The Clyde Minaret is the most prominent and most classic of the many peaks of the Minaret range, outside Mammoth Lakes, California. Its’ Southeast Face is included in the book, Fifty Classic Climbs of North America and the range has some fascinating history of first ascents by the likes of Norman Clyde and others. Last summer, my wife Joy and I wanted to climb Clyde but we ran out of time on our road trip. We balked at the logistics of getting an overnight backcountry permit and dealing with Devils Postpile National Monument. Hence, we decided that doing it in a day would be the best option.
This summer we returned and the Clyde was near the top of our list. Again, we thought doing it in a day would be a good idea but hesitated when we examined the endeavor – 9 miles of hiking with 3,800 feet of elevation gain and then the rock climb on top of it, and back out. With our friends Mark and Katie we started to make plans for a multi-day jaunt but somehow decided that a long day climb would be the best option.
Mark and Katie are great, and no slouches at all, but you’d think somebody would have stopped and asked how fast four people can hike and climb together compared to two people, particularly Joy and I ,the ultramarathon runners. After getting a slow start out of camp, we left the trailhead and started hiking at 5:30 A.M. The hike went quick although the last part of the approach on climbers’ trails and scree scrambling put us behind schedule, arriving at the base at about 10:00. We quickly set off, with one person leading and belaying two people behind them. Peter Crofts’ guide, The Good, the Great and the Awesome, is a fun guide to read but is poor on route description. Initially we thought we had linked pitches and would top out in a few hours but instead we realized that Croft also must have used long pitches. Inexplicably, no one really put two and two together to see that a grade IV would be long and worthy of the 13-pitch description Croft describes.
Despite our concern about time, the day was perfect with typical, clear, Sierras-style weather, enabling us to top out at 4:30 without worry. We spent time on the summit, enjoying food and the view, before heading down with the expectation that we would soon be hiking and doing the last part of the trail with headlamps. No big deal, right? Wrong.
The descent begins with a fourth class ridge scramble to some “inobvious” fourth class down climbing to the scree below the ridge. We had just begun the descent down the ridge when the girls, in the lead, saw rappel slings, dropping down the north side of the Clyde, into an unknown gully on the opposite side of the peak from the standard descent route. Slightly sketched by the thought of descending fourth class, the girls made a case for rapping into the gully, which they felt confident, “would be a quick hike down.” Mark and I weren’t so sure but we eventually gave in. Of course, foreshortening happens in both directions, up and down, and the lake that looked so close was really much farther away.
We carefully began rappelling and scrambling down the choss-filled gully. Sure enough, the gully became a series of cliffs with a number of rappels or uneasy down climbs. Shoddy anchors and loose rock had us all on edge and we were constantly on the lookout for sheltered areas to hide in when we pulled the ropes. Two hours after beginning our descent we felt confident that we could hike out and we took our harnesses off and put away our ropes. We would have been able to hike out if we had known where to go. We kept going straight down which led to wet, grassy ledges intermixed with wet, slippery slabs. Eventually we became “cliffed out” again and set up another rappel at an old fixed hex, at least someone else had been there before.
At 8:30, 3-1/2 hours after beginning our descent, we were able to put away the harnesses and ropes for good. By then, darkness had fallen and we donned headlamps. Actually, three of us donned headlamps because one of us, me, was confident enough that a headlamp would be unnecessary because we would cruise the hike and climb.
Now, in the darkness with the short reach of our lamps we picked away at the faint trails leading down from the Clyde to and around Minaret Lake. Numerous times we lost the trail and became lost in a maze of mini-peninsulas and inlets on the lake. We all remembered the main hiking trail below Minaret Lake as being wide and sandy but somehow in the course of one day, it became a jumbled, rocky mess, making our progress slow.
At 11:00 three of us stopped for a bathroom break. When Mark, who was in the rear, didn’t come behind us on the trail we began yelling for him. Then, we hiked back on the trail, only to find all of his gear on the trail with no sign of him to be found. Our calls went unanswered and we began searching the surrounding area, including the creek. Our initial thought was Mark had stepped off the trail to go to the bathroom or dip his tired feet in the creek. When we couldn’t find him and there was no answer, all kinds of scenarios started racing through our minds. Could he have slipped into the rushing, strong current of the stream? Could he have fallen while hiking into the woods and injured himself? Had he been attacked by a bear or mountain lion? We searched and searched and searched. Initially our impulse was to be mad at Mark for not telling us where he went. Then, after half an hour of searching, that anger turned into horror at the thought of having to go get a search and rescue team and having to tell Mark’s parents that he was missing, or even dead. I had just finished a book about a rescue for a ranger in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park so I went into rescue mode, trying to plan our search and make a plan. Eventually, Mark came strolling down the trail, oblivious to why we were so worked up and angry with him. He had dropped his stuff to go back up the trail to look for his camera, which Katie had the whole time.
Back on the trail, we struggled through the darkness with sore feet and tired legs. It ended up taking us longer to hike down than it did to hike up. Near the finish we missed the in-obvious trail junction that led to the car and started hiking down the wrong trail. When I realized our error I told our group that we had to turn around. It wasn’t clear if we were indeed in the wrong and Joy was so tired and frustrated that she refused to turn around. She said she didn’t care if she was going the wrong way because she just wanted to keep hiking. A small fight ensued, with dirt and rock being thrown at me. Begrudgingly, she followed us as we turned around and eventually, found our way to the right trail and the last mile to the car.
At the car, it was 2 A.M. and talk or thoughts of finding a restaurant was long over and all we could think about was getting back to camp. I kept dozing off while driving the 30+ minutes back to camp and seconds after the doors slammed shut on the car, we were splayed out in our tents, making the most of our well-earned sleep.
