Quick Stats: 22.3 Miles & 6,990′ gain over 2 summits from Bishop Pass South Lake Trailhead.
As a follow-up to Part 1 of me joining Frankie for small parts of the JMT: after leaving her in Purple Lake a week before, it was now on the itinerary to meet her below Bishop Pass with her resupply near Dusy Basin to climb Mount Agassiz and Middle Palisade over 2 – 3 days. From there she would continue on the JMT toward Onion Valley where she would exit, and I would leave from Bishop Pass South Lake to head home. A good friend of mine also wanted me to go with him and some others to San Diego Pride, but I was undecided on that.
That was the plan. However I had been dealing with some intense personal issues that caused me to live the previous week going through one giant anxiety attack. The drive to Bishop Pass South Lake was no help, and I had a lot of trouble both getting to sleep, and waking up to start my adventure toward Frankie. I finally managed to get myself together and making my way in the moonlight toward Bishop Pass. My anxiety was riding so high that my heart rate was elevated at rest, and during sections of significant elevation gain I had to pause often to allow my heart to recover. This is a feeling I’ve never felt in the mountains– normally as soon as I set off on my adventure I’m immediately in a better mental space with my body following suit. Not this time.
Mount Agassiz
It was rough making my way toward Frankie near the base of Mount Agassiz, but I did eventually make my way to her camp, helped along by her exact location loaded into my Garmin. I dropped my pack and fell into her arms, and slowly the physical manifestations of my anxiety attack were dripping away. When we sat down for breakfast overlooking the nearby lake I was able to voice the sources of my anxiety, and then I felt as the mental manifestations of my anxiety flitted away into the alpine air.
I felt better. I was back in my element. Now we could climb, and just be with each other. Now normally I spend the week ahead of a trip reviewing beta on the route we’re going to climb, checking weather reports, downloading maps and GPX tracks, and ensuring my gear is all ready. I did none of that for this trip. I couldn’t tell you what the weather would look like, I’m surprised the gear I needed made it’s way in with me (my hat didn’t though), and to top it all off all I knew about Mount Agassiz was a bit from a route description I had read months prior: “2nd class from the West / Bishop Pass; the further toward the SW you get the more 3rd class.” I thought of Mount Agassiz as a 2nd / 3rd class mountain, which was good since Frankie specifically did not want to do any sustained 4th class scrambling– this is why we opted for Mount Agassiz and Middle Pali instead of North Pali and something else.
From where Frankie was camped we could see a nice line directly up the South / SW Chutes, and I decided that we could just extrapolate that bit of beta I remembered and call it 3rd class. What’s the worst that could happen?
Well, the worst that could happen is you find yourself on a sustained 4th class route with a few 5th class moves thrown in the mix.
A running joke was made of Frankie reminding me of what she had said about wanting to avoid sustained 4th class climbing, but here we were. We made our way up the lower portion of the South facing chute and decided to make it our goal to try and get into the next chute to the west to try and get into some easier terrain. It was a while before we would be able to make our way to the ridge separating the two chutes, but we eventually got a look at the next chute over. . .
More of the same, but the top of the chute looked more manageable. Even though we were in unknown terrain on a route we knew nothing about (was it even a route? I don’t remember reading about the South Chute), we were having the time of our lives; we knew that the only objective for this whole day was this mountain, so we weren’t in a rush and I was feeling so much better.
Eventually we made our way to a narrow ridge where the different chutes collected that would lead us to the summit. We dropped down to climber’s right and scrambled along this very exposed section when we kept hearing this crumbling and breaking sound. It sounded kind of like rockfall, but the direction we were looking we saw none. We did see the Palisade Glacier though, and realized we were hearing the sounds of it shift and crack in the afternoon warmth.
This is the first live glacier I’ve really seen up close since mountaineering, and it’s the most famous one around. From a very far distance I could see the moraine atop the glacier at Mount Dade; I’ve climbed over the dying glacier at Matterhorn Peak (that is really just a moraine at this point with no snowfield); and I’ve climbed on and around dead glaciers. . . but this was the Palisade Glacier!
We spent a lot of time taking it in, amazed that there still is an active glacier hanging on here. We decided to look on the bright side: Had we not chosen the ascent route we did, we wouldn’t have had this spectacular view of the glacier on our way to the summit of Mount Agassiz. We weren’t far from the summit when we heard a crash in the distance. This wasn’t cracking glacial ice. . . this was thunder. It was getting late in the afternoon, and the clouds were rolling in. To the South there was obviously a thunderstorm, and now the clouds to the Northeast of us were looking kind of dicey. We decided the safest option would be to continue toward the summit so that we could traverse to the West side where we would have easier climbing; thus a faster descent.
I started to think back to something I had learned on my first mountaineering trip: Pay attention to good natural shelter locations when climbing incase you need to take immediate shelter. I marked a couple of cave-like features on my Garmin as waypoints so that I would know how to get back to one of these in the event we got trapped by a thunderstorm too high on the mountain. A lot of the worry was for naught though as we didn’t hear another thunderclap from that point to the summit. At the summit was another story though.
