Mount Mallory And Lone Pine Peak From Meysan Lakes

  • Updated: July 22, 2018
  • Post By: Matthew Hengst

July 20th to 22nd, 2018
Mount Mallory (13,845')
Lone Pine Peak (12,944')
Day 1: 5.1 miles, 3,500'
Day 2: 6.3 miles, 3,700'
Day 3: 8.4 miles, 2,500'

This was a three-day trip primarily aimed at students who had taken the Sierra Club Wilderness Travel Course though it was open to anyone who follows Sierra Club outings.


This trip came about because Olancha Group Leader Garry McCoppin had been here in the 1980s with a precursor to Wilderness Travel Course when he broke his leg during a glissade gone wrong. He's now in his 70s (and kicking more ass than you'd think possible at that age) and wanted to get up there again to see the area.

I'm always up for an adventure with Garry and we planned a moderate sounding three-day adventure. The first day would be an easy-ish hike into camp where we'd spend the afternoon relaxing and maybe get in a lake swim or two. Then on the second day we would follow the trail up to Mesan Lake and climbed a chute to access Mount Mallory and Irvine. (We didn't make the latter due to weather but I'm not overly heartbroken as it really looks like it's better done from Arc Pass.)

And then we threw in Lone Pine Peak on the last day because it's a) a fun climb and b) so damn impressive from 395 that many people assume it must be Mount Whitney.


I'd only just dried out after last weekends slightly damp climb of Temple Crag and once again we were looking at a forecast with rain and "unsettled" weather predicted every day. So far July had ended up being a real wild ride weather wise.

Our trailhead was Meysan Lakes which is along the south side of the road just below Whitney Portal. It's a really underappreciated trailhead considering it's easy to access, doesn't have the wag bag requirements of the Whitney trail, and also sees a fraction of the traffic. It also makes for spectacular camping as long as you don't mind doing 3,500' of gain in about 5 miles to get up to the lakes.

We drove up Thursday night and stayed at the Tuttle Creek Campground instead of the usual spot in Alabama Hills. This was mainly because we were in a Prius and didn't want to lose too many bits off the undercarriage but the campground isn't a bad alternative. It's only $8 and always seems to have room and you can find some nice rather spots right next to a stream and fall asleep to running water.


Since we had an easier -ish first day just getting into camp so we decided to take the opportunity to have breakfast at the always excellent Alabama Hills Cafe. Have I mentioned how great is that they open at 6 am now?


After preloading some calories we made our way up towards Whitney Portal. The trailhead is a parking lot along the side of the road just below the entrance to the campground. We found the last few participants who hadn't shown up at breakfast and got hiking a bit after 8 am.


To get to the trail proper you have to go through the campground and then pick up a road leading to some private summer homes.


From there the trail climbs from about 8,000' to 10,800' in a few miles. Even with the easy pace it was a pretty steep climb and we had a few people feeling the altitude. (We even had one person elect to sign out out of the trip and turn back only to have them show up later in camp mid downpour!)


As expected the clouds were building rapidly and by mid-morning we started to hear thunder off in the distance.


It started raining on us on the switchbacks above Little Meysan and it was coming down pretty good when we arrived at Grass Lake where we planned to camp.

The main trail makes a hard right at about 10,970' and a use trail heads off to the left towards Grass and Peanut Lakes. Around where I marked our camp there are a large number of great spots that are spread out far enough you would never have to see another group. The lakes themselves are pretty but too vegetated for swimming so if you want to do that it's best to day hike up to Meysan Lake.

Most people set up tents and dove inside immediately but once I was done making sure everyone has a suitable site the rain started tailing off a bit and I stuck around chatting with Garry. That was until the rain *really* decided to start coming down and I had to hustle off to find a spot.


I ended up with a nice little spot overlooking the lake with a view up towards Mallory. There was a slab that didn't allow water to pool beneath the tent which turned out to be a good thing because it proceeded to rain and hail for hours.

Unfortunately since it was raining hard it was a bit of a mess setting up the tent. In the minute or so it took to get the poles in and throw the rain fly over the tent proper water got everywhere.

It really made me miss the simplicity of my bivy where setup just involves unrolling and climbing inside. While a lot of people freak out about the thought of getting stuck in a bivy during an hours long rainstorm like this but I always just get comfortable and fall asleep.

Still, it wasn't too bad having a three-person tent to myself and getting to spend a few hours stretched out listening to the rain, hail, and thunder.


