Life of Wry

One of the highlights of this year’s trip to Tuolumne was baggin’ another summit, this time: Tenaya Peak.  Much as I appreciate the journey, I can get very excited about the destination.  Luckily, Jim’s that way too, so, many peaks under our belt and hopefully more to come.  And yeah.. we’ve passed along that obsession to Peter, too.  Yay us.

Anyway, today?  No clouds!!  Back to the usual, prevailing, high Sierra August weather conditions.. perfect for an off trail adventure.

Started at the Sunrise parking lot.  Within a hundred yards of the trailhead, we had to remove our boots and ford a shallow creek. Made for a slow beginning on the day, but it was fine and something to look forward to at the end of the day when we’d certainly be dragging and cold water would feel good on tired dogs.

We headed up the trail maybe .5 to 1 mile; we were looking for a spot where the drainage from Mildred Lake crossed the main Sunrise trail.  From there, we’d veer off and attempt to follow the creek all the way up to its source.  We found the crossing easily, but actually managed to lose the creek on the way up the mountain, or we followed a lesser run off, we weren’t quite sure… nevertheless, we continued to bushwack and crash through forest, occasionally breaking out onto granite slabs.  At one point, we found ourselves out on a ledge, overlooking Tenaya Lake, which was.. interesting (but very pretty).  Continued around a couple massive slopes until we found the open granite we were looking for and traversed up and over for maybe another mile or so.  The slabs were very steep, and quite exposed, in some parts, and the views were getting good!

Came upon some gorgeous terraced slabs with sweet gardens of wildflowers, grasses and moss:

They were huge (note Jim’s size alongside one of the terraces).

The view all morning was of Half Dome and Cloud’s Rest.  Here’s a nice one of Half Dome… you can see the sub-dome and can almost make out the cables on the upper dome.

Here’s a shot down Tenaya Canyon with Half Dome in the distance, Cloud’s Rest is the prominent knob on left, North Dome (a favorite hike) is the structure across the canyon from Half Dome:

Finally got to Mildred Lake.  So pretty, so central, yet there is no trail up there.  We–as usual when hiking off trail–saw nobody all day (except at top of Tenaya later that afternoon).

Hung out for about an hour at/near the lake.. talked, dozed, looked around (oh, and threw rocks).  It’s nice now..the adults can hang out doing adult things and the boys can run off and be alone in their exploration.

After lunch, we discussed the route up Tenaya.  Here are Monica, Dror and Jim considering options:

M&D opted out, but agreed to let us take Ben.  So, off we went: Jim, Peter, Ben and I.

This is what the backside of Tenaya looks like.. the side we scrambled up.  It looks simple enough, and it was, but it’s also a bit deceiving; it’s about a 700′ climb from Mildred Lake:

Here’s a close up of what we thought was the peak.  It’s not quite the high point.. which we saw once we got up there:

Here’s a view of the peak from the front side.  This is shot from Tioga Road, right along Tenaya Lake, on our way home a couple days later.  We have looked at this peak forever, driving in and out of Tuolumne Meadows; it’s very prominent and a popular peak for climbers.

Anyway, got to the top (10,301′) and had phenomenal views all around.  Here is the view looking northwest and down on Tenaya Lake, and Mt. Hoffman, highest peak in background (centermost peak in Yosemite National Park, 10,850′) which we’ve climbed several times:

And here’s one looking south and east, over Long Meadow.  Hard for me to identify all the peaks (any of them, really), but we’re probably seeing Mt. Lyell somewhere in there (highest peak in Yosemite National Park, 13,114′), who knows what else.  Sunrise High Sierra camp is to the far right.

Here are Jim, Peter and Ben on top:

And here’s one that Ben took of us:

On the top, we met about 6 climbers who’d gotten to the summit via the front side (I asked a young woman about the climb and she said there were 11 pitches… I’m doubtful… she’d done a mix of climbing and hiking to get there, so wasn’t sure).  We met a guy, Mike, from LA, who said he’s come to TM annually for forty years to climb, hike and run.  He was a wealth of information and enthusiasm.  We sat with him and our map for about 30 minutes while he pointed out dozens of places to visit well off the beaten path.  We retained little, but it was fascinating.

We left, picked our way down, this time much easier following the drainage to the bottom.. took a couple hours, I think, mostly on open granite like this (note water, which was gushing down the slabs all over the place, very powerful in parts, always glistening, and loud):

And toward the bottom, crossings like this:

We ended up back at the Sunrise parking lot in time to catch the last shuttle to Tuolumne Meadows Lodge.  Monica and Dror had thoughtfully shifted our dinner reservations to 8:00, which was perfect.

A great, great day.