Cucamonga (attempt)

 Initial plan was to hike Mt. Baldy, but snowy and icy road conditions was too much for my Prius, even with chains it could not make switchbacks, so we retreated to Ice house canyon. Easy going to saddle. There was probably 10 or so people in front of us, but after saddle most of them turned around. We had a great hopes for 2 folks with snowshoes, but after 100 feet they was confused and scared and went back as well, so it was my turn to lead. Very enjoyable exercise sometimes falling chest deep into the snow. Poor Fedor was struggling even to follow, so speed was very slow. We made it to Cucamonga / Bighorn saddle before turning around.

Mt. Whitney

 Mountains does not forgive mistakes, even little ones. Our annual Whitney trip did not go well for me this time. It was nice to get out, but no summit just because of 3 AAA batteries. We get a few hours nap at trail head, actually somewhere between lower and upper gates. My flashlight died after 1 hour of hiking, but going up was not that bad.

Sunrise near Upper Boy scouts lakes

Iceberg Lake

Mountaineering chute

My high point, ~13000 

I made a conservative decision to turn around early to avoid hiking icy Ebersbacher Ledges in the dark.

Looking up from Lower Boy scouts Lake

Ebersbacher Ledges

Sunset

Bridge To Nowhere hike

Easy 10 miles out and return hike to abandoned bridge on a washed-away road in the San Gabriel Mountains that spans across the East Fork of the San Gabriel River. Relatively flat with multiple river crossing. Took us 2:30 one way.

Bridge to Nowhere

Some river crossing did not go as well as other. Ha ha.

Styx Canyon - Death Valley

Canyoneering trip to Death Valley. We did a South Fork of Styx Canyon (4A IV), descending from Dante's View (5476 ft) to Bad Water (-270 ft), whole day adventure with 14 rappels according to description (we didn't count) and a lot of scrambling and down climbing.

Styx Canyon

My video about our experience:

Sergei's video:

Skyline

 I have been organizing annual Skyline hike for the last 10 years, which was a great success with different groups of friends connecting together and having a good time. On some years we also hike it in the spring to see blooming flowers. This year first storm was hitting SoCal just 1 week before our hike, so we could see a full contrast from 100F in the valley to snow on the top.

2020 Skyline hikers

Snow at the top

Temperature in the valley

Palisade Traverse

According to the Internet:

Palisade Traverse is one of the best alpine climbs in the Sierra Nevada and one of the very best ridge traverses on the planet. This route takes in five 14,000 foot peaks and features amazing views and exhilarating climbing.

It includes following peaks:

• Thunderbolt (14,009 ft)
• Starlight (14,226 ft)
• North Palisade (14,248 ft)
• Polemonium (14,080 ft)
• Sill (14,153 ft)

Haytham joined me on this adventure and was already familiar with first 2 peaks and route between them, which helped a lot. We decided to go from the west side and camped near Bishop pass on the first night. We started from Bishop pass around 3:00 AM, reached Thunderbolt pass by 5:30 AM, and went up the Southwest Chute #1.

Thunderbolt Southwest Chute #1

We get to Thunderbolt around 8:30 AM and was lucky to find another group there who allowed us to use their rope. Summit block is unprotected 5.9 boulder problem and I was not very excited to leaded it unless I have to.

Starlight from Thunderbolt

Route to Starlight involved some not very obvious detour to the right, which saved us a lot of time. Another group went in the middle of the ridge and have to rappel for awhile. They did not even get to the saddle by the time we were on Starlight already. After the saddle you have to go even more right and around to avoid class 5 climbing.

Looking west

Down climb to Thunderbolt-Starlight saddle

We got to Starlight around 11:00 AM and Haytham lead the 5.4 summit block. I was doing ok, but start feeling altitude somewhere around this point.

View from Starlight

Looking west from the ridge

By 2:00 PM we reached North Palisade, and my altitude sickness progress to the point I can't move very fast, so we decided to call it a day and descent from U-notch (to the west of course). From the North Pal. we missed the correct path, which supposed to go right (west) and end up on pretty bad rappel path with sketchy anchors, falling rocks, etc., so I would not recommend going that way.

Looking SW from North Pal.

Looking west from U-notch

Sunset at 8:00 PM

We was hoping to hike out the same day, but that was unrealistic. We reached our campsite around 9:30 PM, packed out and hiked lower to the Bishop lake and spend another night.

Here is what can be done better next time:

• Better acclimatization. For 1 peak it does not really matter, but for traverse where you spend a lot of time above 14K it's crucial.
• Start should be as close to the route as possible. We wasted probably 4 hours hiking in and out. Camping at Thunderbolt pass (or on the east side) would be much better.
• 3 days minimum. Trying to squeeze it into 2 days was a mistake.

Mt. Abbot (attempt)

 Trail to Mt. Abbot (13,711 ft) starts from Little Lakes Valley Trailhead (Rock Creek) conveniently located at 10,200 ft. Only Fedor joined me this time. We slept at trailhead and started early in the morning hoping to tag Mt. Abbot via North East Couloir and camp either near Mills lake or Treasure Lakes.

Mt. Abbot map

There is a good trail going up to Mono Pass, but after Ruby Lake, it's all cross country and the higher you go, the more obstacles you encounter, all of them not harder than class 2 though.

Ruby Lake

Mills Lake (top one)

North East Couloir of Mt. Abbot (left)

We was able to get to the beginning of couloir (~13,000 ft) when 3 contributing factors helped me to abort the mission: Fedor start feeling altitude with light headache, storm was forming to the north of us and it was almost 2:00 PM, kind of late. We took few pictures and continue to Treasure Lakes.

Treasure Peak

Descent to the Treasure Lake was difficult (at least class 2) and slow since Fedor's headache become worse, so I was glad we did not go all the way to the peak. He needs more time for proper acclimatization and camping at lower altitude helps a lot.

Fishing at Treasure Lake

Treasure Lakes are at 11,200 ft. After eating soup and drinking hot tea Fedor feel much better and went fishing, but did not catch anything, we need to practice more.

Our campsite

Next morning it was easy stroll to the trail head, I think we stopped at pretty much every lake to test our fishing luck, but still did not catch anything.

Treasure Lake

Little Lake Valley