Success on the East Buttress

Since our last, abortive attempt at climbing the East Face of Mt. Whitney in 1994 (see "An Abortion on Mt. Whitney", these archives), Mark "The Maniac" Matthews and I had been contemplating another try at the face. We had decided shortly after that trip that we would try the East Buttress Route rather than the East Face Route next time, and that we would go just as a pair, rather than a group of 6. We agreed that the Buttress route, first climbed by Glen Dawson and friends in September, 1937, was more direct, sustained, and aesthetic than the classic East Face Route (FA: 1931), and likely much less crowded, as the Buttress route is not listed in Roper and Steck's "Fifty Classic Climbs . . ." In the meantime, my level of confidence in our ability to safely carry this off was increased substantially by my starting to lead, after fourteen years of only seconding. As he had almost every year since 1989, Mark called me in late March to tell me that among his collection of permits for the coming summer, there was one for the N. Fork of Lone Pine Creek, for two people. It turned out to be for Friday and Saturday nights, 27 and 28 June. This seemed to be a pretty good weekend - the one before the 4th of July weekend, probably pretty stable weather. So I started to think about how best to prepare.

Tom Osborne and I climbed The Error (5.6, 8 pitches) at Tahquitz on 11 May, followed by Mark and I doing two other routes at Tahquitz, NE Face West Variation (5.6, 7 pitches) on 8 June and some route sort of close to Maiden to Fool's Rush on 22 June. In each case, I led half of the pitches, including a few at 5.6. This really helped my confidence, as many accounts of the East Buttress say that it is possible to climb the route without encountering any moves harder than 5.4. In between, I hiked up San Jacinto on 17 May and again on 15 June, for my 21st and 22nd ascents, to try to build up my aerobic conditioning - in some ways, I was more worried about that blasted backpack into Iceberg Lake than the technical part of the climb.

On Thursday, 26 June, both Mark and I left work at midday; we left Escondido at about 2:30 to head up to Lone Pine. When we reached there at around 7:00, our first stop was at the ranger station to see what they said about conditions on the route. As we'd fully expected, the official description was about as bleak as you could imagine - the Forest Service apparently feels it's their duty to attempt to scare off as many people as possible. Now I admit that it was a silly oversight on my part not to throw crampons and ice axe into the car, even given that I didn't think I'd need 'em. But the official word was something to the effect that without those tools one it would be suicide to attempt any route on the east side, including the Mountaineer's route that we had planned to descend. We stood there looking at this description, then by turning one's head a few degrees to the left, one could compare this with the apparent conditions high on the route - we could see virtually no snow except perhaps a little in the gully of the Mountaineer's route. So, though Mark started muttering something about doing Mt. Russell instead in the worst case, we headed up to Whitney Portal.

We spent a pleasant evening in a family site at the campground, very near the summer houses at the lower end - we paid the unaccountably suspicious and somewhat hostile campground hosts $10 for the spot, and $4 for some firewood. John Lohr tells me that he wasn't even aware that there WAS an official campground - he's always just illegally slept somewhere near the stream, as we did in '94. We were amazed at how nice the weather was - I just slept under the stars, and I would say that the temperature never dropped below 50 F. And there were a lot of stars to look at - not a single cloud in the sky. Mark preferred to sleep in the back seat of his car, since he didn't have to get anything out. We got up in a leisurely fashion on Friday morning, and started up the trail at around 8:30 am. Even though Mark was carrying all of the climbing gear and the rope, his pack weighed much less than mine. This is despite the fact that I tried my very best to emulate his spartan style - we didn't carry a stove, and neither of us had very much food. We probably should have brought a 9 mm rope in addition to the 11 mm climbing rope as a backup in case we needed to rapp off, but we didn't. I tried out a bivvy sack by Wilderness Experience on this trip, but I found that it really wasn't much less weight than my "1-2 person" Sierra Designs Clip Flashlight tent, and it certainly was a lot less roomy. The only thing that I can think of to reduce my pack weight a little would have been to carry only one liter of water at a time, and just filter more often - I carried two full bottles. I guess I j ust am not much of a backpacker.

