Trailmaster Peak and Shortcut Point

Trailmaster Peak (high point on the right)

The complete failure of our original Memorial Day Weekend plans ended up being a blessing in disguise. Relocating to the un-stormed-on southern Sierra region meant we could play in my favorite mountains. And luckily someone had the perfect idea to hike Trailmaster Peak, a summit near Cottonwood Pass out of the Horseshoe Meadows trailhead.

Trailmaster isn’t a formally named peak, but it’s the high point to the north of the Pass and just south of Cirque. I believe the summit elevation is 12,337 ft, and the trailhead is at about 10k ft. This hike is split 50/50 between trail and cross-country, but the route finding is straightforward and the terrain is relatively simple. I would consider this a great ‘beginner’ peak for someone looking to start exploring off-trail in the Sierra. Use the map of my GPS track below or at this link to follow along with the description.

Park at the Cottonwood Pass trailhead and store all of your food and food related materials (coolers, etc) out of view or in the bear boxes or risk a ticket from the patrolling rangers. Bears are a problem up here, please don’t contribute to the issue! At 10,000 ft you’ll already be gulping for air when packing up your stuff, and you’re not even hiking yet. Make sure you’re well fed and even better hydrated. The only time I’ve had altitude issues is when I haven’t been properly hydrated. Drink drink drink.

Follow the trail to Cottonwood Pass. As far as Sierra passes go this one is really easy. The trail is well graded and even flat for the first couple miles. It’s only about a thousand foot climb to the pass from the trailhead. Piece of cake! But you’ll still be gulping for air, because hey, 11,000 ft is 11,000 ft.

Go about 100 feet past the pass, then leave the trail and angle up a gully. You’ll be off-trail for the next ~3.5 miles or so. Climb up the gully until you have a better view of the sandy eastern slope of Trailmaster. Angle up this east side, making sure not to climb all the way to the top right away since the still-not-visible northern high point is the summit.

You’ll be climbing through sand and boulders. Look down and you’ll see some dark crystal rocks – excellent examples of smoky quartz. They make a nice distraction during the slog to the summit. We took a long time on our climb, sometimes down on our hands and knees to find particularly nice crystals.

And more of it. Until hey, there's the summit.

Eventually the summit comes into view and you can scramble through the rock and sand to the top. I would classify this peak as Class 1, though you can easily make it class 2 in sections by choosing the boulders over the convoluted sand paths. Enjoy the view from the summit – Cottonwood Lakes below you to the north, along with Mt Langley and Whitney. The Kaweahs to the west. Chickenspring Lake directly below you to the west.

Notice the sandy looking ramp heading down into the meadows to the east? That’s our descent.

To descend, head down the north side towards the broad, sloping, sandy plateau below Cirque. Angle to the east until you reach the broad saddle at the top of the sandy ramp pictured above. We dropped our packs here and made a quick run up the little point to the east, naming it “Shortcut Peak”. This is a fun little side trip – a sandy walk with a cool Class 3-ish summit block.

Back at the saddle, tighten your shoes and your gaiters (you’ll need them) and start down the ramp to the meadow below. I dare you not to run. It’s one of those great plunge-step sandy slopes that you can run. Wheeeeeeee.

Down at the meadow, start following the creek. Stick to the northeast side where the terrain stays easy and you’ll even see footprints and the occasional use trail. Follow this creek about a mile and a half (along stunning meadows) and you’ll intersect the trail that you hiked in on at the creek crossing. Take the trail back to your car. Enjoy a cold one and toast to an awesome Sierra summit!

Trailmaster Peak

Mount Whitney Training Hikes: Bay Area Edition

Main Mt Whitney Trail, just below Trail Crest

Modern Hiker recently published a great post about training and preparing to climb Mt. Whitney. Hop on over there and give it a read, especially the parts about altitude. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…

Casey wrote about some training hikes in Southern California, and that inspired me to think about good training hikes in the Bay Area. These are lower in elevation than the Southern California hikes and won’t prepare you for the affects of altitude, but they will help you understand how it feels to put in a long day on the trail.

South Bay

"The Shortcut". And this is the easy part.

Mount Sizer Loop (Henry Coe State Park)

If you’ve never hiked over 15 miles or over 4000 feet in a day I highly recommend doing this hike before committing to Whitney. I try to do it every spring as a benchmark of my hiking condition going into the summer. It is a 16 mile, 4500 ft of gain and descent hike at the minimum, and there are options to make it longer if desired.

