Thursday, September 13, 2012

Hike #23: Electric Peak

The second of my 'big-5' and the most daunting/anticipated!  Electric Peak!  I had waited all summer for this bad boy.  Three days of backpacking and two nights of backcountry fun!  The intrepid adventurers included myself, Nicholas, Tony, Russ, and Dominick.  Katrina dropped us off with our gear at the Bunsen trail head.  It is 6.5 miles to our backcountry abode, 9 miles roundtrip from the backcountry site to the summit of Electric, and then about 7 miles back down into Mammoth.  We left on a cool Saturday afternoon around 9:00 AM and headed for our site unsure of how the trip would play out.

Would we get waylaid with a storm, preventing us from reaching the top, or worse get hit by lightening?  Would the smoke clear out enough to provide us a view?  Would our campsite get overrun with rabid elk and bear that would result in us fighting to the last man before succumbing to the cruelty that isbackcountry hiking? Or would we simply get lazy and hang out in the campsite, binge drinking Slivovitz until Monday morning?  Find out below!

Intrepid adventurers!

Trail toward campsite with Electric in the background

One of the many valleys we walked through on our way to the campsite

Luxury accommodations at 1G4, highly recommended!

Our view from the campsite, very nice stream on the left about 30 yards

On our way!

Up, Up, Up!  Turns out that is the false summit in the distance...

Taking a break half way up

Nicholas climbing up to a flat landing, about 2/3rds there

Scree field!  We stay to the left and go up along a spine of rock

Spine of rock and what I forgot was a false summit...

Actual Summit, pretty sketchy

We made it and did not get hit by lightning!

The world from the summit

Put our names in the register

Russ pretty happy about it

Me pretty happy about it!

What were we thinking to climb out there!

2 comments:

AB said...

Beautiful. We are hiking quite a bit now too but our views aren't nearly as spectacular.

Also, re: slivovitz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3sJB2tcoJY

(silly, but awesome)

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