A Little Rock

A Little Rock

  10:25 PM    Ted Glick

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It's funny how small things can sometimes have a big impact.  Today a small rock changed my vacation plan in a big way.

I drove 680 miles to Bishop, California, on Sunday.  Bishop is the town closest to the Boundary Peak (Nevada) trailhead, so I spent the night in an old, rundown motel.  I'm like, I just need a bed and a shower; whatever.  I slept pretty well and got up at 4:30 AM feeling mostly refreshed and ready for a difficult day.  At 5-ish I was the first customer at the town's only Starbucks, and then I started north on Highway 6 for the 50-mile drive to the trailhead.  I hoped to get there right around dawn so I'd have some light to get my pack together, and then head up the treeless, exposed trail in the cool of the morning.  The forecast was nearly perfect for today's attempt.

Two miles into Nevada, I turned south onto the long, climbing dirt/gravel road that leads to the trailhead.  It wasn't a great road, but dirt/gravel roads almost always suck.  I've been on a million of them and I thought nothing of it.  I got a mile up the road, still 5 miles from the trailhead, when my car beeped at me and my "Check Tire Pressure" light came on.  I thought, well, the car is driving just fine... it's probably just the altitude and the cold that's thrown the pressure sensor out of whack.  I was initially inclined to ignore it, but then I thought I should at least stop and take a look.

I stopped, and as soon as I opened my door, I heard the unmistakable "PPSSSSHHHHHHHH" noise of escaping air from the rear driver's side tire.  Uh oh.

I got out and looked, and sure enough, there was a rock sticking out of a good sized hole in the tire--it was a really good puncture.  Damn.

Now I needed to find a flat piece of ground quickly, before the tire went completely flat, so I'd be able to jack up the car.  I jockeyed the car around to a faint side track and got it on relatively flat ground.  By the time that was done, the tire was fully flat.

As I pondered what impact this was going to have on my day and my plans going forward, I started unpacking the back of the car so I could get to the spare tire.  I got the jack and spare out, and then pulled out the owner's manual because you should really RTFM to make sure you're jacking at the correct jack point.  This was my first flat tire since owning this car.

I was lucky that the dirt was firm enough to support the car on the jack, and I got the tire changed and everything reloaded in the car in about 30 minutes.

My spare is one of those little donut, emergency-only spares.  So now I had decisions to make.  If I pressed on up the road and had another tire issue (the spare is not a sturdy-looking thing at all), I would be completely screwed.  I would be miles from any people, and I would have to hike all the way back to the highway and then hope for a ride from a benevolent stranger 50 miles back to Bishop where there was a cell signal, and then pay for a tow truck to go 50 miles out to get my car.  Not good.

If I pressed on and had no troubles, I would still be in a pickle as my next destination and hotel reservation was in Ely on the eastern edge of Nevada, 250 across mostly barren desert.  There is almost nothing between Boundary Peak and Ely except Tonopah, a town of 2,500 people, and I didn't really want to take my chances on getting a new tire there.

I felt I had no choice but to turn around and return to Bishop, and the smart thing to do was to cut my losses and go now, abandoning the climb for today.  I don't always do the smart thing, but on this day I did.

I gently nursed the car back to Bishop, greatly irritated with all my prep for Wheeler Peak going down the drain, and also with dollar signs dancing in my head.  I was pretty sure that it was too late to cancel my Ely hotel room, so at a minimum there's a hundred and some bucks down the crapper.  I knew the hole in my tire was too big to patch, so I'd need a new one.  But my car has all wheel drive, so if I needed to replace all 4 tires to satisfy the tight tread-difference tolerances of my car, that was going to be $1,200 or so.  This could be a really expensive day.

I rolled up to a tire shop right as they opened for the day, and they attended to me right away.  Sure enough, the tire couldn't be patched, but I was very fortunate that they had a used tire in my size and the tread wear was nearly the same as my other three, so I would be good to go with just this one replacement.  Within 30 minutes (while I gave Cinnamon, the shop kitty, some scritches) I shelled out all of $35 and I was on the road again.  Whew!

