6/28/14 lone pine peak via north ridge

Drove up to Lone Pine on Friday night after work.  Got into town just before 11, met up with greg and headed up to camp at lone pine campground.  We set our alarms for 5 am and went to bed by 1230.

camera phone pano: Lone pine peak, Leconte, Irvine, Mallory, Whitney

In the morning we hit the meysean lakes trailhead, geared up and started hiking by 620.  I've thought this before, and have improved, but i think i still waste too much time gearing up and starting.  Why bother waking up so early just to pack?  I'd like to be completely ready to go before getting to the trailhead especially in situations like this where most of the gear we used was greg's.  i should be able to just stuff whatever i am given into my pack and go.

Heading up the trail i felt a little sluggish, but we didn't do all too poorly; finishing the trail portion and hitting the notch in about 90 minutes from the trailhead.  The class 3/4 to notch A was long and mostly high quality rock.  Upon descending into the notch, we took a short break and got geared up for the climbing.

Meysan lakes basin

The route was rated 5.4 or 5.5 in all of the beta I had looked at, and i can mostly agree with those numbers.  In my estimation the hardest actual climbing moves were generally the very first sequence out of the notches. In the case of the first technical section after notch A, we belayed 2 climbing pitches and then traversed/downclimbed unroped.  In retrospect, only the first section really needed a rope.

Placing pro by the huge flake pitch2

When we got to the section with the pitons, it was really nice to confirm that we were doing exactly what we should be doing.  Having not been climbing much this year, the layback move past the piton and again shortly above it was a little harder than i would have liked, but I still made it without any issues.  Again in this section, we probably stayed roped a little bit longer than we needed to, once it got really sandy we took off the rope and continued without it to the notch.

Greg checking out the route

We set up a belay across the first really exposed ridge traverse, and then descended into the last notch.  From here, the "zigzag crack" mentioned in the beta looks fairly hard from the bottom, but really isnt.  again the first move was the hardest, and we only belayed for one pitch.  Afterwards we decided to simul climb as it didn't seem very difficult.  I took a ~50ft lead and we tried to keep 3 pieces of gear between us.  As we got up closer to the summit, it became harder to place gear (mostly just giant blocks everywhere) so we unroped. 

Knife edge ridge traverse to notch C, summit block beyond

From the summit, the descent is into the northwestern gully.  There are actually more than a few gullys that look like they would work, but the beta warns you to use the one that you can see all the way down (or face cliffiness).  The descent is in my opinion really nasty, it's a really rocky scree field.  The large amount of big debris made it fairly hard for me to just plungestep/slide down without falling down. 

Chilling on the summit

Once we were down into the lakes basin we just traversed west until we found the trail (amid a swarm of mosquitos).  From here it was approx 2 hours on trail back to Whitney portal. 

We were back to the car at around 730, overall 13 hours for the trip.  I'm pleased that we were able to summit and successfully return to the car before dark, but I need to work on my overall conditioning and climbing level to get back to where i want to be.  Our navigation/route work was pretty much spot on all day which was a huge plus.  The transitions we made too were also pretty clean and we didn't waste too much time switching stuff.  We could have saved some more time by going unroped a bit more, and we probably had too much gear (i think doubles up to #2, hexes and stoppers) but that's easy to say now.  

Thanks to greg for coming and leading most of the technical stuff.

edit:  the real gear list.

Mastercam #1, 2, 3

BD 0.4, 0.5, 0.75, 1, 2(x2)

Full set of nuts

Two hexes (largest and second largest)

10 single length slings racked as alpine draws (each with 2 carabiners... probably should have taken fewer biners)

2 double length slings

two 20-28ft 7mm cordellettes + 6(?) locking carabiners