peak is solid rock with huge exposure. It’s rated as several hundred feet of scrambling class 3 and 4. But there’s at least a few moves of low 5 in my opinion. We used rope. Ben led it. Superb views, some of the best I’ve seen in the Sierra, but I haven’t done much yet.
photo by Ben
photo by Ben
photo by Ben
photo by Ben
zoom in to see the guys coming down the route
zoom in to see the guys coming down the route
Day 3, hike out. 6-22 Miller Mountain – 8729' We had planned for the Palisades next and John had permits, but a 4 day storm slammed into the sierras, so we split ways, and I drove just far enough northeast to get away from the weather. I did the longer route, since it sounded like the upper road might be too much for a car. In the southwest draw, I saw evidence of stone tool-making, which put me on high-alert for petroglyphs. I did manage to find some, which were high above the bottom of the wash. I wonder if any modern day people have discovered these before.
class 4 dryfall
class 4 dryfall
the Whites
the Whites
faded petroglyphs
faded petroglyphs
6-23 Hamaker Mountain – 6580' Awhile ago I was pondering how many P2k’s a person might be able to get in a single day. In a place like Oregon, where most of the peaks are easy, it seems like 10 should be possible. As it turned out, I could have done 7, but that would have had me searching for a camp spot around midnight, so I called it done at 6. This first peak, and two others, were drive-to or very near the summit.
Aspen Butte – 8208' South route through the forest. A bit of snow on the crater rim.

