#mercedpeak

10/24/15 - 10/25/15

There was a big break between this trip and my previous trip — over a month. My last outing had been up Mt Pugh in Washington. Unfortunately, the next weekend there was bad weather in the Sierra, so I stayed local. In my local plans, I went climbing outdoors with some friends near Mt Diablo, and ended up in a bad climbing accident. I got a deep rope burn on my left hand, so it was fully out of commission for quite some time, requiring thorough cleaning and care twice a day every day for the weeks following. This eventually reduced to just once a day, but it was still over a month until it was in good enough shape to use in the mountains.

Thankfully I was the only one injured in the accident, and my injury was one that would make a full recovery. But all the care my hand required precluded me from going out into the mountains for the month following it. As I neared the end of the fifth week of recovery, I wasn’t sure if my hand was ready to go back out, but I knew that my spirit needed it, so I approached Kao about doing a trip. Ephrat had suggested Red and Merced, two peaks in Southern Yosemite, as an option to me many times before. While they looked like neat peaks, and they are both on the SPS list, they are pretty far from any trailhead. I consulted Kao about this idea, and we decided to go for it anyways. We’d just try to go as light as possible, and do our best. If we only managed to get one of the peaks, that’d be okay too.

Kao came up to the city from Mountain View late on Friday night and crashed at my place. We were supposed to talk route/plan before going to sleep, but we were both pretty tired, so we both crashed and planned to talk during the drive in the morning. Plus, I had loaded a GPS track from Ephrat and Luca onto my GPS, so we should be more than good to go.

The next morning we rose very early and started the drive to the Quartz Mountain trailhead. The drive itself was going to be difficult. This is not a standard Yosemite trailhead, and isn’t even in the park itself. There were about 20 miles of random forest roads, all in pretty awful conditions, that we had to navigate. While I typically only use the GPS to track our route on the hike, this time I also used it to track the drive, just in case we’d be driving back out very late at night. We had a couple wrong turns, but eventually made it to the trailhead around 11:30am. There were a few cars parked there, to my surprise, but we didn’t see many people. Having eaten some McDonalds breakfast on the drive in, we were ready to go pretty quickly and set out, after making a last minute decision to ditch our tent and bring only the footprint (fingers crossed for good weather).

I turned on my GPS as usual to start tracking our route, and looked for Ephrat’s track to load it. Unfortunately, I did something wrong with trying to load the track the night before. I had very stupidly decided not to confirm that the track was on the device the night before, because I thought there was no way I could have done it wrong. Surprise, surprise. I told Kao the bad news, but there was no choice but to go anyways. Another challenge!

The trail goes slightly downhill for the first mile or so until you reach Chiquito Pass, which is also the entrance to Yosemite. Downhill — never a fun way to start a trip. We had come up with a general plan for how we hoped to tackle these two peaks, but nothing was set in stone, because we weren’t sure how much we could handle after not having been out for so long. Red Peak is the further of the two peaks from the trailhead, being north of Merced. The approach to either summit was a very long one, so we had a long time to consider our options and talk about what we wanted to do. Kao had suggested we try summiting Merced on Day 1, but that would have meant we’d need to camp very high, which would be very, very cold, and we’d have the further summit to complete the second day. We eventually decided we wanted to get as close to Red as possible, positioning ourselves for a very early start the following morning. We hoped to camp around the Ottaway Lakes, which would mean doing about 13-14mi on day 1. I didn’t feel 100% great about this or sure that I could do it, since we’d only gotten started after 11:30am and we had overnight gear with us, but I was game to give it a shot.

The trail was pretty uneventful, never gaining too steeply the whole way. We were able to make fairly good progress, keeping a decent pace (especially given the overnight gear and out of shape-ness). There’s nothing too out of the ordinary about the hike itself, so we just kept trudging along, hoping to make it as far as possible to maximize our chances. We finally reached Merced Pass, and I was hoping it wouldn’t be much downhill from there, knowing any elevation lost we’d have to gain again on the way up Red.

Creek crossing after Merced Pass.

I was so exhausted by this point that even an extra hundred feet of loss seemed pretty devastating. On the way down the pass, we finally had a somewhat clear view of the area of peaks we were looking to tackle. Kao and I took bets on which peak we thought was Merced, since we weren’t quite sure just yet. I hadn’t lost a bet on one of these trips to Kao yet, and I didn’t want to start now. Having my post-trip root beer float paid for by someone else somehow always makes it even sweeter. But as I trudged along down from the pass, and then, beginning up and up again, it became clear that Kao was right. It finally happened — I owed him a root beer float.

First views of the peaks. Guessing which is which – and I lost.

