Mt. LeConte, Mt. Mallory, and Mt. Irvine

Only once did I see a stone fall into the chute. Still, I chose to move quickly up the sun drenched morning snow. Out above the chute, I emerged onto a wide slope. The snow had softened considerably on the open slope as I began heading toward the north face of LeConte Peak.

I arrived at the base of the north face of Mt. LeConte (13,960 ft.) where the Northwest Ridge route from Mt. Mallory joins LeConte, and surveyed the face. The cairn reported here, was nowhere to be seen, probably buried by snow. I could see the ramp leading to the East Face route and the easy 5th class cracks on the North Face route. I had come to do the NW Ridge, the first route climbed on LeConte by Norman Clyde in 1927.

It is now being called the NW Chute because it finishes up a chute on that face. The old guidebooks call it the

NW Ridge because Clyde had followed the ridge from Mallory to LeConte and found his way to the summit by then climbing the chute.

I dropped down the gully for 140 ft. and climbed up the chute to the NW. The easy way is to stay to the left side of the chute all the way to the top. Near the top I ventured right and made a 5th class move making it then difficult to get to the summit. I was able to find a very narrow horizontal tunnel running eastward, 20 ft. under the summit. Don't try the tunnel if you are over 200 pounds. You may get stuck. I managed to crawl through and pop out in good position.

It was a wonderful sunny day and the climb had taken me 8 hours from the Portal. There were perfect views in all directions. It was the best spot I had been to view south and west into the area near Mt. Langley. I descended off LeConte and set my sights on Mt. Mallory.

I figured to stay along the base of the ridge and not loose too much altitude. It was an easy scamper up to Mt. Mallory (13,850 ft.) with slopes of loose scree. The views here weren't as good from Mallory as they were from LeConte.

The ridge connecting Mallory to Irvine seemed a bit time consuming and I thought a traverse east would get me off Mallory more rapidly. It was time to move on. I followed the summit ridge running east from Mallory and dropped down steep snow slopes with exposed loose rock. In later season, this may be a bit exposed and a further traverse east off of Mallory may be advised. The true Traverse From Mt. Irvine route is much lower down the east ridge of Mallory.

The hike up to Mt. Irvine (13,770 ft.) was again a loose scree affair. I arrived there to excellent views of Mt. Russell. At 4:30, I considered the easiest descent route and started down what I thought was the class 1 route down to the Whitney Trail.

I chose the steep snow covered slope, ledges, and chute that ends at Consultation Lake. I would not choose this route again and would have liked a much heavier snow covering. It was more like class 3. With no snow it may become a deadly bowling alley. The very soft snow did get me down to Consultation Lake. I was on the Whitney Trail at 6:30 and made it to Whitney Portal at 8:00 p.m. It was a really good 16-hour day when I saw Jana and Deva, finishing the climbing trip.

The three-peak trip was a worthwhile way to see great views of the Lone Pine Creek area. It's a not too technical day for those who enjoy hard off trail scrambling.