Spanish Needle & East aka Beast Lamont

Spanish Needle is located in the southern Sierra a short distance north of Walker Pass.  It's biggest claim to fame is both it's route finding difficulty and the fact it's one of the rare significant 3rd class scramble peaks.  It's also notorious for people underestimating the difficulty and either turning back or getting to the wrong peak.

I first did the peak way back in 2010 and it took my two tries with the initial attempt ending with me climbing up to the ridge too early and cliffing out with not enough daylight left to reroute.  It's been led a few times by Sierra Club groups in recent years to varying degrees of success and I decided it was about time to head back out and see how it compared with what I remembered.



Mat Kelliher (aka Single T) and I decided we'd lead it the Sunday after the Advanced Mountaineering Program rappel day.  That meant I had a bit of a long day since I leave OC at 3 something in the morning in order to get up to LA for the pre class rigging, then we teach the class from 8 am to 4 pm, and then we do a post class meal at a local mexican food restaurant with the staff and students.

After all of that we headed for the Walker Pass campground to get a few hours of sleep before setting out at first light on Sunday.


I was a bit nervous on the way up because the people who had planned to arrive earlier on Saturday to secure first come first serve campsites hadn't reported in.  (For the record there is no cell reception at the campground but if you drive back out toward 395 a short distance you can get signal)  So I wasn't sure if we had a group or not until we stirred awake before dawn and started getting ready.

We ended up with 12 people total after two last minute drops.  We consolidated vehicles leaving the rest in the campground overflow parking and set off for the trailhead.


The Lamont Meadow trailhead is accessed via Canebreak Road which is a high quality dirt road that's generally fairly well graded at least on the southern end.

We parked in a pullout along Canebreak right past the junction leading down into Lamont Meadow.  Why did we park out on the main road instead of driving further?  Well...

Entrance to Lamont Meadow 4WD road

To get off the main road and down towards Lamont Meadow there's a burm of loose sand to get over and a steep drop down the far side.  I'd made it over in a Rav4 before only to be stopped not far after.

Lamont Meadow actual 4WD section

Here's your main problem.  The water is flowing slowly and the mud is deep enough I'd be worried about trying to drive through it in my jeep without recover gear.

Assuming you were able to get past this the rest of the road is in fairly good shape and you could possibly cut off another 1.5 miles of hiking in each direction.  But considering the overall mileage for the peak is fairly low to begin with we elected to park at the road.


We were moving by 6:30 am and hiked up the road until it disappeared amongst downed trees.  After that we headed up the prominent gully aiming for a saddle where we crossed the PCT.   There were game trails and occasional ducks but your mostly just going for whatever looks best.


By 8:30 am we were sitting at the PCT saddle.  The wind had picked up and made things rather chilly so we took our break huddled behind a log looking at the cross country traverse.


It looks simple enough on the map.  Just traverse for roughly a half mile before climbing straight up.  Without a GPS it can be a bit harder since I've several a number of disagreeing descriptions of how many chutes you have to cross.


The good news it there's a clear use trail for the first part of the traverse.


It gets a little less distinct in a few places but if you look around you'll find footprints and ducks showing you were to go..


This was taken on the way down but you can see the gully you climb behind us.  Pick a route that looks only slightly crappy and get climbing being very careful about rockfall since everything is right about at the angle of repose.


It was steep but you only have about 550 ft of gain before you gain the ridge and life gets better.



From there we could see Spanish Needle.  It's easy to identify the peak due to the large slab visible on the left side of the peak.


There's some light scrambling along the ridge as you approach the slab.  We had helmets to comply with Sierra Club policy and had brought along a short rope and some basic anchor gear that we didn't end up using.


The climb up to the slab gets a little more interesting as there's a diagonal set of features leading to a decently awkward move at the top.  Coming down this took some coaching from below.


From there you just walk across the slab.  Depending on your personal comfort some people found it a lot easier to stick along the top.


Or if you have decent approach shoes you can just dance across the middle.


On the far side of the slab this bit leads upward and around another bump.  For some reason when I did the peak the first time I used the crack on the right which is doable but does put you over a not insignificant fall.  The route Mat is using above works much better.


Around the corner there's a short downclimb that's helped by the rock being reasonably grippy.  And that pretty much brought us to the summit block.



Getting into the summit block proper requires a short hop.  It's more mental than anything else as you can basically just stick your foot out and fall forward to get across.  We were on the summit by 11 am.


The wind had kept up and we had clouds swirling dramatically around the summit blocking out views except for one really brief opening.


The register dates back to the 70s and was filled with familiar names and I found my original sign in from 2010.


Coming back down the scramble bits was generally easier than going up with the exception of the slab.


We didn't have anyone who needed a belay but we did couch people down one at a time.  I perched on the rock right above the tree in the background and I was able to direct peoples feet.


I dropped us down the main chute as a different location hoping to find a more pleasant route but it was basically just painful in different ways.  Since we had a large group we had to do a lot of controlled zigzagging to prevent any of the constant rockfall from hitting anyone else in the group.


By 2 pm we were back down and heading west along the PCT.  Our plan was to grab East Lamont on the way to SPS Lamont via the use trail running out along the ridge.  The use trail starts at a clearly marked junction with several established campsites.

Last time I'd taken the use trail all the way out to Lamont and then scrambled to the summit but this time I'd wanted to get East Lamont.  It's not on the SPS list (or any list that I'm aware of) but it's a named bump and hey, how hard could it be.


Turn out the answer is pretty hard.  The group voted it should have actually been called Beast Lamont due to the rough terrain along the ridge.  It's steep to gain the ridge and then walking along it there was a constant struggle with brush and light scrambling combined with numerous false summits where we were convinced we had to be there only to go around the corner and see we had another few hundred feet.


The summit itself requires a few 3rd class moves to get up and down but currently there's a downed tree in just the right place to make it easier.  You can also get down on the far side via some tree assisted 3rd.

it was 3:45 pm by the time we were on the summit and we were all dragging a bit after the rough cross country.  Looking at the time and the 3/4 of a mile distance we'd have to cover along the ridge to reach SPS Lamont we decided it would most likely mean descending in the dark and a very late night getting back home.


So instead we dropped down the northern face of East Lamont which proved surprisingly pleasant and picked up the road back down in the meadow.


We were back down at the cars a little after 7 pm and headed for home.