June 17th to 19th, 2016
Spanish Mountain (10,051')
Tehipite Dome (7,708')
Tehipite Dome has become something of a bane of my peak climbing career. Allegedly 3rd class with spectacular views it's a long drive and long hike so not the sort of peak you really want to have to do more than once.
The first time I tried it in 2012 I came down so sick the second day I could barely get out of my sleeping bag turning our aggressive three day loop backpack into just getting Spanish then hiking out. Then in 2014 I went back with friends only to run into enough snow we had to abort. Then a rescheduled attempt in 2015 was aborted before we even left home due to major storms across the Sierra. Then a potential late season redo was killed due to the area being burned by the Rough Fire.
But it was now 2016 and this time was going to be different! Jeff Atijera, Laurent Hoffman, and I were back leading a strong group including 5 Kaweah staff and 6 students from this year's WTC class and we came loaded with what we thought was more precautionary gear than we really needed for the 3rd class crux based on the beta we could fine. And the weather looked spectacular.
This also had the distinction of being the first WTC experience trip of the season and one of the harder ones I was going to lead this year since I was trying to ramp back up gently after having a microfracture done on my right knee in November of 2015.
- Posted By: Matthew Hengst
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