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Gimpilator
infinity/21M



Joined: 12 Oct 2006
Posts: 1684 | TRs | Pics
Location: Edmonds, WA
Gimpilator
infinity/21M
PostMon Jul 04, 2022 2:11 pm 
Pelican Butte – 8036' Very rough road. I drove until I hit snow at 6900’ and hiked the rest.
Brown Mountain – 7340' This peak is really unpleasant! The majority of the slopes are piles of rugged lava talus. There’s no real base to the slopes because it’s all talus and open spaces. Every step is a matter of calculated balance.
nasty lava talus
nasty lava talus
Stukel Mountain – 6525' Drive-up.
Swan Lake Point – 7260' Long drive-up with excellent roads. Another 6 peak day. smile.gif 6-24 Gearhart Mountain – 8370' I recall the day Gearhart burned last year. I was at home looking at the fire maps. Bummer. What condition would the trail be in? I almost didn’t go after all the soot and ashes already on this trip. Ultimately I decided to suck it up.
The first mile passes through some rock formations. Then the trail drops into some shady forest. I noticed something odd sticking out of the ground like a brown corncobb. Could it be? Once I saw the first one, I realized they were everywhere. Hundreds of thousands. Morchella aka morel. Since I had never seen one in all the years of hiking, I texted a few friends for verification. When I told them how numerous they are, they came unglued. Nobody else seemed to know about it.
On my way to the summit, I marked waypoints in my GPS to indicate where they started and where they ended. 2 miles of trail fully loaded, upslope and downslope. I could easily pick 5 lbs in 30 minutes of work. It takes difficult mental adjustment for me to give up assigned hiking days, but I decided to sacrifice 2 days, since this is a rare thing I’m not likely to encounter again.
saw some dust devil's
saw some dust devil's
6-25 Lookout Rock – 6508' Mushroom picking day. 40+lbs wet and maybe 15 dry. I also made a short detour to explore a lookout en route to the morchella trove. Hiked many miles while making laps, hefting fungi bags back to the car. According the waypoints, I only worked the first 1/3 mile out of 2 miles of mushrooms. If I had spent 6 days picking and drying, I could have easily picked over 100lbs. While making one of the lasts hauls, I noticed that another creature was in the area, because it’s tracks through the ash crossed mine.
morchella madness
morchella madness
bear
bear
6-26 Mushroom drying day. Sunlight does the trick. Spore patterns left on all my clean cloth and tarps. Almost like tie-dye. Groovy and far-out!
14 gallon bags full of dried shrooms, at least a pound each, not bad for a day's work
14 gallon bags full of dried shrooms, at least a pound each, not bad for a day's work
6-27 Initially tried to drive into Diamond Peak. The east road is in horrendous shape. Only made it 2 miles and that was seriously taking chances. The south road still had too much snow t 6500 feet. I spent the rest of the day trying to get to different alternatives, but gates and fallen logs made the day a total loss. I should have known when I spotted a skunk that morning that it was a symbol for getting skunked. You win some, you lose some. 6-28 Odell Butte – 7032' Frustrated about the Diamond debacle, I spent the pent up energy “dumpster-diving” a bunch of smaller peaks, mostly old cinder-cones. The first one was a road-walk from locked gate. All the Oregon lookout peaks are staffed currently, but I didn’t take the take to talk to the lookout peronel in the tower. Nice little scramble at the top, if you don’t use the stairs.
Hamner Butte – 7098' Standard eastern slopes. Got tangled up and fell off a log in some bad brush, but no injury. Nice little scramble at the top.
no injury, thumbs up
no injury, thumbs up
Diamond
Diamond
Davis Mountain – 6625' Drive-up.
Royce Mountain – 6148' You can drive to within a hundred yards of the summit. Lookout Mountain – 6220' Road walk with a minor scramble at the top.
Round Mountain – 5900' Locked gate road-walk. I talked for awhile to Shannon who operates the viewing tower and fire reporting communications network. Very cool lady.
6-29 Maiden Peak – 7818' The east approach trail is pleasant, but I encountered snow again around 6600 feet. Did not use the crampons or axe. A funny thing happened during the descent. A carpenter ant crawled into my boot when I was taking a break and airing the feet. It refused to come out. Every time I tried to to shake it out, it would crawl back in.
Diamond  :bawl:
Diamond bawl.gif
Pilot Butte – 4138' Drive up cinder cone downtown Bend, suggested by John. Killer views.
6-30 Mount Washington – 7794' Since we got booted out of the Sierras a bit early, John was searching for a last bit of glory before Ben had to fly back to Germany for a Tinder date. He suggested Washington. Great idea! We camped near Big Lake where the bear grass was plentiful and the mosquitoes intense.
We started hiking from the youth camp which saves a few miles round-trip. Did not encounter a soul on the PCT. The climbers path is very well established, however it was mostly snow covered. We gained the north ridge and our view of the peak could be described as intimidating.
After negotiating snow moats and maneuvering around the edges of steeper snow slopes, we came to the base of the climbing route. Searching through the beta, we correctly skipped the first alcove and proceeded to a second alcove nearer the peak, with an obvious and easy looking diagonal ramp. This ramp goes someplace unpleasant, so we climbed the less obvious and more difficult ramp above it. At the top of the ramp is the first crux. A short chimney with an overhanging exit at the top. Ben led this with confidence and belayed us off of horns. Above that a series of dirty loose ledges allowed us to make vertical progress. The route might stay along the more solid crest of the ridge, but we trended to the right somewhat because it was less vertical. Overall, the two crux moves we pulled were very short and the rest of the route was mostly class 2 with some 3. Having said that, I would not do this peak without a rope. There’s just enough exposure and loose rock to make it truly dangerous.
photo by Ben
photo by Ben
Three Fingered Jack and Jefferson
Three Fingered Jack and Jefferson
We were all pretty excited on the summit. It’s a wonderful feeling to take a dark mystery and turn it into something known and familiar. I felt pretty lucky to find myself up there with a couple of friends. To further sweeten the deal, this peak made my p-index 600 (a nerdy metric some peakbaggers keep track of).
photo by Ben
photo by Ben
7-1 Black Crater – 7251' I wanted to see the big face of Washington before leaving the area. While driving to Black Crater, google maps indicated that the road was closed. As I looked more into that, I found that the hwy was seasonal and didn’t open until July 1st. Well, lucky me.
Washington
Washington
The upper third of the mountain was snow covered. Instead of hiking a switchback trail, I hiked straight up, which saved time.
Rogers Peak – 3706' The hills were crawling with droves of people for the holiday weekend and traffic on the back country roads was frustrating. I accidentally drove to the wrong starting point. But as I looked more into that, I found that the old starting point was now gated much further down, so this was actually the correct starting point. Lucky me again. Mostly a road hike with a little brush at the top. I disturbed a sleeping nighthawk along the way.
nighthawk
nighthawk
7-2 Goat Mountain – 4965' This road is getting torn up pretty good. You might want to do Goat this season. There are pot holes big enough to park a few cars in. The washout channels will get bigger by next season. I nearly made it to the traditional starting point before parking and only walked a few minutes of road.
The climbers path is steep and slightly braided, but there is flagging. The upper ridge is narrow with serious drops on either side. Careful footing is necessary in places. Views of St. Helens and Adams were rewarding. From the benchmark I continued to the north summit which is reported to be 2 feet higher.
Lakeview Peak – 3868' The last peak before my return to Edmonds was a road walk on Weyerhaeuser land. An old couple on ATV’s at the gate told me to be sure to continue past the summit for a view of the lake. I’m glad they told me that because I got to see three goats on the cliff above the lake. A very serene finish for a long journey home.
see the goat?
see the goat?

Summitpost | YouTube | Peakbagger

some names, belowfellow
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awilsondc
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Member


Joined: 03 Apr 2016
Posts: 1323 | TRs | Pics
awilsondc
Member
PostMon Jul 04, 2022 4:52 pm 
Goodness!! What a month! Congrats on 1k p1k's!

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puzzlr
Mid Fork Rocks



Joined: 13 Feb 2007
Posts: 7216 | TRs | Pics
Location: Stuck in the middle
puzzlr
Mid Fork Rocks
PostWed Jul 06, 2022 2:42 pm 
You pack a lot of information into your brief descriptions and captions! Thanks a lot. Quite the tour from LV to the NW. Only one intersection for me -- Pyramid Peak. So sad to see the burnt out forest there.

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