The hike up to Lower Boy Scout Lake went without incident. We took the path on the south side of the N. Fork (started up just AFTER the second stream crossing on the Whitney Trail). Fifty feet after leaving the Whitney Trail we were a little amused by the very nice wooden structure that proclaimed this year's North Fork project, which is entitled the "Pack Out Your Poop System"! The wooden structure is a dispenser for these kits, featuring an opaque bag, presumably with something like lime in it, which neither of us took. (As it happened, neither of us had occasion to even ponder this in the next two days.) I can only hope that they don't have to make this the law, rather than the present strong recommendation. Anyway, we were able to follow the trail on the south side all the way up to the creek crossing just where you're supposed to. The creek crossings were more difficult than I can ever remember, as we were there probably quite close to the peak in the runoff. We climbed the Ebersbacher Ledges without difficulty, and we were sitting by the shore of Lower Boy Scout Lake by 11:00 am. There, Mark was attacked by a Rottweiler belonging to a couple who were encamped there, clearly illegally close to the lake shore. They were able to call off the hound just before Mark was going to split the dog's head open with his ice axe (which he had brought). The dog's owner's seemed to think this was pretty funny, especially after they were sure that the dog hadn't actually gotten his teeth into Mark.

We ran into two couples within a half an hour that were coming down from Iceberg. The first couple, a young man and woman ("date climb," we muttered) had done the East Face Route the previous day. They must have been a bit incompetent, as they reported reaching the summit at DUSK (which would be about 8:30 pm). They felt that the Mountaineer's route was too dangerous to descend, particularly in the dark, so they went down the North Slope to the Whitney-Russell Pass, thence to Iceberg, arriving at about 10:30 pm. They mostly talked to Mark-we were separated by about 15 minutes at that moment- and unfortunately Mark obviously dismissed anything they told him as the babblings of nincompoops. (Too late, it was to become clear to us that they had been trying to tell him which notch along the Whitney-Russell ridge was the correct descent chute.) The other party had ascended and descended the Mountaineer's Route. Though they appeared to have the appropriate equipment, they thought that we could safely descend the route without ice axe and crampons, as long as it wasn't too early in the morning.

We stayed almost exactly on route up the talus above L.B.S. Lake, across and up the slabs north of the willows, bypassed Upper Boy Scout Lake and climbed the talus and slabs up towards Iceberg. When we got to the corner, where one turns west and starts walking directly towards the east face of Whitney, we encountered the first really long passage of snow. We did a long rising traverse, kicking steps in the snow, to reach the western edge of the band of cliffs separating the drainage from the ampitheatre where Iceberg sits, then climbed the steep "cruddy chute" (Secor) up to Iceberg. It would have been even madder than usual to try the "mixed Class 3 and 4" route up near the waterfall. I recommend never trying that, anyway. We reached the shores of Iceberg Lake at about 5:00 pm, to find, much to my amazement, a crowd -- of exactly ONE person! This despite the fact that the weather was glorious! Perhaps people were scared off by the NFS description of conditions. We set up camp and prepared our gear for the morning. I hit the sack at about 7:15 pm - what else was there to do? As usual, I slept terribly at 12,000 feet, so that I got up when the very first rays of light were visible over the ridge to the east. At 5:00 am, I looked down at Mark (just sleeping in his bivvy sack) and announced the time. While Mark lay there, the most beautiful rosy alpenglow shone off the east face and the needles to the left - I hastily got out my camera and took a couple of photos of this sight. (I ended up enlarging one of 'em to 11X14 and framing it.)

My breakfast was one Clif Bar - in the event, I ate nothing else that day until we got down to Lone Pine. Mark suggests that I write the Clif Bar people - maybe they'd send me a free case of them. Again, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and not a breath of wind as we started up towards the route a little before 6:00 am. When we got to the notch that seemed to be the proper rope-up point, I alleviated any concern that we might have had about whether this was or was not the exact spot by breaking out a photocopy of a photo from "Mt. Whitney Guide" of climbers on the first pitch of the route, and compared it with what we were looking at. Yes, a precise match - the photo was evidently taken from exactly where I stood. I took with me the fruits of years of research on the route - I believe that I have examined every description of this route ever published - which were the three most detailed descriptions: Allen Bard's 1991 route card, the one from "Mt. Whitney Guide" by MacDonald and Warstler, and the topo and lousy description from "100 Sierra Classics". I had reduced all three to fit on one 8.5X11 piece of paper, which I laminated and hung onto the back of my pack. Both of us wore daypacks for the whole climb, in which we carried our mountaineering boots for a safe descent, along with a quart of water and extra clothing, etc. Mark had his ice axe strapped on the back, while I had my telescoping Leki trekking pole on the back of mine. I wore a helmet; Mark, characteristically, did not.

