morning alpenglow from the parking lot at Pine Creek Trailhead
The route starts out in some trees but soon turns into a rocky fire road that winds about 1.5 miles up past an abandoned tungsten mill. A small trail soon branches off the road and heads a couple miles upward towards a pass.
Mt. Tom
Pine Lake- top of the pass
Upper Pine Lake
At a junction above Upper Pine Lake, take the trail to Pine Creek Pass
small lake at Pine Creek Pass
From Pine Creek Pass, turn right and walk a little under a mile across a gentle slope. Merriam (left) and Royce (right) Peaks and a lake should soon come to view.
Royce Peak
setting up camp
After a quick lunch we set off towards the peaks. The approach is simple. Walk around the north side of the lake, turn left, and crampon up to an obvious saddle between Merriam and Royce peaks.
nearing the top of the saddle
We decided to do Merriam Peak first because it was a strong class 2 with weak class 3 sections compared to Royce Peak which was easy class 2. Tip for Merriam Peak: ascend up the west side, go steadily upwards but do not go too high that you hit the ridge. The ridge involves a rope. Total elevation gain from the saddle to Merriam is ~900 ft. At first, I thought the small pinnacle jutting off the south side of the mountain was the summit, but when I climbed to the top of it, a slightly higher set of boulders rose up about 100ft away to the north which was the true summit. Based on the signatures in the register (2005 earliest), it looked like the previous register had been stolen.
view from the false peak- even though this is not the real peak, I still recommend climbing it. The views are better than on the real peak
views from the real peak
looking over at Royce Peak
descending Merriam
We got to the saddle in under an hour and started heading up Royce Peak. The climb up Royce is really easy compared to Merriam. Elevation gain from the saddle is ~1,000 ft. From a plateau at just over 13,000ft, the small summit hill comes into view. From the summit, a small pinnacle can be seen to the north that may look like the actual summit, but is a few feet lower.
Craig, ready to start the climb!
Views from the summit- The time of day made for awesome lighting. We looked around but couldnt find a register.
descending
looking over at Merriam
back to the notch and hike back to camp
alpenglow on Merriam
The temp got to 24 degrees F at night at the coldest
alpenglow the next morning
hiking out
