Evolution Traverse VI, 5.9
With the gear piled into the back of my new truck and with room to spare, we pointed our compasses to the mountains. More specifically we headed out for the Evolution Basin, Mt. Darwin and the 8With the late start and the long drive to the east side we opted to spend the night bivied at a pull off on the Tioga Pass at the 9000 ft sign better known as Camp 9. We set our alarms for 0430 and did our best to get the full four hours of sleep. We were on the road early the next morning only stopping in Bishop for gas and coffee. Brian having a more refined palette that the rest of us, we made an additional stop at the Looney Bean, throwing out the previously purchased gas station coffee.
After the fuel stop in Bishop, we shot up why 168 towards the trailhead at North Lake at 9300 feet. By 0820 we were on our way at a steady clip. I really enjoy climbing with people that have years of experience and know what the fuck they're doing. They don't ask dumb questions, they've made their mistakes already and they're efficient. The approach to the Evolution Traverse first takes you up to the Lamark Col at about 12,500 feet before it dumps you back down to the Darwin Basin and the Darwin Bench which is a bit discouraging because you lose a lot of the altitude gains you made on the hike up to the Col. Kat unfortunately started to lag behind at about 11,500 or 12K feet. Even with the night before spent at 9k feet, she was still feeling the effects of the altitude. We waited for her and when we all regrouped she said she felt drunk from the elevation. Since we knew we were going to be losing altitude after the Col we decided to push on and Kat slowly made her way up with the rest of us.
We again regrouped and took lunch at the top of the Lamark Col before descending into the Darwin Basin. As soon as we started down Kat immediately started doing better and was keeping up with the team again. By 4 or 5pm we had made it to the Darwin Bench and made the decision to take two days worth of food and stash unnecessary gear. Even though bears aren't as big of a problem as the mosquitos in the Basin, I set up a bear-hang just the same, figuring it would at least keep the marmots out.
We again started out and up traversing around the ridge until we got to the official beginning of the route and started scrambling up. Kat again started to feel the effects of the altitude, at first the headache then the drinking steps and finally severe nausea. Brian to the lead of the troop and I was at the caboose right behind Kat spotting her as she scrambled up the 3rd and 4th class rock. By about 7pm I decided to pull the plug and called up to start scouting for a bivy site. She wasn't doing well at all and it was definitely a case of AMS that I wasn't going to explore how bad when soloing over high sierra exposure.
We found a spot that would fit all four of us. It wasn't all that flat but it was protected and we needed to stop. We ate dinner and Kat stopped speaking altogether. She became extremely despondent. I know first hand what altitude can do to you and I knew that sleep would help; besides going down wasn't quite an option. Tired from the climbing and the 12 miles of approach, I curled up in my bag and laid my head down, picking it up only briefly to wash the sun slip below the horizon.
The next morning Kat was almost back to herself again. She was at least speaking again and the nausea had gone away. This time we traded our approach shoes for our rock shoes and the climbing became more challenging with more exposure and 5th class moves thrown into the mix. It took longer than I had expected to get to the summit of Peak 13,360'. We would get to a summit expecting it to be the peak but we would only be created with a notch we would need to downclimb or rappel only to see that the ridge continued on and up. When we did finally get to the summit of Peak 13,360' it was mid-day and we took our lunch.
Between Peak 13,360' and Mendel the ridge got difficult. The moves were harder and the route-finding was tough. At one point Brian rapped too far down a notch at had a large headwall ominously protecting the opposite side and from our view we could easily see that a pile of talus protected the sloping top-out. We continued to downclimb, trying to find the route up the headwall but we only found ourselves off-route with only sketchy options. Back up was bad but down was worse. At one point while we were scouting a way to make it back up, the four of us were scrambling a a gully until Brian and Kat who were at the top decided they needed to rope up. The only thing Shannon and I could do then was stay where we were, mid move for about 20 minutes and when we did get to the top it was no dice. We did eventually did get up with Brian leading an entire 50m rope length pitch to get us back up to the notch and a 5.6 short pitch to top out on the headwall. This unfortunately cost us serious time which we weren't making good on already.
Even worse, when we made it back up to the ridge, the Owen's Valley and the White Mountain range were completely covered in black thunderheads. Unfortunately at this point it was so late in the day we didn't have many options and our group communication wasn't exactly top notch. We all rapped down into yet another notch, first Brian, then Shannon, Kat and I took the anchor position again. I had mistakenly left my ATC behind and Kat had been tag lining up hers. At this rap however it got stuck pulling up and I had to rap down on a muenter hitch. When I pulled the rope it got stuck and i then had to solo up to get it out. When I finally rejoined the team I found that the decision was already made to keep going up. Honestly with a storm moving it it wasn't my top decision and when I got to the top of the next pitch which was the summit of Mendel, Brian and Shannon had found a cave to hide out the storm.
I truly expected it to be raining within 10 based on how fast the clouds were moving but we got lucky and the winds didn't bring the storm to us. In fact it held off all night and even gave us a cloud free starry night.