In fact, hiking a long distance to anywhere in Henry Coe is good training. As I’ve said in this blog before, people don’t go to Coe to train for the Sierra, they go to the Sierra to train for Coe. Steep roads, east-west trails that pass over endless parallel north-south ridges, and the heat all conspire to beat you down. Learning how to make these kind of hikes bearable, and even enjoyable, was a triumph of my hiking career.

Sizer is the highest point in Henry Coe State Park and the hike along Blue Ridge is excellent – you can see deep into the park’s backcountry and find all kinds of interesting trees and wildflowers. One other reason I like this hike is that it can be done on fire roads only (the track I include here has one stretch of single-track trail), so it’s easy to avoid poison oak if you’re really sensitive to it. This hike will take you on the “Shortcut”, often cited as the steepest trail in the Bay Area. Choose your loop direction based on whether you prefer going up or down really steep trails. I prefer going up.

Peninsula

On the way to Sombroso in 8 inches of snow

Kennedy Road in Sierra Azul (Mt El Sombroso)

Kennedy Road is a trail that starts in the hills above Los Gatos and climbs up to the main ridge of Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve. The stretch to the first trail junction is a steady uphill slog, and then you have the option of making a loop along some roller coaster rolling hills (gain 200 ft, lose 200 ft, rinse, repeat a million times) or heading to the summit of Mt El Sombroso. Sombroso is an uninteresting high point of the ridge, complete with a PG&E tower and wires and trees blocking 80% of the view. However, it makes a good turnaround spot for an in-and-out hike up Kennedy Road that will get you 4000 ft of gain in 12 miles. It’s also a great place to hike in the snow when we get the rare dusting in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Or, you can do a lollipop shaped hike by turning on Priest Rock Trail and connecting to the Limekiln trail. This gets you the same amount of elevation gain in 14 miles. If you’re feeling really ambitious you could do this loop with the additional side trip to El Sombroso. This will add on another 2 miles and a few hundred additional feet of gain.

Map and GPS Data (El Sombroso)
Map and GPS Data (Loop)

East Bay

Pond and delightfully flat but short stretch of trail

Rose Peak from Sunol Regional Wilderness

Until recently, Rose Peak was known as the high point of Alameda County. That honor actually belongs to a slightly higher bump on a nearby ridge according to recent measurements. Rose, however, is the highest *legally accessible* point in Alameda County. It is along the Ohlone Wilderness trail about half way between Sunol and DelValle. The track I’ve included here is the slightly shorter Sunol approach via the Ohlone Wilderness Trail, coming in at 17 miles with about 4200 ft of gain.

Like most of these hikes this is best hiked in the spring since there is very little shade on the trails and it gets very hot and dry in the summer. The winter can be muddy. But the spring is usually beautiful with green rolling hills and wildflowers.

Monument and Mission Peaks from Ed Levin County Park

Mission Peak is an extraordinarily popular summit with hundreds of people hiking it each weekend. Most people, however, take the short approach from the Stanford Road trailhead. The longer and more difficult approach via Ed Levin County Park is, in my opinion, much more enjoyable since the trails aren’t busy. The most likely place you’ll see someone is on a hang glider soaring above. The hardest part of this hike is the first and last few miles where you climb from the parking area to the ridge. Once the steepest climb is done you can take the side trip to the quiet summit of Monument Peak, then follow the undulating ridge over to Mission Peak. After enjoying the view with the large crowds that will no doubt join you on the summit, you can retrace your steps back along the ridge.

There are some variations to this loop – it can be an in and out, or you can follow different trails up and down. In any case, is is approximately 14 miles long with about 3500 feet of gain. It’s not the most strenuous of these hikes but it’s a beautiful wildflower hike in the spring and if you love rolling ridge walks this is a good one.

Murietta Falls

Murietta Falls is also along the Ohlone Wilderness Trail and is not that far from Rose Peak. But this hike starts on the opposite end in Del Valle Regional Park. Just like the hikes in Coe, this goes up and over a few different ridges between the trailhead and the falls. Over the 15 mile round trip you’ll gain almost 5000 feet.

Although there is a bit more shade on this hike than the others, spring and winter are still the best seasons for this hike. The waterfall dries up easily so if you want to see water find a nice day about a week after a good rainfall. There should be water in the falls but the trails should have had some time to dry out.

North Bay

Mt Tamalpais Steep Ravine Trail

Mt Tamalpais from Stinson Beach

This is kind of an unusual hike in that you have to do a lot of work to get to a place you can drive to. The loop I’ve included here is one of many options; there are so many trails on Mt Tam that you could probably hike this every day for a month and not do the same exact loop twice. Coming in around 16 miles with a bit over 3000 feet of gain, it doesn’t have quite the vertical oomph of the other hikes I’ve listed here, but it provides a different type of scenery than the stuff south of San Francisco. The Steep Ravine trail is rich with deep, damp shades of green. Starting at the ocean usually means a nice cool layer of fog to make the beginning climbs more comfortable.

