Ansel Adams Wilderness and Mt. Ritter

Just back from an awesome 4-day trip into the Ansel Adams Wilderness, which is just south of Yosemite National Park and north of the John Muir Wilderness. Definitely no shortage of wilderness out there. Our target was Mt. Ritter which is the highest peak in the Ritter range at about 13, 200 feet. Huge. Imposing. Glaciers. The real deal.

Day 1: Up early to meet in Pleasanton for the drive to Mt. Ritter. Our path to Mt. Ritter took us through Yosemite which remains freaking completely epic and beautiful, passed near Mono lake which looked incredibly low, then took us into Mammoth to get our wilderness permits. All ski towns really do look alike, but Mammoth has a rustic charm.

First bit of excitement was when we realized 30 minutes from the ranger station in Mammoth that we were 3 hours too late to get our wilderness permits which had expired at 10am. We finally got to the ranger station and snapped up 5 walk-in permits just as several others got in line. Lucky.
We hit the dusty trail around 2pm and started gaining altitude pretty quickly. The hike in took us past Shadow Lake and eventually up about 1,000 feet to Ediza Lake which sits at about 9,200. High enough to require extra effort to carry everything we needed for four days of hiking and climbing.

I'm really having fun though it's hard to tell in this picture.

Some horses passed us along the way. The guides were headed up to Ediza to pick up some artists that were painting for a few days. Nice way to travel.

We got to Ediza around 7 pm, just at dusk when the temperature was dropping pretty fast. Got our tents set up, had dinner, then headed to bed around 9pm. 'Cause it was damn cold. Like long johns and multiple layers of polypro and wool socks in your sleeping bag cold. Not quite as bad as the winter camping outings, but nippy.


Day 2: Saturday morning we slept in until around 7 then moved our tents into a sheltered site in the trees after some other campers headed out. Around 10:30 we departed for our acclimatization and training hike. Idea was to get to a snowfield to get crampon and self arrest practice. We had to hike a couple of miles to get to the snow field - including a nice scramble up a steep talus field - but it was well worth it. Crampons are awesome - took some getting used to but it's amazing how well they grip the ice and snow. Also took a leap of faith to let go and start sliding down the snow field to practice self arresting with an ice axe. Once I got the hang of it and got over the fear of sliding down the hill into sharp rocks, it was really fun.

Saw a family of deer on the way out. Hard to see but they were damn cute and cuddly.


Did I mention Mt. Ritter looks scary as hell from the valley floor? This next pic below gives a nice sense of scale (look for the people standing on the snow). This was the first snowfield we found, but not nearly steep enough for self-arrest practice. The same snowfield is shown at the bottom of the second picture below. Hoo mama, big mountain.


So we then hiked up a talus field to a steeper snow field.


Hiked back to Ediza lake and had an REI instant gourmet meal - beef stroganoff. Tasted awfully good. Then early to bed knowing we were heading out in the dark for the actual attempt at Mt. Ritter. Day 3: Michael Ritter (my good friend and trip organizer (you can guess why this mountain was chosen) woke us up in the dark of the cold night at 4:20am, just in time for a couple of packs of instant oatmeal cement before flipping our headlamps on and heading off into the darkness. Morning is definitely not my time of day. And turns out it's worse at 10,000 feet after a crappy night's sleep on an old thermarest. Thus the first hour of hiking was pretty miserable. We filtered some water from a pristine mountain stream about half a mile from the real start of the ascent then.

To be continued...