Tokopah Wall
Snow Boots
Rock Climbing– California
Total Time: 8:30
Distance: 7.2 miles
Elevation Gain: 2800′
Crux: 5.8
Pitches: 7
Protection: 70 m rope, doubles to #4
Companions: Cory B
Trailhead: Tokopah Falls trailhead, full services
I had another day of climbing planned with Cory B, and was pretty excited when he suggested an obscure adventure route in Sequoia NP- Snow Boots 5.8, 7 pitches. It can be hard enough to find a partner for a classic adventure climb let alone and obscure one, and I jumped at the opportunity when he pitched the climb. We met at the Fowler Park and Ride and drove into the park to the Lodgepole Campground and Tokopah Falls trailhead. After organizing our gear, we started out along the trail, crossing over the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River a bit under 2 miles to Tokopah Falls.
Tokopah Wall and our route- Snow Boots was the cliff directly above the waterfall with a series of short 10-15′ cliff bands separating us from the main granite face. I had hoped it would have been a simple talus hop up to the start of the route, but we soon found ourselves bushwacking through patches of small willow and waist high brush, aiming for small weakness in the short rock bands. Although the bushwacking was certainly not terrible, it did take us a bit longer to find the start of the route than we had planned, about two hours from the trailhead.
The start of the route is by a huge pine tree just right of the massive gully splitting the face, with an obvious handcrack starting the route. I would be taking the odd pitches, and after racking up, I started up the first pitch. The obscurity of the route was clear from the start, with a large thorny weed growing from the handcrack and plenty of moss and loose rock. The hand crack disappeared far too quickly to low angled slab, and I wandered up mostly 3rd and 4th class to a large pine tree high above for the belay. This wound up being a bit too high, with Cory spotting the second pitch from the large ledge about 20′ below the tree as he made his way up. The second pitch is a short 5.5 traverse with maybe 1-2 opportunities for any protection. While the climbing here was easy, the rock was coated in a thick layer of yellow pollen with a few small wet patches, making the slab feel a bit less secure.
This brought us to the base of a the third pitch and beautiful hand and finger crack. I had the privilege of leading this pitch and found it the most enjoyable of the entire climb, no harder than 5.6 but with the cleanest rock of the entire climb aside for some pockets of grass in the crack closer to the top.
I brought Cory up to a small ledge and belay stance and he swung onto lead for the fourth pitch, continuing up the crack and climbing left of a small roof. This wound up being far easier than it looked from below, with an step onto the higher slab to our left with an easy step up back to the right to get over the roof.
Unfortunately the clean crack disappeared into a tree and mossy slabs above the roof, and Cory brought me up to join him. The fifth pitch could hardly qualify as a pitch at all, a bit of dirty scrambling to bring us up to the large ledge cutting across the entire wall about halfway up. We took a short break here, enjoying the views across the valley, particularly of the Watchtower, the huge granite feature directly across the trail.
With only two pitches left, we were in excellent shape for time, and Cory started up the 6th pitch and some of the only 5.8 climbing on the route. Following a curving chimney feature, this quickly narrowed to a gorgeous and far too short handcrack before widening to a 5.8 offwidth, very reminiscent of Yosemite climbing. The crack became progressively wetter leading to the final belay at a slabby overlap, with the slab now completely wet. I was impressed with Cory’s lead on the wet off width and slab (probably the two worst climbing styles to have wet rock) and was glad the final pitch looked a bit easier.
I pull on a #4 cam off the belay to get above the overlap, my climbing shoes thoroughly soaked with horrible friction on the wet slab. The crack more or less stayed a consistent #4 size for the first third of the pitch and I was able to walk it higher until it briefly tapered down to a hand crack. Although this should have felt more secure, I found myself jamming into thick moss and mud, my white crack gloves quickly turning brown. At a ledge I thought the difficulties were over and I climbed higher until hitting the last difficult move of the climb- a flared chimney feature tapering to an off width at the top with a half inch deep puddle at the base. Unfortunately, I had left the #4 in the lower crack which I needed to protect the move. I gave it a few solid tries, but my soaking wet climbing shoes could gave me almost no purchase to either chimney down low or smear on the edges. I built a quick anchor off a finger crack behind me and brought up Cory to have the #4 to finish the climb. I plugged in it, and now feeling very over the route, pulled on the cam to get to the final class 2 ramp to the top. The views from the top of the route were quite good to the south, looking towards Pear Lake and the snowy basin beneath Alta Peak.
We took another short break and changed into dry shoes before starting our descent, heading north to hike along Horse Creek. While other reports have said the descent was heinous, I actually found it to be very pleasant, mostly talus hopping and working around small patches of snow just above the creek.
It only became brushy about a quarter mile from the trail, and there were still plenty of game trails to utilize to get us down. Back on the trail, we were able to pick up the pace for the hike out, now passing dozens of day hikers headed up to see the falls. Once back at the trailhead, we grabbed a quick bite and beer at the Lodgepole Market before heading back to Fresno.