Going uphill again was pretty exhausting for me. I was feeling very low energy and very hungry. But it was at the point that we only had less than a mile left, so it wasn’t worth it to stop for a snack, so I dragged myself onwards. We finally arrived at Lower Ottoway Lake, and it was gorgeous. I was hoping we’d camp right at the base of it, since I was so beat after the 14 miles we’d done, but Kao really wanted us to continue on at least a bit further. I was skeptical about finding camping above the lake, but I agreed. We continued around Lower Ottoway Lake and climbed another two hundred feet or so until we found flat area to camp not too far off the trail.

The view of Merced Peak from Lower Ottoway Lake.

Setting up camp wasn’t too difficult, since there was no tent, so we quickly threw our sleeping bags on the floor and set to work on dinner — some cous cous with dehydrated vegetables and toasted pine nuts. I also tended to my hand, replacing any band aids that had gotten overly dirty over the day, to prepare it for the long day ahead. I felt pretty ridiculous, looking at my hand covered in bandaids and gauze, but hoped it could handle it.

My hand all wrapped up.

After dinner we discussed the task at hand — what time we wanted to get up in the morning, what was the approach for Red, and — the most daunting question — would we be able to make it up Merced? Our route for Red was south-facing, so there wasn’t any snow in it. This was different for Merced — which we’d be approaching from the north, hoping to cross over it and head back south to the meet up with the trail back to the trailhead. But we hadn’t been able to see what Merced’s north side looked like all day. Only once we arrived at camp could we really get our first look at it — and it wasn’t even a great view. But it was enough to tell us that there definitely was snow.

We decided that we’d go to bed, wake up, summit Red, and then decide from there. We just didn’t have the information available to us to decide what to do about Merced until we’d be able to get a better view. I went to sleep hoping we’d be able to do Merced, since going back that way vs the way we came would actually be shorter mileage-wise. Beyond that, while this area is beautiful, I was not so excited about doing 30 miles in a weekend and only bagging one peak.

The alarm rang at 4:15am, and we hit the trail by 4:45. It was dark, but we were able to easily find the trail and continue up from where we had left off by headlamp. Kao had read numerous trip reports to prepare, and it really paid off. We continued up towards Red Peak Pass, but knew that we’d need to cut off a decent ways before the pass, heading north towards the peak. The beta we had suggested we should leave the trail when we reached an area with gray rocks, and try to head towards a large gendarme. Both of these were hard to tell in the dark: the coloring of the rocks was hard to tell under just our headlamps, and we couldn’t see where the gendarme was. So, we did our best to approximate by looking at the GPS and comparing with the maps, and we chose where to leave the trail. From there, it was a straightforward class 2 scramble up to the top (though a long one). We had to adjust the route here and there, but nothing major. Eventually we caught the ridge line and were able to follow that to the summit.

Hiking along the ridge in the dark.

Once we were at the summit, the sky finally started to get light. It was amazing to make it to the summit in the dark, only to have the whole world around us light up, showing us all the beautiful peaks and the gorgeous Southern Yosemite scenery.

First light from on top of the world.

Getting lighter, finally seeing all the snow on the high peaks.

Summit selfies.

We had a quick snack at the top, signed the register (seeing Ephrat and Luca’s signature, as usual), and talked about how to proceed. Now that it was finally starting to get light, we could see that there was much more snow on Merced than we had expected, which was pretty daunting. The early snow had stuck around, and we weren’t sure just how bad it would be going up the north side of Merced to traverse back, rather than retracing our steps the way we came. But, it was freezing out, and we knew we had to get off the mountain either way, so we got moving and retraced our steps back down to the Red Peak Pass trail. As we approached, getting closer and closer to the trail and to Merced Peak, I kept hoping we’d get a better idea of what the snow would be like on Merced and how much of it there was, but I didn’t. Once we were back at the trail, we stopped to eat a snack and decide what to do.

Finally having a real view of Merced, the rightmost peak.

Kao cut up some cheese for us to eat with crackers. I was feeling pretty weak/low energy, and we were facing a big trade off: we weren’t sure if it would be feasible to traverse over Merced and descend the other side, rather than retracing out steps. The worst possible outcome would be that we attempt Merced, thus putting forth effort towards more elevation gain and potentially tough scrambling, decide we need to bail, and then hike more than 15 miles back in the opposite direction. Ideally we’d just start hiking back on the trail right now if that was what we were going to have to end up doing, to save our energy. It was nearly 9am, and we needed to get going either way. We decided to at least start the hike towards Merced, and continue to reevaluate and check in with each other. It seemed like there was at least a chance that we’d be able to bag the summit and descend the other side, but I wasn’t fully convinced.

