It was yet another beautiful weekend in the Eastern Sierras, my friends. After a short discussion about food and gear, Casey (snowmanrn) and I decided to head up one of my new favorite peaks - Mt Russell. We escaped injury and issue for the most part, had hours and hours of free time to explore around UBSL and above, talked at length about beautiful and crazy women, and added another 14er to the list. I had only recently met Casey near Mt Tyndall - he had climbed to Anvil and then summited Tylly/Willy the following day. He seemed like a decent chap, so I took a chance on him and we had a most excellent time.
The dirty:I slept at the portal Friday night, Casey slept in Lone Pine proper. We met at 7 am at the store for a delicious breakfast, and headed up the old trail around 8 or so. We took our sweet time, made sure to hydrate as we should, took a nice long break at LBSL, and arrived at UBSL around 1130 am or so. After picking a camp spot, we hiked up towards Iceberg, exploring and acclimating and making use of the daylight. We hit the sack around 8pm or so, and woke up to the digital rooster at 330 am.
We chose to head up the scree slope above Clyde Meadow towards the East Ridge route (~415 am). The first portion of this section was hell - very very loose scree and decomposed granite. Dave G had recommended this route up to the ridge - even gave me a little route drawing to follow, but we did a slight variation. Sun was coming up as we took a break on the edge of the plateau above the scree slog, we drank up, and headed across towards the base of the ridge route. The strenuous climbing was over at this point, the rest of the ascent was either strolling or careful climbing through exposed class 2-3 boulders. The ridge was 99.5% clear of any snow and ice, and the going was great. We were on the summit about 815 am, too a nice break and some pictures, and headed back towards the east summit. Between the two summits lies the entry to the south face - left side route (5.0). The crux is the chimney directly below the ridge, and this proved to be a piece of cake on the downclimb. We saw some webbing for a rap-anchor as we descended. It looked to be in pretty good shape. After the chimney ends, it's scree surfing down to the big ridge that connects Russell and Whitney.
On the ridge, we headed east hoping to cross over the Sakai Col and drop down towards UBSL. We accidentally dropped down too far north, but this proved to be okay. Too far south and you're in the cliffs, so watch that. More scree surfing ensued, although some of it could be avoided early by climbing down along the rocky formations to your right. There was a large cliff band midway down this face, and we skirted it to the north until we found a decent path down to the valley floor below. We walked along the old snow, past a smaller lake above UBSL, descended along a waterfall to our right that fed UBSL, hopped through the boulders near the lake, and then walked around the north edge of the lake back to our camp. We ate a little food, broke down camp, and left just before noon for the portal. Took the old trail down to the parking lot, finished up just after 2pm. Stopped in Lone Pine so Casey could see first-hand my terrible judgment when it comes to eating an entire large pepperoni/onion/pepperoncini pizza.
We packed light - I'm guessing we each had 15-20 pounds on our backs with food/water.
Highlights:Exploring... having the free time at camp was great, we were climbing around in the waterfalls just to the south-east of UBSL. We foolishly free-climbed a 45 foot wall just because it was there. The world was our oyster, whatever the hell that means.
Acclimating... We both have a short history of funk higher up. I got sick on Rainier, Casey had to bail on Kili just past 16,000 feet. We worked on pacing ourselves, taking in enough water, etc. We felt great the entire time, and camped higher than Casey thought he might be comfortable. Zero issues. I used the ole Diamox again, and had very little tingling if any. I will say, I was looking slightly sexier in my shorts and sun-hat, and I think it was an unintended side effect.
Piling up rocks...I had hoped to pile up a huge pinnacle on the summit of Russell, but when I got there, the rocks were all enormous. When we returned to UBSL, I decided I would tempt the hernia-gods and move around some big stones. Good times were had by me, although I'd imagine Casey will think twice about a second trip with me.
Green screen - we stopped at the Ye Olde Photo Shoppe in Lone Pine to take these amusement-park-like photos in front of a green screen. Well, that's what it looks like
Route Pics: Above LBSL
Up to the plateau
Dropping back to camp
Pics of trip here Videos in the next post - I can't figure out why the Markup options never work for me.
