Sawtooth Peak, Needham Mountain, and Mineral Peak In Mineral King

This was yet another set of peaks I'd eyed for a number of years but never got around to actually climbing meaning they'd been standing out as the only remaining red dots in the area on my Peakbagger SPS map.

Since pretty much everyone we know who has tried to do both Sawtooth and Needham with a group as a two-day backpack has ended up turning back on Needham we decided to make it three and toss in the unlisted Mineral Peak as a bonus climb. We also advertised it as intending to maximize the 3rd class as much as was reasonable and took the opportunity to camp at the less visited Crystal Lake vs the more commonly visited Monarch Lakes.
As always a major issue with Mineral King is camping near the trailhead. There are two campgrounds up at the end of a very windy road that takes 90 ish minutes to drive from Three Rivers. They commonly fill up on Fridays and we've had a few times when we got up there at 1:30 am and couldn't find an open spot.

Almost anywhere else this is a non-issue since we usually sleep out at the trailheads but in Mineral King the trailheads are a bit more challenging surrounded by vegetation and private residences. If you can sleep in your car then no problem but I haven't found a reliable spot for sleeping out on the ground that doesn't involve the danger of getting run over in the middle of the night.

This time we were driving up on a Thursday night which made it a bit more likely we'd be able to find a spot in the campgrounds. Kristen and I arrived again sometime after 1:30 am and went straight for the Cold Spring Campground near the ranger station.

All the drive up sites were occupied so I decided to try the walk-in sites.


They're located at the end of the middle campground loop where there's a bathroom, some bear boxes, and a fair number of parking spaces. The only downside here is you really have to walk in a surprising distance to get to the sites and you don't have a real indicator of what's going to be occupied since people seemed to be treating the parking spaces as not tied to individual sites.

We ended up at the second set of sites where we had a nice isolated area above a pleasantly noise river and enjoyed a few short hours of sleep.


Mineral King doesn't allow after-hours permit pickups so we had to wait for the ranger station to open at 8 am. As a result we usually do an egg burrito breakfast for all the participants.

When the ranger station does open at 8 they don't just issue permits one by one but instead they try and wrangle in all the members of all the groups for one big talk out on the deck. This takes longer than elsewhere but on the plus side it was given by our favorite ranger (once again) and she shows so much enthusiasm and brings in outside information to the point where I really don't mind the extra time.


Of course whenever your dealing with Mineral King people are concerned amount marmots. We did see a few cars wrapped up in tarps but they were done so badly I have a hard time believing they would keep anything out. (Had we been there when Marmots were more active we would have just parked across from the ranger station vs at the end of the road where the problem is worse)


We managed to get the last few spots just down the road from the Timber Gap / Crystal Lake trailhead which was good because the parking lot itself was packed. I'm not sure if it was just normal summer traffic or if the fires and closures were driving more people to these normally less busy trailheads.

Our departure was a little delayed when Kristen realized she'd forgotten a vital piece of equipment back at the ranger station...


Fortunately she was able to run back and retrieve the wine from the cooler we'd left at the ranger station clearing the trip to move forward.


The first section trail is shared with Timber Gap and then you take a right at the first junction towards Monarch Creek. That later splits again between Monarch / Glacier Pass / Sawtooth Pass or the slightly less used Crystal Lake.


The last part of the trail is marked as unmaintained but it's perfectly passable. A few short if steep miles later we reached Crystal Lake.


We followed the trail up to the dam (red track) which turned out to be a mistake as most of the good camp spots we found were on the north end of the lake. You're actually better off following the use trail we came down (purple track) since it avoids some precarious rock hopping with full packs.


This is looking across the lake back at the dam. Most of the camping is on the far right.


We found a number of really nice camp spots along with a perfect group cooking spot under the large tree. Most people were set up on slabs but there were a few bare dirt spots scattered around as well.



Most of us ended up going for a swim which was a little chilly but as usually felt amazing once you were out.


Dinner was the usual happy hour and everyone was off to bed by 8:30 pm which made for a solid nights sleep.

Day 2: Sawtooth and Needham

We knew we were likely in for a long day even though the map only showed about 5 or 6 miles of distance. Our plan was to climb up Sawtooth via the southern ridge and then traverse the ridge between Sawtooth and Needham.


From Crystal Lake we climbed up to the ridge east of Mineral. There were numerous tracks here but I suspect they were probably from sheep or deer.


Once we made the ridge we skirted left around a closed contour and followed the ridge north managing some decently fun 3rd class along the way. Note that we probably could have dropped lower towards Monarch and kept it 2nd class but that didn't look overly pleasant.


Mineral looks a lot more impressive from this side and we all started to get a bit more excited for our plan to climb it the last day. The major topic of conversation was strategizing how we could maximize our 3rd class. More on that below!


Once we reached the saddle south of Sawtooth it was a straightforward 2nd class climb to the summit. We left camp at 5:30 am and were at the summit before 8:30 am.