When you get to the summit you’ll be joined by the picnicking families and tourists that have driven to the top. Grab a hotdog and cold soda from the stand. (Yes, this summit has a hot dog stand. Don’t expect that on Mt Whitney).

Thanksgiving and Christmas 2010

Or, where the heck have I been?

I didn’t fall off a mountain somewhere. I’ve been out having fun and being generally too overwhelmed (in a good way) to keep up with my latest trips here on Calipidder, but I hope to remedy that shortly. I’ll be posting a few hike descriptions from our Thanksgiving and Christmas trips, mostly desert peaks but some other fun stuff thrown in as well.

The first half of our Thanksgiving trip was a bit of a weather adventure, driving across the Sierra on the front end of the big storm that closed Tioga Pass for the season. After nearly getting snowed in along highway 120 between Lee Vining and Benton, we headed into the Nevada desert and explored an area called “The Sump”, a fossilized swamp with lots of petrified wood and fantastic colorful formations. We also visited a similar area called Monte Cristo’s castle, soon to be Nevada’s next state park.

We kind of spinned our wheels the first couple days with the snow, but we got our trail legs a couple of days into the trip with a quick hike of Bullfrog Peak just west of Beatty, NV. We followed it up the next day with Anniversary Peak and Narrows in Lake Mead NRA. This was a terrific hike with lots to offer – look for the details soon.

On the Wednesday we headed into Panamint Valley to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with friends at the foot of the Argus Range. We did some fun 4×4 in our new truck (Tundra Rock Warrior), climbed several peaks, explored some really cool old mines, and played on the Panamint Dunes. As always, a great trip. And details on the hikes coming soon.

Christmas was a few days outside of Lone Pine where we snowshoed at the foot of Mt Whitney, photographed the Alabama Hills, and then went into an area called Cactus Flats to climb a really fun peak, do some 4×4, and visit some pictographs.

So, that’s where I’ve been. I’m not sure if things will ever slow down but I hope to catch up with trail reports here before heading off to the Outdoor Retailer Show in a few weeks!

I hope everyone had as fantastic of a holiday break as I was lucky enough to experience!

4 Comments
January 2, 2011
Miscellaneous
4x4, alabama hills, christmas, desert, lone pine, mines, narrows, panamint dunes, peak, pictographs, thanksgiving, whitney
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Christmas in the Eastern Sierra

For the first seven years I lived in California I always flew back to Michigan to visit my family at Christmas. Each year I would inevitably face midwest snowstorms, holiday travel crowds, cancelled flights, etc. But it was always worth it to visit my family.

Last year was the first year I skipped the holiday travel – the overwhelming aggravation of it, combined with ticket prices that were 3x the previous year’s cost made me switch my family visit to summer, and it was a great decision. I sure do miss the Christmas traditions, but trading it for less annoying travel and time on the beach in the summer is a compromise I’m willing to make. So I made the same decision this year.

Since we don’t have any family out here, we found ourselves with a second year of a non-committed Christmas. And what do we do when we find a free day in our calendar? We hit the road, of course. At the last minute we decided to spend the holiday in our favorite place in the world – in a tent in the Eastern Sierra.

I’ve been meaning to visit Cerro Gordo for a long time and it was with great excitement that we turned up the dreaded road on Saturday afternoon. I have heard that the road condition is anywhere from an easy Sunday drive to a 4WD nightmare. Truthfully, the answer lies somewhere in between, depending on the time of year, the type of vehicle you drive, and your experience driving on steep and narrow mountain roads. In our Trailblazer, we made it up the nicely graded but steep and occasionally very narrow 7-ish miles in less than 30 minutes, including a few stops for photos. Compared to many other roads we’ve been on it was quite an easy drive, but someone who has never driven in the mountains or on dirt could very easily classify it as a nightmare.

With the road condition report out of the way…what’s so cool about this place? Cerro Gordo (‘Fat Hill’ in Spanish) is the ghost of a once busy silver mine. Still private property, there are caretakers that live on-premise, still work the mines, do upkeep and maintenance, and watch over the remains of the town. For a quite reasonable donation, you can wander through the ghost town and even see inside some of the remaining buildings like the fascinating step into history that is the American Hotel. Please be aware that this area is still private property, and it is best to call ahead if you plan on stopping by.

2 Comments
December 3, 2009
Trip Reports
cerro gordo, ghost town, joshua tree, mine, mines, mount whitney, ruins, sierra, thanksgiving09, U2, whitney
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2010 Calendars are Here!

