If you can spare a few bucks for those affected by the Pack Fire, a little bit goes a long way ❤️

Mokelumne Peak

Mount Kaweah Day 3: Exit

Mount Kaweah Day 2: Mount Kaweah

Mount Kaweah Day 1: Approach

Notes:
- Underestimated this one a bit! Strava's also bullshitting about the time and splits, it was about 16 hours with maybe 90 minutes of total break.
- Hike to Brainerd Lake easy, the use trail from Brainerd Lake is much more obvious and easy than trying to follow the SummitPost description that leaves the trail near the high point.
- Finger Lake was stunning! Rivals the North Fork lakes in beauty and much more solitude. Would love to come back and camp here a night.
- After Finger Lake, mostly talus to the glacier :-( although it was generally very solid. A bit of relief crossing the bowl at 11,800 / 12k.
- We reached the base of the technical section around 12:30 if memory serves (5 hours ish).
- The red and white band was not really that loose, just some pebbles. Climbing was tricky but solid. Darker rock on the right is really solid, so if you can get into that corner it's not bad. Definitely the trickiest section of the route though.
- Above the red and white band the grade eases a little, but not much, it's still about 45* all the way to the summit (steeper in places). Gashes and breaks in the rock provide an easy enough way up, though.
- Someone knocked a grapefruit-sized rock loose that tumbled ~800' and nearly hit us at the bottom of the chute. This made us second guess our climb for a few minutes while we ducked for cover. Fortunately the other party took Secor's route down and were out of our way after a few minutes. We decided to continue up, but no pressure.
- Secor claims this is solidly in class 3, folks on the internet have claimed 3+/4. I think it depends on your route. We tried to avoid the center of the chute in the lower section because of the rockfall. Some of the moves on the far left were quite steep. If you choose carefully I'm sure it's easy to keep it to 3. But between the rockfall and some snow on the route, I bet we did a few class 4 sections.
- Route beta from a descender was clutch: climb to 50' below the summit, then cut hard left, do a few easy class 3 moves and cross a broad slab, then turn back right to the summit block. Someone on SuperTopo claimed there was a 5.4 move in here, we didn't see anything that hard, but the 3,000' drop off below the slab was enough to make us think really hard about committing to those moves. Well worth it to reach the summit, though!
- Incredible summit views!
- Descending was trickier than ascending. Downclimbed almost the entire thing (a bit too steep for regular descent).
- About 5 hours for the final 1,200' up and down. Back at the glacier rib around 6PM. Down to Finger Lake and then Brainerd before sunset, but benighted in the bowl below Brainerd Lake. Like a ROOKIE, I forgot to charge the headlamps so we walked the last 4 miles with my phone flashlight like a couple of clueless gumbies!
- All in all, an awesome first time car-to-caring a 14er, and our most difficult technical big mountain in California yet! Rivals Tyndall in how fun it was, although Tyndall might take the cake for those lovely sabs. Really enjoyed the difficult but solid climbing on this route and would love to find more like it.

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Iain Macdonald

Middle Palisade

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If you can spare a few bucks for those affected by the Pack Fire, a little bit goes a long way ❤️

Mokelumne Peak

Mount Kaweah Day 3: Exit

Mount Kaweah Day 2: Mount Kaweah

Mount Kaweah Day 1: Approach

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