A Mt. Russell Spanking
- Keradactyl
- Jul 6, 2015
- 3 min read
I like to climb. And when I can't climb, I watch YouTube videos of people climbing.
The first time I heard of Mt. Russell was in one of the Sufferfest videos, which chronicles Alex Honnold and Cedar Wright free-soloing all of the 14,000 foot peaks in California. By bike. The video gave a wonderful impression of Mt. Russell: Gorgeous granite! Clean lines! Oh-so sunshiney! And I'm sure the approach is a walk in the park!
Not so. My first impression of Mt. Russell could not have been more different than the reality we all faced in the foothills of this colder-than-a-witch's-tit hell mountain.
Let's start with the approach. From Whitney Portal to Upper Boy Scout Lake, you're looking at about 3.5 miles of uphill. Easy, right? Wrong. The first mile of the hike is on the well maintained Mt. Whitney trail, but diverges to start ascent up a steep, water-sogged gully. About two miles in, the trail reaches a 3rd class scramble up granite ledges, finally reaching Lower Boy Scout Lake at the top of the steep gully. Only 45 more minutes of 2nd class scrambling over giant granite boulders and slab finally gets you to Upper Boy Scout Lake, a common base camp for climbing in the area. At this point, you're still three freaking hours from the base of any climb on Mt. Russell.
Me and my epic adventure partners set up camp for the evening at Upper Boy Scout Lake. The next morning we woke up and hit the "trail" by 6:00. One wise Mountain Project user referred to this part of the trek up to the East Arete of Mt. Russell as a "sandy hell", and could not have been more accurate in his descriptive prose of the approach. In just about a mile and a half, we ascended nearly 2000 feet. The initial ascent is up an intimidating scree pile of granite sand, which works flawlessly with gravity in its attempt to suck your feet back downhill with each feeble step upward. After reaching the top, a flat section beckons the exhausted climber to prance across it and up to the East Arete approach to the east summit of Russell.
Once on the arete, I noticed that the weather was not quite the same as I had seen in the blissful Honnold-Wright video. Clouds, wind and cold were our reality, not sunshine. We had also been hiking for nearly three hours and were nowhere near the base of the climb. Where had we missed the magic carpet that Honnold and Wright had hopped on in their approach to Mithril dihedral? Feeling uneasy because of the exposure (death three feet on either side of me) and the weather (death by lightning), I looked at my rad-tastic friend Kori and wimpered. Being the supportive friend she is, we descended the sandy-hell together, while John and Nick continued on to simul-climb Fishhook Arete in the snow.
Not ten minutes after Kori and I arrived back at camp, rain started to knock on the fly of our tents. For seven hours we waited out a true Sierra Nevada summer rain storm. The wind would occasionally try to crumple our tent, but I would fight back by forcing my weight into the direction of the blowing wind-gods and hope that more water wouldn't wiggle its way into the tent.
After hours of worrying that our adventure-tastic boyfriends had been blown off the side of Mt. Russell, John and Nick burst back into camp in the pouring rain, promptly stripping down to their birthday suits and diving into their respective tents. We could have filmed an informative video on how to recover from the brink of hypothermia. Step 1: Get off snow-and-rain-drenched mountain. Step 2: Find camp (if possible). Step 3: Take off all rain-drenched clothes and induce uncontrollable laughter in respective girlfriend. Step 4: Attempt to dry off with the least-damp clothing possible (pro-tip: don't use a baselayer that you'll need later). Step 5: crawl into sleeping bag, shiver, wimper and make a pouty face until your concerned-yet-giggling girlfriend spoons with you. For body heat, of course.
What is the moral of this rain-soaked story? Alex Honnold and Cedar Wright are Gandalf-like climbing wizards that can control the weather, climb with the strenght of an alpha-male gorilla, and hike with the haste of a Pacific Crest Trail hiker with an amphetamine addiction.
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