Mount Williamson
1989-1992 (November 2003 summary account
of four attempts)
I thought four attempts to summit a mountain was a bit
excessive until it took me five attempts to finally summit Mount Sill in 1999.
After two attempts in 1989 and one in 1991, I finally reached the summit of
Williamson in May of 1992. Before I try to remember the success I would like to
go back to the first attempt which I really don't consider a complete failure
because we never actually made a summit attempt.
In May of 1989 my climbing buddy Mike and I decided to
go for the second highest mountain in California since we had already climbed
the highest some four years before. Having come over Tioga Pass through Yosemite
from the Bay Area I waited in Independence for Mike to show up from
Ridgecrest. There is one bar/cafe in town and that is where I ended up for hours
waiting.....drinking. There was a local who wasn't too impressed with my liberal
Bay Area attitudes and began a genuine dislike for me. I'm not opinionated
...I'm just always right. Luckily Mike finally showed up and defused the
situation and we headed for the trailhead for the night. .
The next morning we started out and after many grueling
hours we reached the saddle between Symmes and Shepherds Creeks at about 9200
feet. While in the saddle we ran into another group of about half a dozen people
including a very pretty young lady in short shorts. They arrived in the saddle
after us but pushed on towards Anvil Camp before we did. By the time I reached
Anvil Camp that evening I was beat and went to bed (passed out) without dinner.
I was usually always too tired to eat after long days and this probably didn't
help with my energy levels the next day.( but it helped to work on trimming down
my beer gut). I don't remember how long I spent getting to Anvil Camp but I
assume somewhere between twelve and fifteen hours. Somehow we made friends with
a computer programmer from the LA area and we pressed on the next day as a
threesome.
After a day less than half as long as the first we set
up camp on the rim of Williamson Bowl using the LA coders tent. The other group
camped right next to us in several of their own tents. That night all hell broke
loose as a late season blizzard moved in. The wind was horrendous on the highly
exposed ridge and at one moment the tent would be touching your head from the
back and the next from the front. I was really worried that the tent was going
to come apart and hardly manage to get any sleep. The next morning the wind had
mostly subsided and the temperature had dropped forty degrees from the day
before. When we had arrived the previous afternoon we were post holing dam near
to our crouch where as the next morning an elephant could have tap danced on the
snow without breaking through the crust. The people in the other party had lost
one tent which had shredded in the high wind but everybody was alright It
was hard to visualized that the bundled up Eskimo I was talking to was the same
cute young lady in shorts from the day before. The wind had all but vanished but
the snow was really starting to fall heavily and we all decided the best
approach was to run like hell down out of the weather.
The LA programmer didn't have an ice axe and when we
reached the bottom of Shepherds Pass Mike brought mine back up to him to help
him down the steep route. We stopped at Anvil Camp long enough to take down
Mike's tent we had left there the previous day. We continued down and up through
the saddle in the snow and finally got down into rain towards the trailhead. The
storm had closed Tioga Pass and I ended up going down through Ridgecrest to get
back over the Sierra to the Big Valley and back up to Sunnyvale where I was
working at the time. Accounts of my second and third attempts on
Williamson are chronicled on other web pages.
In May of 1992 I was gainfully un-employed. I hadn't
worked since the beginning of March and the only thing that was keeping from
going to Alaska was the Williamson climb. I had been living in my camper for
over a year including an eleven week stint in 1991 while I collected severance
pay and lived in the Crystal Range in the Eldorado National Forest. I had managed to
get to many of the western national parks including Yellowstone, Zion, Bryce,
Arches, and the Grand Canyon. When I was working, I lived in the Lockheed
parking lot next to Onizuka Air force Base in Sunnyvale. Having all the time in
the world at my disposal I decided to cheat and spend 2 more days than Mike and
Randy on what I hoped would be my last attempt on Williamson. I hiked up and put
a camp in the saddle where I waited for my friends to come by the next day. I
joined them on the trek to Anvil Camp and being well rested was not that far
behind for a change. I cut the last long switchback into Anvil Camp, I don't
have any idea why they had to make it so long.
The next day we set up camp in the bowl instead of on
the rim of it or near the pass as we had previously. We put my tent at the edge
of the frozen lake at the base of Mt Tyndall, although Randy opted to sleep
under the stars as he had the night before rather than squeeze three into it.
The night time temperature was probably in the low teens or upper single digits.
The following morning we pressed for the summit which knowing the route from the
year before was just a matter of time and work. The final slot up to the summit
plateau is a little exposed but is still only class four climbing. As we neared
the summit a hang glider landed in the huge snowfield near the top. The guy
broke out a pair of skis and skied around for a little while before signing the
summit log and taking off again. This was my fourth day on the trail and it had
only taken him a matter of hours to gain the summit from the Owens Valley ten
thousand feet below. As usual I was the last to reach the summit where
Mike, Randy and I spent a short time enjoying the fantastic view before
returning to camp in the bowl.
The next morning after breaking camp we decided to try
and take a short cut down instead of going back down through Shepherd's Pass. We
worked our way north to the ridge which overlooked Shepherd's Creek below Anvil
Camp. I sent my pack down the steep snowfield to check it out before following
it down. It went around a corner out of sight but soon emerged into view again
and finally came to rest hundreds of feet below. When I followed the trough it
had made in the snow I was in for somewhat of a surprise. Once I had gone around
the corner I found a ten or fifteen foot high cliff that I had no idea was
there. Luckily I had my ice axe lease around my wrist or I would have lost it as
I fell over the cliff out of control. Luckily the snow landing was soft and I
didn't tumble or hurt anything, it was more the shock of finding something the
pack hadn't indicated was there. When Mike and Randy sent their packs down after
me they didn't fair as well as mine had. When they hit the bottom of the cliff
they tumbled end over end spilling things everywhere. Riding the huge snow chute
down was much faster and more fun then negotiating the large boulder and scree
fields below where there was no snow. We finally made our way down to and across
Shepherd's Creek and up to the trail. When we reached the saddle I said goodbye
to Mike and Randy and set up camp. It sure is nice having as much time as you
want. When I got down to my camper the next day I found it had ran out of
propane and the refrigerator was warm. So much for a cold beer.