At 7:10 am, Mark started leading the first pitch, up the center of the face of the Second Tower - about 5.6. In general, we found that we mostly agreed with Bard's rating of each pitch; "100 Sierra Classics" seemed to consistently overestimate the difficulty by about 1 grade, while the older descriptions were pure sandbags - calling almost everything fourth class! On the second pitch, Mark traversed to the right a little too soon - one is supposed to do this about 15' below the summit of the Second Tower - but made the notch behind the Tower anyway. You could see from the ledge there how the first ascent party on the East Face route downclimbed to get to the start of The Washboard. Our route went to the right up a ramp - we chose not to do the direct version up the arete, which is supposed to be "beautiful unprotected 5.7". I think that this phase is an oxymoron, as did Mark. The crack up the ramp on the right (5.6) went all the way, rather than the escape halfway up that Bard recommends for no obvious reason. Somewhere in here, one of Mark's natural tendencies started emerging - though his gross motor skills, i.e. balance, are phenomenal, and not adversely affected at all by altitude, his fine scale motor skills really suck. In short, he's a butterfingers at sea level, and at 13,800' or so, he gets worse. At one point, he dropped a chock, cursed a bit, then dropped the 'biner. Fortunately, I easily retrieved both when I followed.

On the sloping ledges at the end of this ramp, where one makes the 3rd belay, we found an ATC lying on the rock. The one I'm using these days I had found at Tahquitz, and since I have two figure 8's and two Sticht plates, all but one of which were found gear, I decided to leave the ATC there as a signal to others that they were on route - it seemed to have that effect on Mark, anyway. I was quite certain that we were right on even before we found that. We never saw even one fixed piton on the whole route, though Bard mentions them repeatedly. I suppose they've been pried out by souvenir hunters. We saw two "fixed nuts", one of which I spent a few minutes trying to get out, but it was too deep in the crack to reach with the pick. Ah, well.

Pitch 4 was in an obvious right facing corner, capped with a "tricky step-across" to the left, onto the crest of the arete. I didn't find it "tricky" at all. However, just as Bard describes, the belay ledge onto which one is stepping is indeed the most spectacular spot on the route - the ridge is only 2 ft wide at that point, and on one side looks down onto The Washboard, the Mountaineer's Route on the other, and the ridge itself drops steeply down to Iceberg Lake. I had to have a picture of myself on this airy perch, so I dug my camera out, took four pictures and then, with much trepidation, handed the camera to my ham-fisted companion while making dire threats should the camera go the way of the chock and carabiner earlier - the camera couldn't be recovered so easily. He wanted me to stand up on the arete, on a rock which I demonstrated could easily be picked up. Unfortunately, we couldn't get more than about three feet apart without me disconnecting from the anchor, which I was not about to do, even in the name of Art. So the resulting picture is not a bad one of me, but I fill the frame - could've taken it down at the lake, practically. (Fig. 2)

The next pitch (5) was a little trickier, but not too much. I finally decided that I was feeling daring enough to take the lead on the next pitch, indicated on the topo as 4th class, and "many ways to go". Mark yelled up that if I found a sunny ledge, I ought to stop, because he wanted to take a little break. I reached a large ledge system below and a little to the right of the underside of the "Peewee" block. This fit the bill, so I set up an anchor. I found the empty cardboard tube from a roll of toilet paper there, and I hastily stopped looking around. However, it was nice to know that we were still on track. I probably should have run the rope out about 20 feet higher, because then the next pitch would have reached the ledge to the right of the top of the Peewee without any shenanigans - as it was, Mark ran out of rope a bit short of the ledge, and we simulclimbed for a bit. It was, after all, 4th class according to Bard (5.4 on the topo). The Peewee is incredible - what you can't see until you are just to its right is that there is a two foot gap BEHIND it - not at all obvious what is keeping the whole gigantic thing from falling off!

At this point we were faced with a decision. Do we do the "traverse right for a long and roundabout (but easy) approach to the summit" (Mt. Whitney Guide), or do we attempt the Bard variation (5.7)? We felt pretty good, and I was willing if Mark wanted to lead it. It was pretty clear what Bard was referring to as a "short right facing corner". Mark led up without too much difficulty, but every route description ever published gets awfully vague from there to the summit. I believe that Mark didn't go sufficiently to the left after getting up that corner. The ledge Mark anchored on was the smallest yet - we were really on top of each other. This was our first clue that we were now off route. What we found was a scarily steep face, with a big left facing corner on its right side, and a smaller right facing corner on the left side. Our ledge was on the left side of this face. I thought that the first 30 feet of the next pitch (number 9) was the most technical of the whole route: the face was so steep and smooth (obviously polished from melting snow) that one was forced to do pretty much a pure jam in the crack in the corner of the dihedral. Mark explored a bit to the left above this part, but it was too late to move left, I think. He wound up in a slot just about directly overhead of the previous belay.