Well, now it was too late to go re-try the climb.  And if I stayed here in Bishop I'd have to chill for about 8 hours before I could check into a motel.  I could start heading east for other peaks in Colorado or New Mexico, but I wanted to take advantage of being relatively close to visit my mom in SoCal, so this seemed like the time to do it.  Then I could evaluate my options and head out again on Tuesday with a new plan, and with luck, good weather forecasts for Boundary, or other peaks on my to-do list in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado or Utah.

So here I am in Whittier, California, visiting Mom for a bit. Boundary Peak has bad weather forecast for Wednesday, so I can't just go back to Bishop and try to pick up where I left off--that's out for now.  Humphreys Peak in Arizona also had not-great weather forecasted.  So I think I'm heading for Flagstaff on Tuesday, and then Taos, New Mexico, on Wednesday.  I should be able to try New Mexico's highest mountain, Wheeler Peak, on Thursday if the good forecast for that area holds.

It was a very nice, all-weather Michelin...

Unpack the car, get the spare out...

Bad tire off...

WTF is this thing in with my tire-change tools?

That bastard rock was really in there

Cinnamon the Tire Shop Kitty says, "Sorry you're having a crappy day, Ted."

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The Best Laid Plans...

The Best Laid Plans...

  9:01 PM    Ted Glick

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This has been travel prep week. Or should I say, de-prep. Here it is less than 36 hours before my planned departure. I have all my 'stuff', I'm physically and mentally prepared for this crazy trip I've been looking forward to for about a year and a half, and my travel plan is pretty much in the trash. The forecast for the peaks in Idaho and Utah is not good. No snow, but the wind will be too strong at the higher altitudes near the summits for the next week or so. 30+ MPH winds with temps in the 30's? No thank you. Damn the bad timing.

I just cancelled all my reservations at various places in 5 states.

So Sunday instead of heading for Idaho, I'll be going south, down to western Nevada for a Monday attempt on Boundary Peak. That's the only mountain from my plan with decent weather. From there, I'm going to be looking at the mountain weather forecasts daily and I'll head east and just play it by ear. Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona are all on the table. Utah too if it settles down and gets its act together. This should be interesting. I will send reports from the road as time allows...

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2018 End-of-Summer Road Trip Planning

2018 End-of-Summer Road Trip Planning

  1:26 PM    Ted Glick

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Last year, I thought it might be kinda cool to take a couple of weeks off to travel solo around to some of the western states and hike up some mountains that I normally wouldn't have the opportunity to climb.  I made a plan to visit Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Nevada, and hike the highest peak in each state.  They're all non-technical walk-ups or scrambles, but they're also all challenging in their own way.

I planned my trip for early September for several reasons.  Kids would be back in school, vacation season would be over and summer traffic and crowds wouldn't be much of an issue.  Hopefully the summer wildfires would be dead or dying, and theoretically the weather would be cooler with fewer chances of summit thunderstorms, but still be good enough to get out there.  And after a full summer of hiking and climbing, I hoped I would be in good enough shape to be successful with these strenuous climbs.

Sadly, a family tragedy struck in mid-August, and I was needed on the east coast for a time.  I had deal with a very difficult time for my family, and unavoidably to postpone my trip.

For 2018 I've revised the plan a little bit.  I took Colorado out of the mix, mostly so I wouldn't be so rushed to get everywhere.  Now the plan is:

• Borah Peak in Idaho's Lost River Range. 
  Borah is Idaho's highest peak at 12,667 feet.
• Kings Peak in Utah's Uintah Range (via Henry's Fork on the north side). 
  Kings is Utah's highest peak at 13,534 feet.
• Wheeler Peak in Nevada's Snake Range. 
  Wheeler is Nevada's second highest peak at 13,065 feet.
• Boundary Peak in Nevada's White Mountains. 
  Boundary is Nevada's highest peak at 13,146 feet.

