The High Sierra - Tuolumne Meadows - Mathes' Crest

(2nd in a series of posts about my 2012 trip to the High Sierra)

We finally got good at starting early. 

If you were god, and you were making a lake, you'd make Budd Lake.  Would't ya?

How much more fucking idyllic can you get, seriously.

Mathes' Crest, in all its glory.  We did it the usual way, South to North, which in this photo is right to left.  Its about a mile.

What's not obvious in this photo is that I am heroically running it out up a steep and exposed fin of rock.  What is obvious is that I have a big ass.

The posing options were exceptional.

A soloist that caught up to us at the end.  Supertopo says to bail at the halfway mark, but this is nonsense.  The section of climbing that this guy has just completed, the Rock Wave, is fucking phenomenal, and you'd miss it if you do as Supertopo says.

I should admit to something.  In spite of my usual bravado about sending and crushing, this first week in the Sierras was getting the best of me.  The whole area is above 8000 feet, and a lot of the summits are 9 to 12 thousand.  I don't do well with altitude, and I was struggling on the approaches, often feeling weak and slow, and occasionally stopping just a few minutes into my predawn hike to puke.  I tended to feel more worn out halfway through the day than it seemed like I should, and often wanted to end the days early.  Usually Neale and I destroy Supertopo's approach times, but there were a couple of times where we were even slower than the slow-end range (which was my fault).  It wasn't until about halfway into the trip that we began to demolish guidebook approach times in fine style.  The altitude made no noticeable difference to the climbing, since most of the climbing we did was pretty easy and rock climbing is not particularly aerobic, but the hiking was brutal.

All that said, on this particular day we planned to do Mathes' Crest and Cathedral Peak.  Normally, I think, this would be a very reasonable goal, but hiking out of Mathes', I wasn't into it.

Cathedral Peak