The next pitch started with a bit of chimneying in this slot, after which Mark yelled down that my mood would be improved when I reached where he'd reached. Gee, I hadn't realized that I was being crabby - I guess that's the effect when I realize that we're off route. Then the rope ran out for a long, long time without a pause, until he ran out of rope again. It turned out that he'd come out of the slot into the sunshine onto easy 3rd class terrain to the left, but not to the summit. It was not entirely clear just how to get to the summit from the big alcove where I found Mark sitting. We discussed the possibilities a bit. I decided to lead the next pitch (#11).

After a couple of low fifth class moves, I found myself in a kind of low angle gully which ran up and a little to the left. I stopped putting any pro in, and just ran it out as fast as Mark could pay out the rope. When I reached the end of the rope, I yelled back: "OK, simulclimb!" I didn't have to tell him twice. After another 60 feet or so, I reached an apparent impasse. The only way out seemed to be to climb a short steep right-leaning crack, but that looked rather difficult. I scrambled up onto a kind of a shelf at the base of this crack and looked at it. I realized that the summit was JUST above, as I started hearing the conversations of the people standing there! For a few milliseconds, I even thought about attempting the crack unbelayed, as Mark still hadn't caught up. Fortunately, even in my oxygen-deprived state, I realized that wouldn't be a good idea. I sat down on the shelf and started piling up the rope. Soon Mark arrived, and I told him that I was going to try this crack, but that I needed a anchored belay, which he then set up. When all was ready, I attacked the crack. I got a cam in, and wriggled on up. I actually had my hand on the top of the thing, but my pack was scraping and getting caught on the left side. Obviously, I should have taken the darned thing off before trying this. After a couple of tries, I could feel my arms running out of steam. I starting whining and chanting "Take it up! Take it up!" Boom! Out I popped! I flipped out backwards, heels-over-head. Next thing I knew, I was hanging upside-down looking Mark directly in the face. I said," Whad daya know! My first leader fall!" Mark asked if I was ok. I told him that there was apparently no harm done. The cam had held. I had Mark lower me off the piece, and I collected my wits. We swapped the lead. He got up on the shelf and looked at the crack, shaking his head. We agreed that it was probably in the 5.8-5.9 area. He said there was no way he was gonna try that. We decided that he should investigate around to the left. He stepped off the little shelf down onto a triangular bit of rock that seemed to me to resemble a diving platform at the top of the East Face - quite spectacular exposure - then he disappeared around the corner. Immediately I heard him chuckle. "It's Class 2 from here!" Strangely enough, at this point he had me take him off belay! He later explained that he didn't like the rope drag. I waited until he reached the top, which turned out to be about 50 feet over easy blocks, and he set up a casual belay. I envied him the experience of popping up there, because the route ends EXACTLY at the summit, and there were about a dozen hikers standing on that precise spot, completely startled and asking, "Where did YOU come from?!" In a couple of minutes I appeared as well. We took off the rope, and I got out the camera and had one of the hikers take our picture with the summit hut in the background. I took a few more as Mark starting collecting the gear and putting it away. It was about 2:00 pm; the twelve pitches from the rope-up point to summit had taken a little less than seven hours. (Fig. 3)

We didn't hang around on the summit for more than about 20 minutes, as we both had visions of getting home at a reasonable hour. In fact, Mark had me sign the register for him as he busily assembled his pack. (It was my fifth ascent of Whitney, Mark's eighth or so.) We both put on our mountaineering boots and Mark got out his axe, I my Leki pole. We ambled over to the top of the chute that drops down to the notch at the top of the gully of the Mountaineer's Route, next to the highest toilet in the contiguous 48. I looked down it for a couple of minutes, thinking that it didn't look *that* bad, but Mark was heading west along the top of the ridge. Well, we're not gonna split up here, I thought, and followed him. We got to the top of a big snow bowl, whereupon I pointed out that I had neglected to bring skis. But Mark just hopped over the edge and started a downward traverse back east. This was a pretty nerve-racking bit - not wearing crampons, me without an axe, going across the top of a steep, 1000 foot high bowl. Soon we could see that the tracks we were following led to the aforementioned notch at the top of the Mountaineer's gully. In retrospect, we clearly should have just been thankful to avoid the snowy third class section and gone down the gully, which did not have that much snow in it. (We had seen it up to that notch from Iceberg and from the Buttress.) Instead, Mark made for a rock rib, and started down the north slope on the rib. Well, that rib was awful - steep, totally loose, dangerous, etc. The worst thing was that neither of us had any certain knowledge of wh ether we might come to a cliff at any point. Mark admitted that when he'd last been there, it was January and there was no rock visible - he'd just plunge-stepped down the whole slope, wearing crampons. At several points in the descent, we had to traverse the snow again to reach another rib. Eventually, we reached the big ampitheatre between Whitney and Russell, and moved over towards the obvious notch in the ridge between them.

