I secured two others from Northern California to carpool on this SPS climb up these two peaks on the High Sierra crest. We made our drive after work Friday night, with sights to see motoring south on U.S. 395.
Meeting the group, we backpacked starting from Lake Sabrina up the trail to Midnight Lake. We had some snow and stream crossings. Moving along well with good leadership, we set up our base camp, and had a restful evening.
With a chilly morning start, we started our snow climb up the first of our peaks, Mt. Wallace. After some effort, we surmounted the class 3 summit rock, and I snapped photos of the view. The weather was nice, but then we had our second peak to climb.
Doing a steep snow traverse, we shortly came to the summit of Mt. Haeckel, with spectacular views of other peaks in the clouds. The others were cold in their wool and cotton shirts, but even with a stiff wind, I was fine in my Capilene T shirt. They allowed me some time to snap my photos, and then we started down. We did some short glissades, and then trudged back to our camp.
Packing up, we sped on back to our cars, and then all of us had our respective long drives home. I recall having Monday morning off, so had a relaxing time. With a double climb, I suspected that our carpool might not get home that Sunday night. This was a heavier snow year, so we’d have some delay while hiking and route finding. It went well enough, so that I signed up for another spring climb with the best activities group, said to be anywhere in the world.
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