pk 6649 of West Twin Peaks 11/10/15

[AW~]

Started off early morning on the Devils canyon trail down to the creek, which had a lite flow. A couple of minutes later and the 2900ft of elevation to the subpeak starts. Initially, its a long upstream parallel of the creek below and then has a sharp 200ft uphill move to signal the terrain to come. At the top of the ridge turn to rolling hills of strangely eroded decomposed granite, with an immediate dropoff to Devils canyon on one side and a flatish area on the other. After that it was two steep pitches to a subpeak of the subpeak....with supersteep pitches thrown in here or there.
The ridge was nice and wide to distract the persistent straight dropoffs on either side. Its also is a Station Fire boundary line giving a contrast to the two sides of the line.

The subpeak had the best views, and should be the one on the topo haha. I planned on getting to the major ridge so I continued on attempting a series of narrow notches, including subpeak 6649. Unfortunately, I was stopped out at the last notch ...but I was out of my league on that stuff, so I headed back. It was 1pm at this point, back from crawling and what not.

Coming back down was a chore. Near constant feelings of cliff out everywhere, and must not venture down some stray fakeout ridge. The lower pitch, zig zag, is kind of funny because I couldnt see where I was supposed to end up because of the forest. Back down on the granite area, I came back the longer, not worth it way via subpeak 4915. Finally on the sandy ridge above the canyon...now what was the way down again?:D I had forgotten, but made it down without too much grief onto some small cascades off the canyon trail. Then it was back to the car, my flashlight coming on about 500ft before the end.

Start of climb from elevation 4800


Looking back down at previous travel...the ridge without the brush moving left to right off picture in the center.


Taking care not to step on any life forms besides buckthorn


No going around any notches as can be seen from this picture upper right


An overexposed picture of being on Twin Peaks ridge


Subpeak 6013 was neat because it creates a view on the upper elevation side that can see Hwy39 at West Fork. Move the camera a little west and Devils canyon all the way to Cogswell dam(and beyond since higher than Monrovia Peak).It was a clear day with excellent views.

Another overexposed view back to the car at ACH.

Huggeee mount Waterman

Back down at subpeak 4915 looking down into Devils Canyon before it meets the trail.

Following the ridge back down....

[walker]

Nice job! Certainly into the heart of the wilderness on an outing like that.

Did you see any ancient, weathered and eroded cairns on or around peak 4915?

On my descent of Devil's Canyon from twin peaks saddle some years ago, I took a shortcut through the flat area to the east of peak 4915, specifically the meadow/dry lake area immediately below it. I ascended peak 4915 to get a view of how to meet up with the trail and was surprised to see a sturdy but possibly 100 year old cairn on a fairly prominent rock jutting out. At the time, a few years before the station fire, I had just been reduced to tears hacking through impenetrably dense, fearsome thickets of 50-foot-tall chaparral, so the sign of any human passage through there was pretty striking. The descent to the river from that area was surprisingly cliffed-out and intricate, or maybe it just seemed that way in my exhausted state.

Maybe there were some old mountain-man routes through that area from a long time ago.

From your pics, it looks like it's relatively wide-open travel in the lower sections since the fire has cleared things out. Thanks for the report. Nice!

[AW~]

I didnt see any cairns around peak 4915. You did an excellent job of escaping Devils Canyon though....I was looking down where you came up to the peak thinking it was a good bypass. But like you said, its easy to get bamboozled on the way down from peak 4915 since there are so many options that appear viable but almost none of them are. And yes, the brush was crazy before the fire! As if the place is not intimidating enough.


The closest thing to a cairn I saw...precise erosion kind of common to the place.


Mr.Grinch rock