I caught up with Mark just as he reached the top of the notch, and we were relieved to see footprints in the snow, going over to the head of the gully. We walked over to the head, and looked over -- the brink! -- It was practically an ELEVATOR SHAFT! Ohmigosh! No way, Jose! This ain't it! And the tracks indeed disappeared over the edge. These must be the tracks of an insane person! A DECEASED insane person! At this point, the words of Secor's book, regarding the usable Whitney-Russell pass NOT being the low point between the two peaks started drifting through my mind. I sat down on a rock, a safe distance away from that awful drop, and got out my map. Looking at it for a minute, it became obvious that the correct chute was the less obvious one to the S of the true pass, and that one would lead directly down to Iceberg Lake. By the time I reached this conclusion, Mark was hundreds of yards away, following tracks in the sand towards the notch to the N, closer to Russell. I could easily see from the map that that one would not work at all. But I got up and went after him. He soon was looking over that notch, and yelled down, "This is it! Come on!" I yelled back, "Are you SURE?" To which he replied affirmatively. I knew that this couldn't be right, and indeed when I'd reached him, he was looking down the chute and muttering, "This is weird. Where's Iceberg Lake?" I told him that it was on the other side of the ridge to the S that one could see at the bottom of the chute. He reluctantly agreed that this was in fact the wrong drainage entirely. So, by the process of eliminat ion, the correct notch had to be the southernmost of the three. We dragged our butts over there. At this point, it was about 4:30 pm.

Mark had said earlier that we had to be on our way down from camp at Iceberg by 5:00 pm at the latest to get out that night. As we made our way down the loose scree of the correct gully (which was obvious as soon as we could see down the chute to Iceberg), I told him that since we clearly were not going to make it by 5, that we'd be spending another night at Iceberg before heading down in the morning, because there was no way that I was going to try to descend those damned Ebersbacher Ledges in the dark. He argued with me for a while, saying that he'd gone down those ledges in the dark more than once, but gave up when he could see that my mind was made up. However, we really moved quickly down the gully, and followed tracks in the snow on another long descending traverse back to Iceberg very efficiently, an lo and behold, we reached our campsite at just 5:00 pm. I told Mark that I'd give it a try if he wanted to. By now the people that'd hiked in on Saturday to do the peak on Sunday were encamped, and they asked us what we'd done as I started taking my bivvy sack/tent down as quickly as I could. We told them. They congratulated us, and then expressed a certain incredulity when they realized that we planned to try to hike all the way out that very evening. We left Iceberg a little after 5:30 pm.

The descent was extremely efficient. I led most of the way on the upper part, and I was able to follow the almost entirely ducked trail all the way down to Lower Boy Scout Lake, where we finally stopped for our first significant rest, at about 7:45. At that point, I was confident we'd get down the dreaded ledges before it got dark. Indeed, we descended the ledges, followed the "lower" trail close to the stream through the brush on the S side of the creek, and got back to the main trail as the sun set. Mark was of the opinion that we'd managed the "cleanest" descent of this route (i.e. we were at all times exactly on the optimal path) that he'd ever experienced. We reached the trailhead just as the last photons of daylight were richocheting around the rocks. Our descent from Iceberg had taken an even 3 hours.

We impressed some guy in the parking lot with our tale as we changed clothes and packed the stuff into the car. We ate at the Pizza Factory in Lone Pine, in accordance with long-standing tradition, and, of course, the Maniac had no trouble at all driving all the way home, with only one stop to buy iced tea at Kramer's Junction, while I slept about two-thirds of the time. I got home at 3:30 Sunday morning.

Comments?

• Sun Jun 7 Way to go, Bob! Judy Senior (100)