A few months ago, my friend Joel decided he wanted to climb the East Buttress of Mount Whitney. He realized that if he reserved a bunch of weekend permits and spammed his climbing friends, everyone would be so eager to jump on the rare permits that he might score someone willing to lead all the pitches for him. That's exactly what happened; our friend Danica became his unofficial guide, and four others including yours truly decided to join him at Icerberg Lake for camp.
We left from LA in two cars on Friday night, picked up Danica from the Santa Clarita Park & Ride, and cruised over to the Alabama Hills to sleep. On Saturday morning, my partner Lea and I decided to crag at Whitney Portal before getting a late start to Iceberg Lake. The others left earlier in the hopes of getting on East Buttress or East Face the same day.
We decided to climb Bony Fingers. We didn't have a guidebook and the Portal Store wasn't open until nine, so we had only my dim memories from a rained-out attempt from last summer to get us to our climb and back down. I managed to remember the approach, which is surprising considering how quickly we ran back to the car last time under a monsoonal deluge of rain. I also managed to remember the grade and that it was a finger crack, which guided our gear choices. I even remembered that awesome picture of Peter Croft soloing the route, but of course it was hard to tell if I just imagined that, since there is a picture of Croft soloing more or less any given climb. What I failed to remember, however, was that we needed two ropes for the rap. Luckily I've done The Nose twice this season and have my pendulum skills dialed; I made a huge swing from the ends of my 70m rope to a large tree, from which we did one more rap to the ground.
After a couple of burgers at the Portal Store we started the hike to Iceberg at 2 pm. Besides climbing and camping essentials, my pack was laden with bananas, strawberries, apples, 500g of chocolate, chai, coffee, and one of those stovetop espresso makers. Given the few extra pounds, I decided to get most of my water on hands and knees on the way to Iceberg instead of packing it up. Lea was skeptical, but I guess we'll know soon if I got giardia.
We arrived at Iceberg around 7:30 and began to fill our bellies with chocolate fondue. I used a large pot on my Jetboil to boil water, then removed the cozy from my normal Jetboil pot and stuck it in the water as a makeshift double boiler. Luckily one of my former roommates had left some fondue forks at home, so we were totally decked out for fine high-country dining. We even had a Frenchman, Florent, in our party to round out the ambiance.
At the ass-crack of dawn the next morning, I heard Danica, Joel, Florent, and Erika leave camp. I rolled over in my sleep and knocked out for another couple of hours. The left-facing corners on the south face of Mount Russell stay shaded and cold until noon, so we had a great excuse to get exactly the opposite of an alpine start.
I brewed coffee around 8 am and we had a slow breakfast, chasing marmots as they strutted into camp. We finally left for the Russell-Whitney col around ten, and as the corners were very much still shaded we sat down at the col and gossiped about various things, including dudes who romance ladies in portaledges by moonlight at Point Dume. Finally the corners came into the sun and we crossed the scree wastelands to the base of Bloody Corner.
I linked pitches one and two, which were a little loose by Russell's standards. On pitch 3 I noticed a series of unlikely face holds which might just go all the way to Star Trekkin twenty-five feet to the right. Annoyed at the rock quality on Bloody Corner, I traversed right, placed a piece fifteen feet out to protect the traverse, and surprisingly made it to Star Trekkin near the top of its 10c roof. I pulled the last couple moves of the roof and continued up the crack for fifty feet and made a belay. Lea joined me at the hanging belay by climbing through my legs, which was amusing.
I continued up the unbelievably awesome Star Trekkin for a little over half a rope length, then noticed a series of edges which might just make it all the way to Mithril Dihedral fifteen feet to the right. I traversed, thinking that if it didn't go I'd just climb back to Star Trekkin. Again, to my surprise, it went, and I climbed seventy-five feet to a belay under the alleged 10b crux of Mithril without placing gear to keep rope drag down.
We pulled the crux of Mithril easily and simul-climbed to the summit, where we arrived at five. It was great to see entries of friends and our own entries from long ago. After rappelling the top of S. couloir right, we waltzed back to camp, where we arrived around seven. We were surprised to see that Erika was still there; we assumed they'd have finished and left long ago. As it turns out, Joel and Danica hadn't come down yet and she'd stayed to make sure they made it down safely. We had dinner and chai, packed up, then commandeered Danica's bag as a blanket as we waited for their distant headlamps to make it back to camp. They finally arrived at 9:30, which is when Erika, Lea, and I headed down to Lower Boyscout for the night. Tired as they were, Danica and Joel just crashed at Iceberg.
The next morning the only event of note was that I redpointed a Whitney Portal Store pancake. I claimed the onsight, but someone pointed out that I had had half of one with Kedron once and had therefore blown it. Bummer.