- I could bike the first 3 miles from the trailhead to the saddle
- Doing it this way, the section in Bear Creek is only 1 mile long instead of 3 miles coming from below. The unending river crossings are slow.
At 6:30 I started riding. Met some hikers near the bottom who warned me about the brush encroaching the trail on the other side of the saddle. If they only knew. Didn't see anybody else all day. Got to the saddle, stashed the bike, walked down to Bear Creek. The approach to West Fork Bear Creek is similar as the last time. Saw some huge mushrooms near the river
With some more traditional ones nearby
West Fork Bear Creek is as I left it the last time. Saw a Great Blue Heron (maybe?) and an unhappy rattler. Saw one extra bit of human activity: just below the creek junction at 2900ft there're some pots/pans in a tree. Look like they've been there for a LONG time.
Alright, so at 2900ft the main branch of West Fork Bear Creek turns N. West Mermaid is still to the W, so I took that branch of the creek. This is much drier, but still has water. Pretty soon there's a waterfall:
There's a bypass on the left on a good deer trail. Lots of deer trails above, and it's clear-ish of brush. I took a trail back to the creekbed past the waterfall. Here the canyon was narrow and filled with debris. Fighting this didn't seem worth it, so I left the drainage, and started the climb here. Headsizeburrito: you stayed down in the drainage all the way to the saddle N of the peak, right? How was that?
I tried to link up the deer trails on a SW line, aiming for the E ridge of the peak. It isn't bad for the most part. The upper part below the ridge is very brushy, however, and I was doing a lot of crawling. Eventually you can see the peak
I topped on on the ridge at ~ 4000ft. Here the terrain improves. The brush thins out a bit, there're clear spots, and rocks. The N side of the ridge is almost friendly.
And you can look back on Middle Mermaid, and whatever snow is left on Baldy. You can also see Smith Mountain saddle, where I came from.
Then there's a bump
There's a bypass of that wall on the left. Once on top, you can see a long ridge from the South connecting to more bumps:
(note: this is tilted; the ridge in the background should be straight-ish). Everything about this feels like the Triplets.
The left one is taller. And I want to say that the right one is a part of the North ridge that headsizeburrito climbed. Yes? I walked to the saddle, then walked around looking for a weak spot. It's prety cliffy, but there're some class 3 chutes on the left. Finished those, topped out, and felt the same disappointment that headsizeburrito felt when he saw that the high point wasn't here, but on an uninteresting, slightly higher and VERY brushy bump to the West. You can actually see it in the photo: it's the thing on the left. Probably the worst bushwhacking of the whole day was here. Normally I'd find a bypass, but this was the high point. Eventually I broke through, 6 hours 20 minutes from the start. I spooked a roadrunner, found headsizeburrito's VERY nice Pelican case register, and signed the book. I'm taking bets: how many signatures there other than the two of us? Cool views:
I returned the box
And started the return trip. Pop quiz: which of these two chutes doesn't cliff-out at the bottom?
Answer: neither! I felt very pleased with myself that I marked my chute as I was climbing up, but I didn't do that ENOUGH, so there was some guessing happening, still. Worked out. Since the top of Mermaid ridge was friendlier than the slopes beneath, I had a thought to take this all the way to the saddle at ~ 3820ft. But it turned out that it gets bad past where I popped out, so I mostly ended up following the same lines back. The rest was a long slog, and I got back to the car with just enough daylight remaining to not take out the lights.
This was hard. I definitely lost some fitness. And it was a warm day AND I forgot to bring my hat. So I overheated or underhydrated, or something. Felt parched constantly, and was chugging water constantly, and it never felt like enough. Had so much water in me that the thought of eating food was really unappealing, and I forced down one clif bar all day. In the end, I made it, and the fast-food drive-thru milkshake I had was incredible.
