nolanr

Did it a couple years ago, I think we were slightly off route part of the time. Another plus is the great views of EF of Liberty Bell you get during part of the climb.

Maybe I would've appreciated the humor more if I'd seen it myself. Oh well. Yeah I'm sure I did dumb stuff when I was younger, too. Probably still do from time to time.

That would've scared the crap out of me at first, then pissed me off. I don't think it's particularly funny.

Around what time was that? I was up there w/ a group of people on Sat. There were a bunch of teenagers hanging around the lookout, but I didn't see a dummy. From the lookout we followed along the ridgeline towards the lakes, but turned back due to time constraints as soon as we caught a glimpse of them. We traversed below the summit on the north side on the way back. Didn't see anybody drop anything. That was around 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

I'm not sure how it would work as far as camping just outside of the park boundary but still w/in Royal Basin. On another trip I camped in Deception Basin and didn't see another human the entire time until I dropped into Royal Basin.

I wandered my way up Fricaba from Royal Basin several years ago. It was early November and there was a decent amount of fresh snow cover. I imagine when the area gets melted out the shoulder of Fricaba is a rotten pile of loose rock. But once the ridgeline is gained it seemed solid enough, if I remember it was straight forward 3rd or 4th class at most. I did it at night by moonlight. That was a pretty cool experience. I'm not even positive I summitted, the ridgeline just kept going and going. I'm not sure I ascended your proposed route, I headed up towards a saddle between Fricaba and Deception. I didn't hit the low point of the saddle, I stayed a little closer to Fricaba, and like I said the ridge itself was easily negotiable and pleasant. It was mostly snow but there was some exposed rock.

We didn't use pickets. I guess it would depend on time of year and conditions. I think a bigger concern would be how melted out the approach gulley is at this point. We got maybe halfway up it when we encountered a moat. The snow continued above us but would've been difficult to get to. We had to jump across a couple of horizontal feet onto a small ledge, made it just fine, but if we didn't stick the landing it would've been an unpleasant little tumble down inside the moat. After that it was scrambling up the rock on the left hand side to the ridge crest, not too bad, but nowhere near the quality of rock as the route proper.

Can also be done in a day easily enough, I did last year and we weren't setting a smoking pace. I can't remember exactly when he left the car at the TH, probably around 5 or 6 am, and we made it back before dusk. It was around this time of year.

Yes it does make sense.

All of this talk about it lured me up there on Saturday. I'm happy to report it was fogged in. Is it just me or has anyone noticed the temperature frequently drops significantly as soon as you cross Headlee Pass and drop down the other side and then head up towards the lake basin? It's often the difference between wanting to put on a parka/gloves and being fine w/out them. There isn't a significant difference in elevation, so I'm not sure why this occurs.

Alpine Tom, You may be the only person to summit Vesper 3 times in one day, at least you can lay claim to that. It seems like it's foggy almost every time I'm up there and I've got disoriented to some degree up there before. One time I had myself convinced there were 2 outlets to the lake. I haven't managed to confirm that in subsequent trips.

Unfortunately my trip got canceled at the 11th hour. We would've had a couple of really nice days followed by some crappy weather.

I haven't been in that area but in general we've had variable weather w/ plenty of precipation and mostly cool temps. Not much snow has been melting the last several weeks it doesn't appear. Still plenty above 5,000'.

Cool, thanks.

Are the goats on pee patrol throughout the night?

A friend of mine mentioned a guy being stranded on a ledge on Pugh for several days and then being rescued. Never saw or heard anything about in the news. Weird how they pick and choose which stories to publicize in the media. We were up there a week before the incident.

I've read several threads about the route, but how's the snaffle situation? Looking at doing it w/ a couple buddies starting Sunday. A little iffy on the weather but that's the timeframe that works for everybody.

Bump. Thinking of heading down in early August. Don't have it all planned out, but I definitely want to get into Dusy Basin and Thousand Island Lake area via Devils Post Pile. I've seen a few pictures that are fairly recent, looks like Tuolumne area still has quite a bit of snow on the ground. How's the melting out process going so far?

The road to Dug Bar seemed a little rough to me. And long. Of course it was dark and I wasn't exactly sure of where I was or where I was going, so that didn't help. A trail that started there immediately left the river and went up through some dry hills. I eventually got back down to the river and was going to enjoy the peace and scenery...except noisy power boats went by at 5 minute intervals. They actually looked shocked to see someone on foot in the canyon. Instead of taking the trail back to the parking lot, I just rambled along the river. I've never seen so many spiders and spider webs in my life, they were everywhere. I had to carry a little stick to clear the webs out of my way as I went. I thought the Imnaha River and canyon a little south of there was prettier scenery.

Nice pic. I love that area.

Sounds like you've got the area well scouted out MCash. I've only been in there once, several years ago, I remember thoroughly enjoying it. I got to the trailhead fairly late and had to hightail it to a campsite. I can't remember the name of the lake, I think there was 1 other lake between it and Goat. I spent 2 nights, during my 1 full day I rambled up to Goat L., traversed most of the way around, then ascended a rock slide/gully to a saddle between She Devil and I believe Mt. Baal. Both were easy scrambles. I was going to traverse She Devil to the saddle between it and He Devil, but it started looking like there might be some gendarme problems or I might get cliffed out, so I descended onto the face above Goat Lake. That proved interesting. It was a maze of ramps, ledges, gulleys, and dead end cliffy sections. Wasn't sure I was going to get off of their for a while, but I finally found my way down. Traversed below He Devil, then eventually scrambled up the northwestish (?) side of He Devil. That was fun. Got to do a little bit of chimneying, there was even an au cheval move across the top of a flake. Good day of peak bagging. Anyway there's plenty of nontechnical alpine playing to be had and great scenery TLG. If I remember right the temp. difference was 20 to 30 degrees between the Seven Devils and down in the Salmon River canyon around Riggins. Too freakin' hot, and the river wasn't even particularly cold. I'll tell you, there are some backwards ass looking yahoos running around down there.

Yeah the goats are just waiting for you to whizz so they can have a little salt lick. I spent a night just below Goat Pass on the shoulder of Stuart and a pair of goats kept walking past our camp all night. Fairly annoying. I've never encountered them being aggressive, they seem fairly acclimated to and tolerant of humans.

Bear buckets nothing, it's the raccoons ya gotta watch out for out there.

The Seven Devils Range just east of Hell's Canyon (access from Riggins, ID if I remember correctly) offers some good diversions. Plenty of hiking, a bunch of 9,000'+ peaks that you can scramble, and I'm sure plenty of technical routes, as well. There's a decent sized face on He Devil (the tallest in the range) from Sheep Lake. There's another peak, name escapes me, by the outlet of Sheep Lake that looks pretty cool.

Oh yeah, your pictures reminded me why I try to get up there every year. Never get tired of that area.