And the clockwise, 4,000-mile circuit looks like this (with a visit to Wyoming's Devil's Tower, and a day in Whittier, California to visit Mom):

Half the fun of a road trip is poring over Google maps, topo maps, satellite imagery, mountaineering trip reports, photos and youtube videos, figuring out what you want to do and how to make it all work with your available time and budget.  I love the planning and anticipation!

Wheeler Peak is my bonus peak for the trip.  If I'm too tired or my feet are too beat up to actually squeeze in all four of these peaks in such a short time, I will skip Wheeler and adjust the timing accordingly on the other climbs to have more downtime and recovery time.  But if I feel good, I will attempt all four.  If successful, this will be about 19,000 feet of climbing in 12 days!  Usually 19,000 feet is a pretty good month for me (I'm averaging about 15,000 feet a month so far this year, and August is shaping up to be a personal best 20,000-feet month).

I'm only really concerned about the gamble on early autumn weather.  Borah and Kings Peak could both be getting snow by the time I get to them in the second week of September.  If that happens with any significant accumulation, I may need to reroute and look for other peaks further south.  We'll see how that goes.

But this is the plan.  I am very excited about the trip and greatly looking forward to it.

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Lakeview Mountain

Lakeview Mountain

  5:03 PM    Ted Glick

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I saw an Instagram post one day of a small but very picturesque mountain. I had never seen or heard of Lakeview Mountain before, despite that fact that it's in the Cascades just about 60 miles from my home. It's also very near Crescent Lake, which I have visited many times, but it's not a large mountain and it's tucked away out of view, so I've never seen it.

This is a picture I snapped on my visit that is very similar to the Instagram post that first piqued my interest:

Looking at the east face of Lakeview Mountain from Stag Lake

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Consulting the maps, I saw that Lakeview would make a very good day hike, and I also thought I might be able to travel the ridgelines to visit the other three unnamed peaks to the south of Lakeview, so that was my tentative plan.

Lakeview Mountain and the Crescent Lake area

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I set off early on Sunday, August 5th.  Upon arriving at the trailhead area, I turned off at the dirt road just over the railroad tracks, but then I had some difficulty locating the trail (which is actually an old, disused snowmobile trail), but I found it about 100 yards south of where the tracks cross Crescent Lake Highway.

Trailhead area just off of Crescent Lake Highway

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I think this is a lesser-used trailhead--I believe most people probably use the Fawn Lake Trail starting at its terminus at Crescent Lake Campground, close to the north shore of Crescent Lake.

I started up the trail with 5 liters of water and Gatorade as it was going to be quite a long hike and forecast to be a pretty warm day.  The smoke from many southern Oregon forest fires hanging in the air would hinder my views for sure, but I didn't think it would be too bad.

Trails overview. Fawn Lake Trail, Stag Lake Trail and Pretty Lake Trail.

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When I reached the Fawn Lake Trail intersection, I stashed a liter of water behind a fallen tree for me to pick up on the return trip, lightening my pack a bit.  Then I turned right and headed towards Fawn Lake.

About a mile in, a backpacking family of 5 passed me going the other way.  They had probably camped at Fawn Lake and were heading home today.  They would be the only people I would see all day.

At about the three-mile mark I reached Fawn Lake, and it is a truly beautiful area.  There are many campgrounds around the lake and it's a very appealing spot for a weekend getaway for anyone who doesn't want to have to hike in too far.

Lakeview Mountain (right) and unnamed peak (center) from Fawn Lake

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Here I turned right and joined the Stag Lake trail, enjoying the lakeside scenery as I went.  At about 4.5 miles into the hike, I reached the end of the trail at the shore of the smaller but still beautiful Stag Lake.  There is one campground on the east shore of Stag Lake where the trail ends, and it looks like a great place to spend a day or two.