With another thunder clap seemingly closer, darker clouds swirling directly overhead, and more rain clouds dumping to the North we didn’t spend a lot of time on the summit before heading down. We stayed facing Bishop Pass almost the entire way, hoping for easy climbing followed by a scree ski finish.
We never did find that scree ski finish, but we did talk on the way down about where I was mentally, and the fact that this climb and being with Frankie really helped. We also talked about how I was on the fence about meeting Adan for San Diego Pride, and what my reservations were. While I had a ton of drama in my life at this point, so did Frankie; and she was starting to think that the more responsible decision would be to leave the JMT so that she could get some things in order. Point by point Frankie dismantled my San Diego Pride reservations with a simple solution: She would leave the JMT and come with me.
Before we got low enough on the mountain to lose service (nearly all Sierra summits are high enough to give you 5G), I messaged my friend Adan to let him know we would be meeting them all for San Diego Pride.
When we made it back to camp we discussed options for leaving: Did we want to just leave in the morning, or did we want to climb a mountain on the way out. If we did climb something, what level of commitment were we interested in from that climb? We looked at a map and decided on a small little mountain that could easily be climbed on the way out of there: Chocolate Peak. This would be a fun way to hit another summit, while not being so committed that we lose the entire day to the mountains when we’re planning on being in San Diego early the next morning.
After a nice evening with my love on what became her last night on the JMT, we were drifting off to sleep for what would become her last day on her JMT adventure. We woke up to the crisp air of an alpine sunrise, broke camp, and were on our way out; just in time since thunderstorms were in the forecast where we were.
Peakbagger (dot) com Entry from 7/14/22
Chocolate Peak
Along the way we had a strange experience unrelated to climbing that was a great experience for me. I often tell Frankie she has “Honey Badger Energy,” because “Honey badger don’t care; honey badger don’t give a fuck.” She naturally looks out for me, and I’m just not someone to speak up or attempt to rock the boat in general– I’d rather just deal with something silently and move past it. I want to be more like Frankie in this regard, and then I was.
As we were getting closer to Chocolate Peak there was an unmaintained side trail we would be using to get to the base of the East Slope (the ascent route we chose), and I was on the lookout for this trail. We had passed a bunch of people along the way, and ever closer to that trail I pulled out my phone to look at a map. Frankie was a bit behind me, and with someone headed in my direction I decided to step off of the trail and let them pass– an opportunity to let Frankie catch up a bit and to also take a look at the map and see how much further until the trail junction. Some crusty old man decides to step off trail a few feet in front of me and tell me to pass. I told him to go ahead. He told me to go ahead. I told him to ahead and mentioned that I had someone behind me I was waiting for. He cut me off, raised his voice, and curtly said, “No, you go ahead.” I sort of shrugged it off, thinking I’d just stop literally as soon as I passed him just to appease him. I stepped off trail again as soon as I passed, and then as he walked away from me he said, apparently to me: “You know they say you go blind looking at those things.”
I was so caught off guard I literally laughed out loud and muttered “What the fuck?” Whatever. . . some old dude having a bad day or something– I try and have compassion for people that feel compelled to be rude to strangers. I watch him as he goes and then Frankie steps off trail and he does nothing but continue onward. Now I’m not one to immediately jump to things being some sort of microaggression toward me, but something about that didn’t sit right with me. Rather than confront the issue directly, as Frankie made her way toward me I told her in no quiet way, “That guy was an asshole.” When she wasn’t sure what I said I repeated it just as loud, to which she replied, “That guy was an asshole? What did he say?” This got his attention, and Frankie being the amazing protective partner she is engaged him to let him know that he’s an asshole. She had seen the interaction between us and knew something wasn’t right; after he responded in a predictably misogynistic way and they had words, we were headed in opposite directions– us having a good laugh about some weird cranky old man and him. . . who knows?
We made our way up around to the base of Chocolate Peak, which is directly across from Cloudripper, another mountain we plan to climb some day. We cached our packs entirely and our poles, and decided then coined one of our new mottos: “Every mountain is 3rd class if you try hard enough.” Sure this is a 1st class peak that can be summited on faint use trails; but why do that when you can find a way to make it a scrambling peak?
When we reached the summit we saw something strange there. . . a person!
We never run into people on summits, so it really was strange. He was a nice older guy from Colorado that came out here to spend time in the High Sierra; a fun bit of perspective because we’ll one day be the couple from California on the summit of a Colorado 14er.
On the way down we grabbed our packs, and I thought of something that I personally thought would be hilarious because of the nearby “Chocolate Lake:”
After a good laugh, we were back on our way out, dealing with increasing heat as we found ourselves at lower and lower elevations. We were now officially “over it.” It was hot, we were done, and we wanted to be back at Alyx already.
Then we were, and we enjoyed a fantastic day at San Diego Pride the next day.