After packing up the snack, we started off again, leaving the trail on the other side. We gained a little, and then did our best not to lose any elevation as we traversed around the side of the valley. We were aiming for the saddle between Merced Peak and Ottoway Peak. Once we’d reached that, we’d hopefully be able to take the ridge up to the summit. The going wasn’t particularly challenging, but my low energy was not improving, making me very slow. At first it was fairly easy to avoid the snow, but as we continued up, gaining more elevation, and ending up on features that were more and more north-facing, it became unavoidable. Kao was much faster than me, and I felt bad that he was waiting so much, but I trudged on.

Crossing the valley towards Merced, approaching the snow.

We finally made it to the saddle around 10:30am. And there was a lot of snow. I wasn’t thrilled about doing all of this scrambling with this much powdery snow that had no give and was only slippery, but by this point, there wasn’t much left to go in the snow. The first section of the ridge was entirely north-facing, but about halfway up, the ridge turned westward, and we’d be able to stay more to the south side of the ridge and avoid the snow. So we decided to continue up. I had a few slips and slides here and there, and had to be very careful during the scrambling (and even one point where I asked Kao to come back and spot me), but we managed to make it to the westward section. From there, it was a much more straightforward scramble to the summit, which we reached around 11:45am.

Scrambling up the snowy ridge.

It was crazy to think we’d been hiking already for 7 hours. While we had done the majority of the elevation gain for the day, we still had at least 10 miles to make it back to the car. On the bright side, the views at the summit were incredible. Now that it was actually light out, the visibility was pretty crazy. We could see the minarets to the east, tons of peaks to the south, up north to Clark and the peaks in Tuolumne; it was spectacular. Plus, this was our second SPS peak of the day!

Summit views towards the Minarets.

We signed the register (finding Luca and Ephrat again — those jerks did these two peaks in one day), had another quick snack, and then started the descent. Our plan was to go down the southern ridge until we reached a low point in the saddle, and then head west through a valley trending southwest until we’d finally meet up with the trail in about 4 miles. We were both starting to get tired, but there was no choice but to keep going. I was pretty impressed with our route-finding. We picked good intermediary features along the way to head towards, and never really chose a route that was very suboptimal.

Summit views south.

We had stopped for another snack around 1:30pm. While the day before had been beautiful, the clouds had definitely rolled in by now. It was something I had been keeping an eye on all day, since I had zero rain gear and was a bit nervous about it. But instead of raining, it actually started to snow. This raised a pretty big panic in me: “What if it was snowing way more at the car?? Since the car was still 7 miles away?? What if my car won’t be able to get back down that terrible road???” In retrospect, it was a pretty silly fear. The snow was super minimal, and it’d have to snow quite a bit for us not to be able to make it down the road. But at the same time, I felt pretty foolish for not putting my snow chains in my car. Nevertheless, this fear helped me pick up my pace for the next couple miles. While Kao had been in the lead most of the day, my fear put me in gear and I was racing back to the car.

Passing through swampy meadows on the descent.

After a mile or two, the snow stopped, and so did my pushing myself. I was definitely very, very tired now. Something Kao had commented on was that we still hadn’t decided what to eat for dinner once we got out. This was unusual, because the post-hike dinner choice is always one of of the first things I talk about on trips. But, the snow got in my head and I was still the tiniest bit afraid that there would be a problem getting out, so I hadn’t brought it up, and Kao had noticed.

Anyways, we finally, finally made it back to the trail, after about 5mi of cross country from the summit. It felt so great to be back on easy walking ground. But the high of being back on trail was soon diminished by the fact that we still had 6mi left to go. We blasted some Queen off of my phone for a while, to try to pass the time and the uneventful remaining miles. Playing music out loud isn’t something I’d usually do in the wilderness, but we hadn’t seen a soul yet, and I didn’t expect that to change now. Those last 6mi went by pretty slowly, but they finally went by and we made it back to the car.

Kao did the drive back down that terrible road, and we stopped for burgers and root beer floats (Kao’s was on me, for his first bet win) in Oakhurst. Even though we were both exhausted, we were also both pretty high on this trip. This had been the most physically demanding trip either of us had ever done, as well as the most challenging route finding we’d ever done. There were a lot of obstacles during this trip, and I’d had a lot of doubts that we’d be able to get both peaks, but it was amazing to work as a team and overcome them. I especially felt proud that this was my first outing after being injured for more than a month. Both of us were pretty high on the whole trip the whole drive back, until sleepiness set in, and we both felt the exhaustion. I dropped Kao off in Mountain View, and then did the last bit of driving up to SF and collapsed at home. One of the most satisfying weekends I’ve had to date.