Cloudripper 13,525′ and Vagabond Peak 13,374′
Sierra Nevada
Total Time: 8:24
Distance: 12.0 miles
Elevation Gain: 4390′
Crux: Class 3
Trailhead: South Lake- trash, pit toilets
An early winter storm seemed as if it was putting an early end to an already short alpine season in the Sierra, with inches of snow above 10,000′ making my plans for a climb of Dade, Gabb and Hilgard feel overly ambitious. But with a day free in Mammoth, I wanted to still climb at least one new SPS summit and settled on a snowy ascent of Cloudripper, a 13,000′ summit just north of the Palisades. Considered one of the easier Sierra Peak Section summits with the majority of the approach on trail, it seemed like a good option, with the fresh snow upping the difficulty without adding much added danger. The snow had fallen a few days prior and I was unsure of the conditions and overall stability, so I decided to leave well before dawn, my car reading a crisp 34 degrees at the South Lake Trailhead. I started up the trail in the backside of the parking lot, cutting north through the forest to intersect the pack trail leaving Parchers Resort leading up to Green and Brown Lakes. The GPS track I had loaded followed a massive half buried pipe, about 2′ in diameter and having just enough frost coating to keep me from moving too quickly. I quickly intersected the main trail leading up to the lakes and encountered small patches of snow, nothing more than a quarter inch deep and easily avoidable. I followed switchbacks up to the broad meadow below Brown Lake, with what little snow had fallen at this elevation melted out, leaving the meadow extra muddy. I lost the trail at the outlet of Brown Lake in the meadow, and cut cross country, picking it up again at the outlet of Green Lake, now at about 11,000′. Before the climb, I was worried the headwall above Green Lake would be the crux of the day if it held snow, and although one could climb it directly via class 2 talus, I decided to keep with the trail as long as it remained dry. And even with the half moon illuminating snow covered slopes directly across the lake, the trail was bone dry, the snow clouds getting hung up one ridge over.
It wasn’t until I was well over 12,000′ that I began to encounter snow with any real consistency, and even then it was fairly easy to hop over the patches on boulders and larger pieces of talus. The sun was just starting to rise as I crested over the sub-peak of 12,406′, with a look straight across the Palisades covered in a fresh coating of snow. I hadn’t been to the Palisades since traversing them before Avery was born, and it was a real treat to see them with so much fresh snow.
To reach Cloudripper via the standard north face, I needed to go up and over Vagabond Peak, the northern slopes of which lay directly ahead. I crossed the shallow col and started up, and was surprised to find a series of tracks through the snow, someone having been up sometime in the past two days since the storm. I followed these initially, then deviated partway up in an effort to hop across rocks rather than walk in the unconsolidated snow. About halfway up from the col, I reached a deeper snowfield, a large surviving patch that made it through the entire summer.
Out of sheer laziness, I resisted the urge to put on crampons, the snow suncupped enough to not be a high risk of falling, although I probably could have used the extra traction. The terrain steepened below the summit of Vagabond Peak, and I boulder hopped best I could before transitioning back to the footsteps up, reaching the summit at 7:45 AM. This provided me the first good look at the remainder of the route up Cloudripper, and although it had a similar large snowpack that had survived the summer, it looked like it would be fairly straightforward.
I dropped off the south face of Vagabond Peak, this side having considerably less snow with a good amount having melted in the past two days. At the connecting saddle, I stopped to put on crampons. While I initially had planned to try and climb the northeast ridgeline directly, I quickly found this to be all loose and unconsolidated snow, pivoting to the snowfield on the northern slopes.
Although this also had some loose snow on the top, the old snowfield beneath was bullet hard ice, and I made quick upward progress with crampons to the final summit ridgeline. There was a very short section of scrambling to reach the summit block, with a ramp of class 3 snow bringing me up to the summit shortly after 9 AM. The views of the Palisades were tremendous, and it was hard to look at anything else, although Devils Crag covered in snow could have easily stole the show without so much competition. There was surprisingly little snow in the region of Rock Creek, and although I probably could have gotten at least Dade and Gabb, seeing the Palisades in fresh snow made this the right call.
I ate a quick snack before following my prints in the snow back down, plunge stepping down to the saddle between Cloudripper and Vagabond. It looked like I could follow a snow free line back up and over the west flank of Vagabond and took my crampons off, although needed to put them back on dropping off Vagabond due to the large snowfield on the north face. Descending the ridge, I decided to drop down to Green Lake more directly down talus slopes, as they looked reasonably angled from above.
This wound up being the most tedious part of the day, as the snow was considerably deeper in the north facing gully and I was constant slipping in the unconsolidated snow with loose scree underneath. It may be the fastest route when dry, but I’m confident the dry trail would have been faster.
I took off my crampons again in a dry meadow above the lake, with easy cross country to bring me back to the trail. Once on the trail, I picked up my pace, crossing the outlet of Brown Lake and quickly reaching the pipeline descent back to the trailhead.
No longer coated in frost and warm and dry from the sun, it was a fast and efficient descent, reaching the trailhead before 1 PM. Driving back into Owens Valley, I swung into Bishop for a quick bite to eat before heading back to Mammoth.