Mt. Price - Desolation Wilderness Trip

Spurred by friend Alex Price out here, a group of us - mostly from work and some of Alex's other friends - took a trip up to the Desolation Wilderness the other weekend to climb Alex's namesake peak, Mt. Price. At 9,975' it is the 2nd tallest of the peaks in Desolation, and while it doesn't have any real maintained trails up it, in general it's just a rocky scramble up from some alpine lakes in the area. We camped at Lover's Leap, a really nice walk-in campground near the big rock outcrop/cliff that makes the campground popular with climbers (and whose perpetual shadow makes Google maps think there is a cliff-side lake there, apparently). It snowed on us a little Friday night, making for a beautiful dusting (or up high a couple inches or more) of white along our hike. Pretty cold too. On to the pictures...


Here's our group heading up.


Abbey Road, Desolation-Style.


Lunchtime! We found a spot as much out of the wind as possible. The weather was pretty ominous at this point.


The cheese was no match for Mikey's new knife.


Time to climb.


Neat picture of frozen lakes above Island Lake, by Alex.


I think the caption for this one should be "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."


Getting higher up the slopes of Mt. Price, picking our way across the boulders.


Starting to get snowy.


Still higher... this is probably near where the final couloir starts. You can follow my tracks in the picture.


Looking up the final couloir to the summit ridge.


On the summit! Looking S towards Agassiz (the one that looks like a cresting wave) and Pyramid Peak (the tallest of the Desolation peaks at 9,983)...


And North, down towards Island Lake and the route up.


East over Lake Aloha towards Lake Tahoe, with more snow rolling in.


This is one Alex took from a different approach, where he ultimately got turned back by a cliffband along the ridge. You can see me standing on the top, as well as the path up. Mikey and I got to the summit ridge via the couloir just beyond the really steep snowy part at the far right of the frame. If you zoom in you can see footprints.


Mikey and me on the summit.


Mikey and I took a different route down, which unfortunately took us over this house-sized boulderfield. Phew! Exhausting. The cliffs at the top left are the ones that turned Alex around at the saddle.


The Yaktrax helped immensely in the snow higher up - thanks Steve! They also completely tore up the bottoms of my old old boots. RIP Dartmouth Raichles.


In addition to enormous boulders there was this particular tricky part. Picture is not mine, annotations are. Imagine it covered in more snow, just not enough to cushion your fall into pointy rocks.


We were a little slow getting down due, but that let us enjoy a beautiful sunset over Smith Lake! By the way, Smith Lake looks like a prime place to come back in the summer for cliff-jumping into the water.


With the help of a near-full moon (when not blocked by the blizzarding clouds) and a headlamp, we made out out after a full day of hiking! Desolation is always a beautiful place to go hiking, and this was no exception. Any more trips this year and we might need to bring the snowshoes, though.


Here's our approximate route.

See - all my cold-weather gear doesn't go entirely to waste out here in California! With luck we'll get back to Desolation for some snowshoeing this winter/spring. There are a bunch more pictures, including some of Alex's nice shots, on my Picasa page. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get any of the large bear that rumbled through our campsite early Saturday morning to sniff around at the bear locker a bit. (!)