I have no idea how much my pack weighed, but it was incredibly heavy, I would guess approximately 800lbs. Nothing that we have can remotely be considered ultralight, but it was only a 7-mile hike in so we bit the bullet and shouldered our packs.
The mandatory (:x) shuttle bus dropped us off at Agnew Meadows (which has ample parking), and the views and wildflowers were immediately impressive.
The trail drops you down into Reds Meadow Valley, with undeniable evidence of the windstorm that tore the place apart last November all over the place, but it has a fair amount of shade and the uphill portions aren't too steep or long.
Quickly you climb back out of the valley upstream towards Shadow Lake, where you get your first glimpse of the Minarets and the Volcanic Ridge.
You continue upstream for what seems like an extremely long time over a gigantic granite staircase and finally come to Ediza Lake, one of the most scenic places I've ever seen:
We set up camp in a forested section to the west of the lake, retiring early so we could get up and make our attempt at Mt Ritter the next morning.
Morning Glow on the Minarets
Ritter in the Morning
We woke up early, as planned, and headed up the stream that feeds Ediza from the glaciers and snowfields between Ritter and Banner. I had a rough idea of the route to take, as we wanted to keep it class 2, but as is usually the case, when I got there in real life it looked nothing like the photos I had studied.
After negotiating a ton of huge talus, it looked like we could scramble up to a series of grassy ledges above the cliffs below Ritter and skirt the side of the SE glacier, so we tried that. It was fun Class 2 for the most part with a little Class 3 stuff mixed in, particularly climbing up one small waterfall. We reached our ledges, the peak appeared to be getting closer, but then we ran into a huge waterfall that was beyond our abilities.
Approaching Ritter and Banner, you can see the grassy areas we made it to
Not skilled enough to cross this guy
Failure never tasted so good
If we had been staying more than one night, we would have backtracked and tried again. Our mistake was obvious, we followed the stream too far in and should have cut up some previous chutes to climb well above the cliffs and onto the glacier, but to go back and do so and continue to the summit would have guaranteed we'd miss the shuttle back to Mammoth and added several miles of road hiking in the dark, so we decided instead to explore the surrounding area. We ran into several other lakes before dropping back down to Ediza, packing up, and making the long, sad trek back to civilization.
Nydiver Lakes
Garnet Lake
Ediza from Above
All in all, we had an awesome time and we weren't really expecting to summit Ritter anyway. We did gain the knowledge that, with the proper routefinding, Ritter is definitely doable as an easy Class 3. Next time up (hopefully soon), we'll book two nights in camp so we don't have such a tight time constraint.
A ton more photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wattifoto/ ... 546314844/
And as a bonus, here are some shots from Lassen that are completely unrelated to this post (meaning I don't feel like typing up a trip report on something so far north on a website dedicated to the SGMs. The Southern-ish Sierra sort of makes sense here....
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More here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wattifoto/ ... 546041624/
Cheers 8)