Gary and I expected the rain to let up by dinner time since that's often how Sierra storms work but when 6 pm rolled around and it was still going strong we decided to just cook dinner in our vestibules. It wasn't the most sociable of evenings but I did make some significant progress listening to my Malazan audiobooks.


The rain did finally let up around 7:30 pm and everyone briefly came together for a slightly damp post dinner chat before heading off to bed.


Since the weather forecast was predicting another day of afternoon showers we wanted to get moving as early as was feasible. Since the climb up to Meysan Lake was on trail we decided to leave before sun up and do the first part in headlamps.


With the aid of my GPS we were able to follow the trail -ish though the further up you go the more it tends to split off into multiple use trails hence the variation between my tracks up and down.


We made Meysan Lake in about an hour and using the rather helpful picture from the Secor guidebook identified the 2nd class East Slope route we'd be taking up. (The East Chute looked rather tempting but we had to keep things 2nd class)


We went around the western side of the lake which turned out to be a mistake as the eastern shore is significantly easier. Rock hoping around the lake was enough of a challenge that two folks elected to head back to camp rather than head up the chute.


This is the chute from partway up the intial slope. You can see the snow off on the left which we avoided entirely by sticking to the rocks in the center of the picture.


It wasn't exactly pleasant going thanks to the loose rock and dirt but it was doable and our views went from fairly impressive to epic.



By the time we reached the top of the chute the clouds were building and it was becoming obvious that we wouldn't have time to get Irvine if we wanted any chance of making it down before the rain started. (The route to Irvine from here involves crossing the eastern ridge of Mallory, dropping down and traversing a bowl, climbing back up to the peak at 13,700, then dropping back down and climbing back over the ridge to Mallory.)

Another group had passed us not long after we entered the chute and we could hear them shouting at each other from partway up LeConte trying to locate each other in the fog. That and Mount Cocoran are on my list to climb in the next season or two.


It took us about an hour from the top of the chute to the summit with the altitude really kicking the crap out of us the last 400 ft or so.


On the summit we found a register dating back to 1988 and saw that there had been several groups up this way recently.



Oddly enough the clouds only looked threatening on the eastern side of the crest which makes weather the situation look a lot less threatening than it actually was.


We snapped a few quick pictures when the clouds cleared along the ridge and headed back down hoping the rain would hold off long enough to get down the chute.



Two people from the group we'd heard on LeConte blazed past us on the way down while a third trailed well behind us. The way down was far easier than going up but you still had to watch every step and everyone was happier once we were down.


We made it down to the lake by 1:30 pm and things were still dry! At least they were until we made it back around Meysan Lake and had stopped for a moment to refill our water.


A few drops quickly turned into a decent downpour which kept us moving briskly back to camp where we dove into our tents for a repeat weather performance.


Rain, hail, thunder, and blinding flashes of lighting kept things entertaining and I spent a relaxing few hours laying back listening to it all. I've always found it to be an incredibly relaxing experience to be inside a tent in weather like this and my only complaint was that I couldn't really look out and watch the storm since it was coming down hard enough that water and grapple were striking the ground and bouncing inside the tent!


The next morning all but one person was up for Lone Pine Peak and we again started a bit before it was light. This ended up resulting in a bit more bushwhacking than was strictly necessary but hey, at least the brush was cold and soaking wet as we climbed through it...


From a distance the chute from Grass Lake looks somewhere between impossible and just really unpleasant but once you get right under it you can see it's fairly straightforward. I had initially thought to aim more to the middle of the chute to take advantage of some larger rocks but once we started up we found that wasn't really necessary.


At about 11,800' the chute swings to the left and and you aim for the notch at the top.


There was a lot of fresh rockfall and some minor mudslides in the chute but the angle is such that you mostly don't have to worry about your footing letting go. So it's just a bit of work.


Once we made it to the top we were treated to a spectavular view of the peaks to the north.


And from that point there was basically a use trail to the summit with tracks that were mostly filled with grapple from the day before.


We left camp at 5:15 am and we were up top by 8:45 am just in time to get a view before the clouds moved it.




The descent back to camp went smoothly and we were back at our tents by 11:30 am.


I fully expected to get rained on during the hike out but mountain weather tends to be hard to predict. There were a few times where it felt like it was about to rain but for the most part we got to hike out in the sun.



We made the cars by 3:45 pm and headed down the hill for a well-earned meal and an almost reasonable drive home.

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