Mt Humphreys
9 August 2015
All the usual superlatives apply to Mt Humphreys. Sinuous. Devastatingly prominent. Outstanding. Jaggged. Hardcore. Scary. A Jewel. Or as Joseph N. Leconte put it: “I have never felt so impressed, so utterly overpowered, by the presence of a great mountain as when standing amongst the crags of Mt Humphreys looking up that smooth wall to its airy summit, and again down ten thousand feet into the depths of the Owen’s Valley.”
John, David, and I climbed the mountain via the scramble route up the southwest chutes. The approach from North Lake is chill enough that we were able to drive up from SoCal Saturday morning, start hiking around midday, and make camp comfortably before the sun rounded the horizon. Humphreys Basin was truly memorable. The kind of place that dances about your most pleasant daydreams. A scattering of tarns and rocky flats provide ample accommodations for overnight adventures. On Sunday morning we began the climb, which would take us the better part of the day owing to our lack of experience in roped climbing. We roped up for a chockstone bypass (just 15-20 feet in a low angle corner) low in the chute, and again on the step above the notch and below the summit. We grew closer and closer as the climb proceeded and celebrated jubilantly on the airy summit. Quite a feeling to be on the summit when you know those few blocks can be seen stabbing the sky from the bustling streets of Bishop. The descent provided another nice opportunity to practice our rope-work as we rappelled back to the notch. FUN! David is a talented photographer and really captured the feeling of our trip:
As we broke camp and began hiking back to the car I couldn’t help but gaze wistfully back at the mountain…again…is it still there? again…and again. The closer we got to Piute Pass the stronger was the pull of the mountain. It made me sad to leave such a place. We spent approximately 32 hours on the trail from car-to-car and it would be another 122 hours before I would run into Craig at the Tuttle Creek Campground the evening before another spectacular peakbagging extravaganza to the Meysan Lake drainage at Mt LeConte. It was worth the wait.
