I first admired the Kaweahs from the summit of Mt. Whitney 25 years ago. I’ve been looking west from Whitney, Williamson, and other summits in the area and thinking, “I gotta get over there one of these days” ever since. The trouble was that I was having too much fun repeating great climbs on the east side to justify the effort to drive around to the west. Well, a few years ago, I decided I should try to climb enough SPS peaks to meet the requirements for Master Emblem. Now I HAD to drive around to the west.
Last year, I drove to Mineral King to climb Mt. Eisen and to familiarize myself with the area. This year, I did a lot of planning and research for my longest backpacking trip since Denali in 1995. Ed Herbulock, one of my climbing partners since 1990, accepted my invitation to join me.
I left Reno at 7:15 Wednesday morning in order to get to the ranger station before 3:45 to pick up our permit. Then I grabbed the last level campsite at the Cold Springs campground, hiked up to the trailhead to check things out, and just killed time until Ed arrived.
We left the Mineral King trailhead just before 7:00 on Thursday morning. We followed the abandoned trail over Glacier Pass (11,080+) and down to Spring Lake. We went over Hands and Knees Pass (11,145), which included about 100’ of easy class 3 rock climbing. From there, we contoured north until we could drop down to Little Five Lakes. We initially missed the trail from Black Rock Pass and did a bit of cross-country before we finally found the trail and cruised to our camp at Big Arroyo. It took a little under 10 hours to cover around 9 miles and 4,500 feet of elevation gain.
On Friday, we headed for Black Kaweah. I was hoping to tag Red Kaweah too, but our progress was much too slow for that. As we approached Black Kaweah, things somehow didn’t look right to me. I thought we might be one ridge too far to the right, and I headed left to check out the next drainage. Ed quickly convinced me that I was wrong, and we continued to Black Kaweah on the right route. I owe you, Ed!
Finding the black watermark and the traverse into the left couloir was easy. There were a few sections that were pretty dangerous because of loose rock, but the climbing was only class 3 if we did the route finding correctly. I wasn’t sure which way to go, but we stayed left until just below the very top of the couloir. Then we headed right and found the summit. (I think we should have headed right a little lower.) I enjoyed finding an entry from our favorite moose in the register. On the way down, we had to take turns climbing so we wouldn’t kill each other with falling rock, so it took a while. We were back at camp in about 10 hours, round trip. It was a good day, and our hardest objective was out of the way.
We climbed Mt Kaweah and Second Kaweah on Saturday. As the Spot track shows, we stayed on the trail a long time before heading up the loose, overgrown slopes towards the saddle between the peaks. This minimized the misery, and we descended pretty much the same way. After we got high enough to actually see our objectives, Ed made a terrible discovery: he had either lost all his food at a rest stop or forgotten it entirely. We decided that we could get by sharing my food, so we both continued up. Ed agreed that the food was sufficient payback for correcting my route-finding mistake the day before.
Secor and others list Mt. Kaweah as class 1, but I couldn’t see any route to the summit that was just hiking. There are many large talus blocks to overcome, and we used our hands for balance often. It’s still an easy climb; I just think “Class 1” is inaccurate.
After a nice break on Mt. Kaweah, we headed for Second Kaweah, which was just a 600’ talus hop from the saddle between the peaks. We were running low on food, so we headed down without delay. The descent went quickly, since there was a lot of loose sand. We were back in camp after another 10-hour day.
Ed had to be back at work on Monday, so he headed out Sunday morning. I had originally hoped to climb Triple Divide on Sunday, but I decided to climb Red Kaweah instead, since I didn’t have time for it on Friday. Red Kaweah was arguably the best climb of the trip: no route-finding mistakes, no forgotten food, less loose talus on the approach, and minimal rock fall on the route.
There were some nasty-looking granite cliffs at the bottom of the west (or NW) face, but I thought I saw a class 3 route through them. I was pretty tired of loose talus by this time, so I gave it a try. Easy class 3 got me up the cliff. Then I headed too far left, worked my way right into a couloir, followed the couloir until cliffs blocked my way, and then climbed out of the couloir to the right, only to find the route I should have been on the whole time. A short scamper to the summit gave me the privilege of making the second entry in the register for 2013. After a quick trip down the correct route (including the cliff again), I was back at camp for a 9-hour day.
Monday was a straightforward trip back to the car, retracing our route from Friday. Despite several stops to soak my sore feet and remove a toenail, it was just an 8-hour day. I got a shower and a good but overpriced burger at Silver City Resort and headed for Reno. I slept in my car at the Auburn Fairgrounds and was home by 9:30 Tuesday morning.
I really wish I could have climbed Triple Divide Peak, but four big remote peaks and no real problems is still a pretty good trip.