There are a few 3rd class moves on the summit block depending on how you come upon it. We came up behind the boulder in the picture above (which was where we found the summit register) but there was a much more natural spot to gather the group where I'm taking a picture.


We had excellent views of the Kaweah Range (namesake of our WTC group) once again.



From here we planned to drop down the western ridge of Sawtooth and traverse to Needham. Route beta said the ridge went 4th class in one place but could generally be kept 3rd so our initial plan was to have fun and stay close to the ridge.


This lasted until the first of two closed contours between the peaks where things kept going 4th class despite our best attempts. After cliffing out rather solidly we descended only to cliff out on several more times before eventually descending all the way down to 11,600'.




Sawtooth does look a lot more impressive from this side.


Things got a little more straightforward once we were past the second closed contour but it was 2 pm by the time we reached the summit of Needham.


This was the summit area (looking back from the eastmost bump) and there were some 3rd class moves involved to get to the top of the summit block.


Victor and I did go run over and check the bump at the end of the ridge which was about where the topo showed the high point. However, it both required some exposed moves to get over there and once there you could tell it was clearly lower.


We never found a register but determined the highpoint was this (the rock hidden behind the foreground spire) It was not quite the most photogenic peak so despite the fact I'd carried the WTC flag up we decided we'd save the flag shots for the next day.


Our plan was to descend the SE face and we were hoping for a nice sandy descent where we could make up some time. And we did get that for a short while but some of the sand had slabs underneath which would send you flying if you got moving too quickly.

We ended up making a routefinding mistake here and getting sucked into a smaller chute which eventually left us having to decide between a slightly unpleasant downclimb or climbing back up and over to try something else.


In the end it would have been faster to climb back up the chute and find another way around. This worked and wasn't steep enough to be dangerous but it was awkward to the point we had to go one at a time and couch people down. This ate up at least a good hour.

We dropped down by Amphitheater Lake where we filled up water since several of us were either out or near there and eyed the pass back over to Crystal.


We aimed for the pass marked with a red arrow (the view is from earlier partway between Sawtooth and Needham)


The pass itself is rather straightforward but I'd recommend staying lower than we did on approach. The ledges up high would look like they were going to go only to cliff out or require something a bit more exposed than everyone was comfortable with causing yet more delays while we worked the group through.


We crossed the pass at 6:50 pm giving us enough daylight to spare that we even made it back to camp without headlamps. On the far side there was a short downclimb followed by easy slopes back to camp and we ended up with a solid 13.5 hour day.

We enjoyed another lakeside happy hour as the sun went down and a few people debated on whether they intended to do Mineral with us the next morning

Day 3: Mineral Peak and Out

As I mentioned above Mineral Peak doesn't look overly exciting from Crystal Lake but almost anywhere else it's extremely eye-catching. It also makes for a great climb particularly if you forgo the main chute (which is mostly 2nd class) and stick to the ridge where you can get in some solid fun 3rd class.

We let everyone sleep in a bit more since we had such a short day and ended up leaving camp at 7 am.


Since we wanted to see if we could maximize the 3rd class we decided to drop off the eastern ridge and aim for the southern ridge where we could see some fun looking rock.


This meant a bit of scrambling to get over the base but the rock was of a much higher quality than what we found on Sawtooth and Needham.


From where we gained the ridge it was pure fun!



I was leading on the way up and kept forgoing easier routes to the right to stick right on the ridge.






There were even a few parts where I could have gone around the left-hand corner and done some fun looking 4th class bits but alas we were an official Sierra Club M rated trip and couldn't do those. Next time!



We didn't make the summit until 9:30 but that was mostly due to the group size. The climb was fantastic and the views from the ridge were amazing.










After getting in our pictures and spending some time just relaxing on the summit we reluctantly decided it was time to head down. We intended to take the main chute for speed reasons.



We had one section where we ended up getting a bit too far to skiers left when we should have hugged the right. Other than that misstep the chute went quickly and we were back down to camp at 10 am.



Once we packed up there was just enough time for one last swim. We went over to the smaller lake north of Crystal which was shallower and therefore a bit warmer than it's bigger neighbor to the south.


Since we were already over there we were able to find the use trail leading out instead of backtracking to Crystal Lake. Again this is significantly easier than trying to circle Crystal Lake if you're looking to camp up here.


We were at the trailhead by 2 pm and Kristen ran off to retrieve the cooler from the shed across from the ranger station. (This tends to stay significantly cooler than your average vehicle left out in the sun so if you want cold beer at the end of a trip it's not a bad idea to leave it there.)

The normal plan at this point would be to drive down to Three Rivers and hang out on the deck of Cafe Mendoza for a post-trip meal but considering it was 103 degrees outside we elected for an inside meal.


We were back on the road a bit after 5 pm and made it home pleasantly early.