The 2010 Calendars are here!

Every year I wait until the last minute to print calendars, and usually do just a personal run of a few to give to family at Christmas. I had a calendar last year at Cafepress but was disappointed in the print quality. This year I’m trying out a new service, redbubble.com. General consensus on photography message boards is that the quality is pretty good, so I’m looking forward to receiving my order.

The nice thing about redbubble is that I can offer my calendars for sale to the general public. I originally was just going to do a single calendar of my favorite photos from 2009, but someone asked if I could do a wildflower specific one too. Then, I couldn’t narrow down my favorite photos to 12, so I did two calendars, one specifically of Mt Whitney, and another one of the Sierra Nevada.

All photos featured in the calendars were taken by me on my various trips in 2009. Click here to view the calendars (or on the photos below), or here to see all available prints at redbubble.com. For other ways to support calipidder.com, please see the new and exciting Brazen Commercialism page.

Lastly, I’d like to thank the people who encouraged me to set this up. I’d been putting it off, but there is something very motivating about people actually asking to buy prints of my photos. Thanks!

High Sierra Trail Day 7: Guitar Lake to Whitney

It’s Whitney Day! My watch alarm woke me at 4 am and remembering last night’s cold temperatures, I maneuvered myself to the door while staying inside my sleeping bag. I wanted to heat my breakfast and coffee water inside my vestibule and get as much packing done as possible while staying all warm and cozy inside my down cocoon. As I started moving around I realized it was warmer than the previous night – a check of the thermometer on my GPS revealed a temperature of 47, warmer than most mornings in the Sierra. I ridiculed myself for being a baby and finally got out of my bag.

We packed up quickly and were on the trail by 4:50 am. Hiking by headlamp is fun, but we didn’t need them for too long. My eyes adjusted and the starlight reflected off of the light colored granite enough to see the way. The only disappointing thing about starting this earlier is the inability to photograph the scene around us.

I mentioned in the blog entry from the previous day that Backpacker Magazine had named Guitar Lake as the best place to watch a sunset, but I have to disagree. It’s the best place to watch a sunrise. As we climbed the switchbacks to Trail Crest we could see the predawn sky start to lighten, creating a strip of pastels above the Kaweahs. Sunrise was scheduled for 6:10 am, and at 6:11 we could see the first morning alpenglow sunlight begin to hit the distant peaks. As we climbed, the sun did too, exposing more and more peaks. Eventually the lower lakes like Guitar and Hitchcock caught the colorful reflection and started to glow orange. It’s a trail experience unlike any other, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have enjoyed it twice.

We dropped our packs at the junction below Trail Crest and headed up to Whitney. After a week of hiking with the pack on my back it felt like I was flying that final couple of miles to the summit! This is another favorite stretch of trail in the Sierra – the views and structure of the trail are just out of this world. Additionally, the polemonium (sky pilot) was in full bloom and brought a burst of color to the desolate granite landscape. This is my favorite flower, mostly because I can only find it in my favorite of places – the very highest peaks and passes in the Sierra.

It was a lot colder up there at 14000 ft, the wind was blowing, and the sun hadn’t yet hit the back side of Whitney so we didn’t spend a lot of time on the summit. Enough time to snap pictures, sign the log, take in the views and revel in the feeling of a successful trip, and then it was back down to warmer temperatures to thaw our hands and faces. We found a Staples Easy button in the summit register and delighted in pushing it. “That was easy!” it told us. I don’t know if I’d call it easy, but we were blessed with a successful trip without any major mishaps or injuries.

Signing the Summit Register:

Once you turn around off the summit there is another motivating factor, especially after spending a week on the trail: real food. On the hike down I would recite with each footstep: “burger…beer…burger…beer…burger…beer.” I don’t know if it made things go any faster, but it sure made me hungry. I also tried counting the 97 switchbacks. I lost count at 88. Guess I’ll have to go back!

We made it down to Whitney Portal around 1:30 pm and headed to the Portal store for cheeseburgers, fries, and beer. David pulled up to meet us just as we sat down – great timing! Then a few others showed up to welcome us back to civilization. We had quite a little party there at the Portal store, and finally left to continue it in Lone Pine. As we spent the night celebrating Paige’s birthday and our successful High Sierra Trail trip in the town of Lone Pine, I kept glancing back up at Mt Whitney, wondering when I’d be up there again. I’m already jonesing for another entry in the log sheet.

Photos from today are here (105 photos)
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Mount Whitney from Guitar Lake, exit to Portal at EveryTrail

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Calipidder

[kal-uh-pid-er] - noun: Free Range Backpacker, Climber, Runner, Gear Nerd