Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

July 14, 2019

4342m

Bishop / White Mountains, CA

White Mountain Peak is the highest summit in the White Mountains and also the 3rd highest in California. It’s considered by many as the easiest CA 14er because the standard route is nothing fancier than a Class 1 plod up a (gated) Jeep road. The ascent is about 11 km one way with under 1000 m cumulative elevation gain. This whole mountain range sits in the rain shadow of the High Sierras and the landscape is more desert-like. It’s apparently also a geologists’ paradise and the road cuts across so many layers and travels beside some of the world’s oldest living trees. The crux of an ascent of White Mountain Peak is the drive. At least 25 km of rough dirt road with a ton of elevation gain and loss needs to be driven each way and although doable, I would not recommend attempting without a high clearance vehicle.

Matt and I decided to hike up White Mountain Peak the day after our successful traverse of Thunderbolt Peak, Starlight Peak and North Palisade. We only had half a day to do anything before pushing the drive back to Seattle and among the 14ers we figured White Mountain Peak would make the most sense. That night we car-camped a little bit of ways in Grandview Mine Road away from the hordes in the official campground and had some neat morning views of the Sierras. We did not bother to wake up super early as we were exhausted from the previous couple days’ work. The drive to the trail-head was more adventurous than I thought and definitely justified the decision to bring my Tacoma that far down south as opposed to a standard passenger car. The gate at Barcroft was open and it was very tempting to drive the remaining 2 miles to the research station but we decided to not risk getting locked in.

There weren’t a ton worth documenting about the ascent as we essentially just followed the road all the way to the top. The initial 2 miles of plod to the research station felt like a drag and there was a substantial amount of elevation loss past the shoulder of Mt. Barcroft. Near the south-east ridge of our objective we took a short cut that avoids a tiny bit of unnecessary elevation loss and regain, and higher up on the SE slopes we also had to take a few forced short-cuts because of snow. The whole ascent took us under 3 hours on a decent pace as we were already well acclimated to the altitude by this point.

The views were awesome so we stayed for a long time on the summit and that was unusual. On the descent we took no break for anything (not even for water) and were back to the truck in under 5.5 hours of round trip. The drive down the winding White Mountain Road was just as scenic as the hike and offered some other perspective of the mountain range so we stopped frequently for photos. Matt is a geologist and travelling with him meant I could get at least basic knowledge about the rock formation and vegetation in this area. We eventually got back to the town of Bishop in late afternoon and despite the amount of work we did our new objective was to push all the way back to Seattle (and Vancouver) in one single push, through the night.

Instead of finding a luxurious restaurant we decided to just find a roadside place for sandwiches and we sure found one in Carson City, NV. I then managed to push all the way to Klamath Falls, OR in a single shot by midnight. Matt took over the drive and made back past Portland into the state of Washington and then it was raining. We found a gas station to cover up the gears and I took over the rest of the drive back to Seattle to drop Matt off at his parents’ place. The traffic through Bellevue was brutal but at 9 am I was very awake and managed to push all the way back to Vancouver with no problem. Of course I slept a lot in the afternoon and that’s the end of another amazing adventure trip.