From here I would say goodbye to trails for awhile.  I wanted to bushwhack around to the west side of Stag Lake and then ascend the gully up to the saddle between Lakeview and its neighbor to the south.  This was roughly the plan:

The plan to reach the saddle

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At this point I should mention that I stupidly forgot my handheld GPS unit at home, and was relying on my paper maps.  I should have fished my compass out of my pack and taken a bearing on the saddle while I could see it from Stag Lake, but I trusted that I would be able to more-or-less just go uphill and gain the ridgeline at the saddle between Lakeview and the other peaks.  That was dumb.  Once I got into the woods, all visual references were lost and I was seduced by a good line up a ridge, and I ended up going too far south.  Even though my bearing error was only 10 or 20 degrees to the left of where I should have gone, it was bad enough that I soon found myself on the extremely steep slopes of the unnamed easternmost peak, cursing to myself and trying to make my way over to friendlier terrain.  After some very difficult and treacherous side-hilling to get myself going in a more northerly track, I was finally able to gain the ridgeline in the wrong saddle.  This is what the actual route looked like:

The reality of poor navigation

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Okay, I guess I would be visiting the middle peak of the southern three peaks first.

The ridgeline travel was much more rugged and difficult than I expected, and it was laborious and slow going.  I reached the middle peak, then turned north towards Lakeview.  It was another difficult ridgeline followed by the loose rocky scramble up to the top of Lakeview.  The views from the summit were smoky, but still wonderful.

Looking at Lakeview Mountain's south ridge from the saddle

About halfway up Lakeview

Looking back down at the ridgeline from Lakeview's south ridge

Smoky skies and Stag Lake from near Lakeview's summit

The west flank of Diamond Peak in the smoky distance

Obligatory Summit Selfie

Difficult traveling along the rugged ridgelines

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At this point it looked like there might be some thunderstorm activity starting to form so I descended from the summit and had lunch back down in the saddle on the ridgeline.  I was already pretty tired and still had a long way to go.

Heading back towards the line of three unnamed peaks, I decided I'd had just about enough of this ridgeline travel, and I now focused only on getting to the saddle between the middle and western peaks, and then descending south from there to get back on the trail and return towards Fawn Lake.  I skirted around the middle peak, thinking that following the contour around the west side would be easier than climbing to the top and then back down to traverse that peak.  I'm not sure my contouring plan was any easier--it was very steep and rough terrain, so even that little quarter-mile was tough.

Continuing southwest along the ridge, I went down far enough until the terrain looked friendly enough, then I turned left and headed down.  After 15 or 20 minutes of not-too-difficult bushwhacking, I was back on the trail not far from from Saddle Lake.

Down from Lakeview Mountain, around the middle peak and descent back down to the trail

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Now I was just going to stick to the trails and loop around on the Pretty Lake Trail instead of taking the Fawn Lake Trail back towards the car.  Backtracking on Fawn Lake Trail would be significantly shorter, but I wanted to take the opportunity to see everything while I was out here.

The rest of the hike was quiet and uneventful.  The thunderstorms I thought might be forming never materialized.  As I passed by Redtop Mountain, I noted that its north ridge looked very climb-unfriendly.  I probably won't seek out that summit anytime soon.

I didn't care much for the Pretty Lake Trail.  It's been heavily used by equestrians, and horses are very hard on trails.  They pulverize the dirt into a fine, dusty sand that gets into your boots, socks, eyes and lungs, and they turn a flat trail into a large U-shaped trough.  Walking in this indentation is very hard on the feet and ankles.  And you're choking on the sandy dust and dodging horse manure piles.  I always try to avoid horse trails whenever I can, but on this day I spent a lot of time on them.

I slogged down the trail back to my turnoff, picked up my water bottle from behind the tree and continued toward the car.  I only drank about 3.5 liters of liquid on the whole hike, so the 5 liters was overkill, but it's better to have too much than too little I guess.  Filtering/purifying water at Fawn, Stag, Saddle or Pretty lake would have been a good option as well.

Here's the crummy GPS track from my Garmin Fenix 5 watch:

Complete route.  Both loops were counter-clockwise.

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And here's the little overview video of the trip from the Relive & Strava apps, using GPS data from my watch (note that Relive often puts some of the photos in the wrong spots):

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My Garmin watch says the trip was 16.1 miles, so in reality it was probably more like 15-ish miles.  All in all a pretty good workout and a nice day out in the woods.  I highly recommend Lakeview, but you can skip the other peaks.  They're really not worth the trouble.

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