Lion Rock (12,360'), Triple Divide Peak (12,634') August 30 to September 2, 1991

This was a regular SPS trip. The leader was sick, but chose to lead anyway. I arrived to the trailhead area the day before, with some hiking and exploring. I visited Crystal Caves, a park tourist attraction, and snapped many photos. The Sequoias and Crescent Meadow also made for some nice pictures.

We began the trip at Wolverton trailhead, which may have been a mistake. This requires some gain to go over a high hill, Panther Gap, then to be lost. Starting at the lower Crescent Meadow trailhead avoids this.

A long pack east along the High Sierra Trail went fine. Stopping at Valhalla for photos, we made it to our basecamp, well before dusk, at Tamarack Lake. Nice alpenglow, already.

The next day, our climb of Lion Rock went nicely. The leader being slow, others went ahead to scout and lead the route. One couple had some excellent intuition about which way to go. I snapped my sets of summit photos, and we enjoyed then another nice night back at camp.

Triple Divide Peak is a Mountaineers peak, good for me. It required some good route finding, and the leader followed as we went ahead. Mostly a class 2 sidehill brings you to a shorter climb straight up, and the views were great.

We rested on top, then took the same route back all the way to camp, back at Tamarack Lake, where I saw a nice rainbow.

Our last day, we started our pack out, passing Hamilton Towers. The leader knew he'd be slow, so he allowed me to go ahead. Sadly, it'd be climbing that high hill to get back to our trailhead. I had offered for him to go to the lower trailhead, where I'd be with my car. No word on that, so I left the group to never hear further about how they did.

I hiked roughly 31 miles, with 12,000' gain. I shot six rolls of Kodachrome.

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