Alabama Hills Rock Climbing Weekend For Wilderness Travel Course Alumni

  • Updated: April 08, 2018
  • Post By: Matthew Hengst

April 7th & 8th, 2018

One of the things I've always commented on about WTC is that is that the course is amazing but once someone finishes the class, does their experience trips, and graduates we often do a bad job of staying in contact.  Some individuals return year after year for trips but there's always a limit to the number of trips we lead and spaces on permits so I've always wanted to put together something low key where everyone could come back together.

Hence this weekend.  I've done climbing weekends like this in the past but always at a smaller scale.  This time invites went to area staff, current and former students, and a smattering of people outside of Orange County leading to around 50 people driving out to Alabama Hills in the Eastern Sierra.

Of course we planned this shindig back in the December / January timeframe when all we knew weather wise was the average temperatures for the area. And then when the dates drew near we found we had a slight complication...


The forecasts a week out from our weekend were predicting rain all over the Sierra and the area we'd be in.  We decided we were going anyway since after all when has WTC been afraid of a little rain?



We picked Alabama Hills for the location because the views are amazing, the camping at Tuttle Creek is plentiful, the rock climbing is accessible and fun, and for those who didn't want to climb they had numerous options to hike or go sightseeing.  Something for everyone!

Most of the sites at Tuttle Creek Campground are first come first serve but they do have one group site that is reservable.  We paid $60 for two nights which gave us enough space for 10 ish cars and plenty of tents.  In addition we had people grab $8 a night first come first serve campsites as needed.

The group site had a row of 3 picnic tables by the pullout and another one off by itself.  It also had three fire pits scattered around.  It's located right in the middle of one of the loops which was a bit awkward but since we ended up filling a lot of those sites it all worked out.


The thing I didn't expect was the mosquitos.  Friday evening and Saturday morning they were pretty bad and a number of us were glad we had our bug nets along.


We had a few drops of rain straight off the first morning as we were having breakfast.  The forecast said there was a high chance of rain but that it would clear after lunch.



The weather did have one major perk which was we saw epic rainbows (if you look close it's actually a double!) as we drove over to Alabama Hills proper.  They were quite possibly even more epic than the rainbows at Little Picacho a few months back.

We started Saturday at Paul's Paradise where we set up a number of routes and slowly spread out to Paul's Backyard and Hillbilly Pillar.







Most people climbed and for a few folks this was their first time climbing which was really awesome!


The clouds moved in and out and sure enough a little after 11 am the occasional spattering of rain turned into a full on downpour.




We got in a few last climbs and pulled the routes congregating next to the cars for our next move.


We ended up eating lunch in our rain gear waiting to see what the weather way going to do.  The storm didn't seem like it had much staying power and sure enough we were soon dried out and ready to head on to the next location.


We decided to take advantage of the fact that most other folks seem to have been driven off by the rain and moved over to the classic Tall Wall area.


Tall Wall has two routes which take 70m ropes if you want to belay from the ground.  It has a combination of small holds and a friendly -ish angle that makes newer climbers feel amazing.

Alfonso on one of the routes on Tall Wall



We also set up a few other routes to the right and left of Tall Wall and the next few hours passed quickly.


Things naturally wound down around 5 pm and everyone converged back at our site at Tuttle Creek.


We had a massive potluck and spent hours visiting with current and former staff, students, and their families.  I think we had at least one person from every year and even one or two that predated the formation of Kaweah Group back in 2012.


And we had a completely reasonable fire!




The party continued until the wee hours of the morning and we actually didn't make it through our firewood supply.  I blame the tiny fire pits...

Normally we would have headed in to town to eat at Alabama Hills Cafe in the morning but that place struggles to hold a small group nevermind our jolly horde.  Our solution?  Breakfast burrito!


For a very reasonable donation Lubna and crew produced massive green chorizo breakfast burritos and all the accoutrements.


Food, was eaten, coffee was drunk, and some of us were fired up and ready to climb again!


We decided to see if we could get Sharks Fin aka the photoshoot rock due to it's positioning in front of Lone Pine Peak and Whitney.






We set up three routes along the face and climbed until people had to go.





The majority of folks had wandered off earlier that morning and the last of us packed it in around 2 pm and headed for home.

All in all the weekend felt like a huge success.  Weather challenges aside it was great to see everyone including a number of folks I hadn't seen for years!  And climbing at Alabama Hills is always a great time.  We already have plans to do another one of these next year.

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