Jeff Woodward Posted August 30, 2007 Posted August 30, 2007 Trip: Matthes Crest - South to North Traverse Date: 8/29/2007 Trip Report: Robin Batha and I climbed *most* of the full Matthes Crest South to North traverse yesterday... The route. Our route is in red, the proper finish in yellow. The climb is absolutely amazing. To get there, we walked a very mellow, 6 mile approach. Some of the meadows inspired Robin to frolic. To start, we climbed up a couple hundred feet of mid fifth (5.5 or 5.6) cracks and face. I LOOOOOOVE Tuolumne knobs. After that, there's a long fantastic horizontal section over towers up to the South Summit. The climbing on this section ranged from sidewalks to mid-fifth boulder problems on fantabulous rock. Pictures help explain the ecstasy. The ridge at the start of the horizontal bit. Totally strange awesome flakes! Robin on a sidewalk section. She's holding the coil because she's walking too quickly for me to belay. Lunch #1. Coconut curry lentils and rice. Beautiful mountains. Fun climbing. Yummy. Robin heading towards the South Summit. Occasionally, a steep bit required a diversion to one side or the other... Or a fun boulder problem... Almost at the South Summit. All is well... we think. From the South Summit, we descended down a 5.3ish ramp on the E side to the Notch between the S and the N summit. One of the cruxes is climbing out of the Notch. Robin styles a fun variation of it. Around here, a soloist passed us (he was the only other person we saw on the climb). He made some comment about it being "an hour til it dumps on us." We responded by hurrying onward. The climbing stayed spectacular. We hurried. Note the dark shadow. Over the next pitch or two, the cloud above us got a lot darker. Then it grumbled, sounding distinctly like thunder. Robin said "shoot." We hauled ass. The rock, Robin's hair and our rope started buzzing from the static in the air. Our hearts started buzzing from the thought of being hit by lightning. Robin (ever the genius) found a way to downclimb a pitch from crest to a rap station. From there, two single rope raps (we had to reinforce both stations) and some 4th to easy 5th class scrambling brought us down the West side. Our descent route. The sky's mood lightened as we headed down, only raining on us for a few minutes. A larger thunderstorm passed North of us (near Cathedral Peak), but we didn't see anything in the area actually get hit by lightning. That being said, we learned a few things... Don't trust the weather forecast. NOAA said clear, but we hadn't been there for several days to get a feel for the weather. Alpine starts are the way to go. We drove most of the way up from Sacramento the day before and camped about an hour and a half from the trailhead. We got up at 5, left the trailhead at 7:10, were climbing by 10:00 (we're lazy approachers), and bailed around 1:50. 45 minutes earlier and we would have been off the climb when the storm hit. If you're gonna get a late start, bring two ropes. We brought one because we wanted to go light and simul-climb the whole route. Two would have made the bail much quicker, which would have been all the more important had the storm really nailed us. Slightly dark clouds=bad. There were no towering, evil thunderheads to warn us, just the usual puffies. This route kicks ass. It's got great contrast between carefree strolling along the ridge and super crazy exposure and views on all sides. Even with the thunderstorm, it was a blast. Our feelings on the route: Gear Notes: Go light. (We had a medium rack to #2, and it could have been much lighter). Approach Notes: Yay! The traverse around Echo Peaks is awesome. Quote
johnson Posted August 31, 2007 Posted August 31, 2007 i did the Mathes Crest as well this summer. good times. nice TR Quote
EWolfe Posted August 31, 2007 Posted August 31, 2007 :cry: Thanks for the great TR and pics...next week. Quote
cstemley Posted August 31, 2007 Posted August 31, 2007 (edited) When i was on it, the wind was howling up both sides making our rope do big loopdy loops, crazy climb Edited September 1, 2007 by cstemley Quote
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