Girl Power + Baked Goods = Clyde Minaret

Labor Day weekend was coming up and it was long past time for a Lizzy and SK adventure. We had been wanting to do a nice long Sierra alpine route together and, after discussing our options, we decided on Clyde Minaret. The Southeast Face of Clyde Minaret (5.8 IV) is one of the 50 Classic Climbs of North America and it sounded pretty awesome: hike in to a picturesque alpine lake on backpacker trail, camp, then climb the long, beautiful southeast face to the summit at 12,281ft, the highest point of the Minarets.

We decided to take a relaxed approach to the weekend, since we could also take Friday off. Our preparation on Thursday involved baking. SK made blackberry turnovers and I made caramel turtle brownies. We knew it could be disastrous to set off on a climbing weekend without enough desserts.

We left Stanford at 5:45 on Friday morning and drove to the Ranger Station in Mammoth to get a wilderness permit (the Minarets are in the Ansel Adams Wilderness). We arrived just in time: there were only 4 permits remaining for entry on Saturday. After some power shopping at Mammoth Mountaineering, we headed to the Duck Pass Trail to do a little altitude training hike (about 5 miles round trip in ~2 hours). We cooked dinner (beer sausages with carmelized onions) in the ranger station parking lot and headed out to bivy in some Forest Service land.

Enjoying an alpine lake along the Duck Pass Trail on Friday.

Saturday morning, after some final packing and some giant biscuits from the Breakfast Club in Mammoth, we drove up to the Main Lodge and got our tickets for the Red Meadows Shuttle (you can’t drive into the area between 7am and 7pm). We were on the trail by around 11am – not particularly early, but we were planning to climb on Sunday and we expected the ~7 mile, 2200ft elevation gain hike wouldn’t take us all day. We started on the John Muir Trail before turning off onto the Minaret Lake Trail. We made good time, reaching the western shore of Minaret Lake in about 3.5 hours of hiking. We were surprised to stumble upon Chris and Warren (fellow Stanford Alpine Club climbers) and spent the afternoon chilling, chatting, and planning above Minaret Lake. We shared our blackberry turnovers with the boys and turned in for an early night of somewhat fitful sleep (not that surprising at ~10,000ft).

The alarm clock went off at 6am on Sunday morning. We choked down some oatmeal, put on our harnesses, and headed out of camp. The approach took us to Cecile Lake, then up a talus slope to the base of the Southeast Face. The guys, who had started hiking a little earlier, had chosen the original start, but we had decided on the Direct Start (5.10a) because it had a nice line and was supposed to make the route-finding a little easier.

Fueled by baked goods: blackberry turnovers and caramel turtle brownies

SK racked up and led us up the direct start in 3 pitches (Peter Croft suggests 2, but we had a small-ish rack and wanted to belay on edges). I took over the lead and traversed over and down to intersect with the standard Southeast Face route. We began swinging leads, making pretty good time to a traverse that matched the Pitch 6 traverse in the Croft topo we had brought. We were surprised to reach that pitch so early, but optimistically figured this must mean we were making great time.

As it turned out, the upper dihedral took several more pitches than we expected (5 instead of 3), but we had caught up to the guys, so our morale was boosted by some shared-belay-socializing. Rather than the standard Sierra granite, the Minarets are metamorphic rock. Although there was definitely some loose stuff, the rock quality was generally surprisingly good and the rock was very featured – tons of cracks, corners, jugs, and crimps. The climb lived up to its reputation on Mountain Project, delivering pitch after pitch of fairly sustained 5.8 climbing. We both found that following a pitch was actually more tiring than leading, since we tended to climb faster and hence get more winded while following.

Evening light coming over Clyde Minaret (on the right) on Saturday night.

After what seemed like forever, we finally reached the notch, after which 4 easier pitches lead us to the summit. The Croft topo had 12 pitches indicated, but it took us 15 (that’s a lot!). I guess we could have climbed longer pitches if we’d had a slightly bigger rack, but as it was we got to belay on ledges and our belay change-overs were all quite efficient.

The view from the summit was awesome, but we only took a few minutes to enjoy it, since it was already 6:20pm and we knew we needed to get as far as possible down the descent before the inevitable darkness. We simuled down some 4th class ledges to a rap station the guys had found. They’d very kindly waited a couple minutes so the 4 of us could do the descent together, which I think ended up being a smart decision for all of us. Some more down-scrambling over often loose rock lead us to another rap station (it was great to have 2 70m ropes so we could skip the sketchy midway rap station). After a 3rd rap, we finally reached the main gully between Clyde and Ken Minarets. It was dark, but we were happy to put on our approach shoes and snack on some food.

We headed down the side of the gully, but somehow ended up above the main gully. Luckily, we found another rap station, which took us down to a small-house-sized chockstone. A final double 70m rope rappel from another somewhat manky rap station thankfully allowed us to skip a long section of loose, steep choss and we were thrilled to have the ropes pull perfectly (not even knocking any rocks down the gully, amazingly).

Mist and mountains from the summit of Clyde Minaret.

Then there was just a long slog down talus to the bench above Cecile Lake. It was amazing to walk on solid ground after hours of walking down loose talus and scree. We were a little disoriented, but finally directed ourselves down to our campsite, which we reached around 12:45am, 18 hours after leaving. Luckily, we had plenty of food to share, including some instant miso soup that really hit the spot. We crawled into our sleeping bags at around 2am, exhausted, but happy to have made it back safely.

Monday morning we packed up, hiked out, caught the shuttle back to the parking lot at Mammoth, and hightailed it to the Whoa Nellie Deli for some fish tacos (both with mango salsa, please). We arrived home tired, dirty, sore (especially the quads, ouch!), and but happy about our weekend. This was my highest climb and summit yet, my longest climbing day (I think), my most serious descent, my 5th of the 50 Classics, and it was great. At times it felt like Type 2 Fun (especially during the descent), but I managed to keep it together. Although I think we underestimated the length of the route, in terms of distance and time, but it was within our ability and it’s good to challenge ourselves and know what we can do (although I think our next adventure might involve sunny cragging ). We were also really happy to have run into the guys, because sharing belays on the upper part of the route and the descent really helped keep our morale up and helped the whole experience stay a lot more fun.

Summit photo! We're psyched to be up here, but still pretty concerned about the descent.

Climbing with SK is great because we have a very equal climbing partnership, so we’re both challenged to step up more than we would with a stronger partner, but we climb well together and make a good team. Sometimes girl power in the alpine is the only way to go, because we don’t need a guy to “put the rope up there” for us ;D

Have you climbed Clyde Minaret? What did you think?

Lizzy