Miss(ed) Whitney, met Charlotte!

We are out here in the rocks!!! And it ROCKS!

-Joey

Feels like we have been waiting forever to get out and go rock climbing... Markie hadn't climbed in around 3 months and I hadn't climbed since the Wind River trip around 4 weeks ago, but we stayed in shape with a bunch of BFR rehab training for our fingers and tons of endurance training with my homie 'da stairsteppa'.

Monotonous training was easy given our motivation... We planned to climb Mt Whitney via the East Buttress route, as our kickoff adventure and my birthday adventure! Unfortunately, permits are difficult to get, as this is the tallest peak in the US, outside of Alaska, and is easily accessed via a hiking trail. So we had to wait for the 11am lottery at the Eastern Sierra Interagency Visitor Center. 

And we drew the last  possible ticket... The person before us took the last permit.

No biggie, right? We have plenty of time. So, we went back to our 9,000ft camp (an attempt to pre-acclimate) and took a day off. Woke up early, headed back to Lone Pine for another lottery.

And we drew LAST... again. Permits were gone.

We were getting antsy to get on some rock. Kinda feeling like we were getting withdraw symptoms. So we 'settled' for a overnight entry permit for Kearsarge Pass trailhead. This meant that we were gunning for a Steck/Roper top 50 classic route, on Charlotte Dome! We thought that this was not a bad warmup route but didn't seem as classic as the Whitney and Russell routes (SPOILER ALERT, THIS ROUTE IS BETTER THAN THOSE ROUTES), especially since the approach ended up being around 11 miles and a lot of vertical. About 2,500ft gain on the way in, in the first 4 miles and about 3,500ft gain on the way out. 

At least it was insanely gorgeous... I mean, check it out!

This little guy followed us up the first few switch backs from the parking lot.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that our permit was for the same day we were at the lottery... Which meant we started the hike at 330pm... So we hiked through sunset! (damn good idea)

We finally made it over Kearsarge Pass... Too bad we had around 7.5 miles to go still.

 

Markie was movin' FAST!

Unfortunately, we weren't moving fast enough and settled for a campsite at Charlotte Lake, instead of the Charlotte Dome campsite. Not too shabby though!

So the next day, we started the 'bushwack' to the dome and we were startled by how HUGE it looked. It is a freakin' mountain!... This is the point were we started wondering why we thought that this was a lesser route, compared to Whitney. (its not...)

After a lot of manzanita, some scree, and a lot of dirt, we made it to our fairytale campsite.

Complete with an amazing freshwater spring!

After filling up in the spring, I finally got to share my favorite camp meal with Markie... Packit Gourmet's Pizza Margherita! 

For the non-climbing folks, I will say that we successfully summitted, with no falls! It was harder than expected and WAY better than expected. At the end of the post, I will get into the nitty gritty of the climbing, along with my cell phone photos/videos of the climb.

This photo was on the way out... Insane views everywhere

Finally making it back to Kearsarge Pass! 

As promised... Here is the nitty-gritty, starting at the start!

We hit the trail right at 3:30pm, hit the pass by 6pm, then the lake by 7:35pm. Around 8 miles, 2500ft elevation gain, in 4 hours, 5 minutes. Not bad, for 2 off the couch climbers!

On climbing day, we started the climb at 8am and summitted by 5:30pm. Much much slower than expected, even with some simulling and linked pitches. We made it back to camp at 7:15pm.

We simul climbed the first two pitches, but I put Markie on belay after a few insecure 5.7 moves. Then we moved quickly through the next 2 pitches, enjoying some incredible rock and nice cracks. After that, I was given the 'Slot' pitch, which is a mega fun overhanging crack. From far away, it looks like it could be a hard lieback, but turns out, it is a little bit of jamming, a ton of footwork, and a lot of hidden holds. Mega classic pitch and especially 'thoughtful' at 5.8. I linked this pitch to the start of the next crux pitch, which was a nice 'chimney'. It was more like an awkward crack, with really unique moves and holds. Also a super mega classic pitch! After that, we enjoyed climbing the 'Furrows', which are huge water tunnels/runnels. We had never climbed anything so 3 dimensional, outside of my experience in Thailand/Greece on limestone. Granite that reminded me of limestone! EPIC! After these pitches, we had a quick runout 5.4 pitch, into the final pitch. A beautiful golden slab with some nice cracks and a final runnel/tunnel. Any of these pitches would be 'money' pitches on lesser climbs.  After all of the climbing was over, we slowly made our way to the summit and down the descent. Honestly, this summit was also one of the best I had ever been on. It is incredibly unique. No one prepared me for it, so I am not going to spoil it for you. GO GET ON THIS ROUTE.

On our hike out, we left camp at 9:15am, hit the pass at 1:05pm, and then were back to the ambo at 2:52pm. Around 11.5 miles (book says 12 miles, mountain project says 9.5 miles, we measured 11.5) and 3,500ft total gain, in under 6 hours. We even managed to get in a hot shower and dinner before sunset!

Now into the cell phone photos! Brace yourself, I got excited and took a lot of mediocre photos. I blame the long layoff and the insanely gorgeous setting of this climb.

SUMMIT SELFIE!

Super cool summit ridge line! Way different than expected.

Looking back at the massive cirque across the way.

Here is a post descent selfie!

And finally, some cell phone videos! Enjoy the hilarity 

This one is from our early morning start to the climb...

This is from the middle of the route. I had to show off the exposure!

And the incredible light that always seems to show up in the alpine. I was wishing I had my camera... It was left at camp, in respect for this climb.