Solo: Sawtooth Traverse and Matterhorn Peak
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This trip almost didn't happen. Between the forecast of 40% chance of thunderstorms all weekend, the long solo drive, and a difficult itinerary, I figured it might be better to just stay home this weekend. But I took Dave Chenault's advice to go anyway, and I'm glad that I did.
I've seen the Sawtooth Range and Matterhorn Peak many times on various other trips. I've seen them from the top of Mt. Conness, from highway 395 near Bridgeport, from the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne a few weeks earlier. Eventually if you see a cool looking mountain enough times, you have to go climb it.
PART I – LITTLE SLIDE CANYON
After navigating my way through the giant sprawling maze of RV campsites known as Mono Village, it was liberating to be walking on the very beautiful Robinson Creek Trail.
I found myself lost in thought, and before I knew it, I had nearly walked past my scheduled turn-off from the main trail, up Little Slide Canyon. After having done a few trips recently using much larger scale Tom Harrison maps, I misinterpreted how far I had to walk on my 15' USGS topos. I realized my mistake when I got my first view of Kettle Peak and the Incredible Hulk.
I had instructions from both Secor's guidebook and the SuperTopo climbing guide. Both of these caution the walker to turn left up Little Slide Canyon early, to avoid having to wade through beaver ponds followed by a terrible bushwhack next to the creek. But it didn't look so bad from where I was standing; just a small cluster of aspens and then the canyon opened up above. So I stepped off trail, turned due south, and began the first off-trail section of my trip. You can guess what happened next.
Fast forward 45 minutes. After wading knee-deep through the beaver ponds followed by 100 yards of thrashing through willows, I can personally verify that the guidebooks are correct. But I was back on track, on the pretty decent climber's trail up through the canyon. The trees slowly faded to bushes, and the bushes slowly faded to talus.
The views up canyon kept getting better. I can see why this is such a popular climbing area. The Incredible Hulk is but one of the many impressive rock formations in the canyon. Outguard Spire, the Reggae Pole, The Thing; all beautiful rock formations with equally interesting names.
Eventually, I made my way to the top of the canyon, where Maltby Lake and Ice Lake reside.
The "trail", which was relatively distinct up to the base of the Hulk, had long since disappeared. The way forward alternated between scrambling over talus, up small snow fields, and through patches of beautiful alpine tundra. Shortly after passing the lakes, Ice Lake Pass made itself visible as a small notch in the ridge with a talus gully leading up to it. Once I crested the pass, the small notch opened up into a broad hanging valley, filled with wildflowers and small tarns, with a beautiful creek meandering through it.
After a short while, I met up with the trail from Mule Pass and made my way up Slide Canyon proper to the headwaters of Piute Creek. Though the sky had been clear all day with the exception of a few small puffy clouds, I was still worried about the thunderstorm forecast. I found a small grove of pine trees to pitch my tarp, and had dinner in a nearby meadow with a great view of the entire Sawtooth range. The sunset lit up the mountains and the sky beautiful shades of orange and pink.
PART II – MATTERHORN PEAK
It never got cold that night, and I slept most of the night with my quilt down at my knees. I woke up very early the next morning, knowing that I needed to climb Matterhorn Peak quickly to avoid the chance of getting caught in an afternoon thunderstorm. I broke camp in about 15 minutes and hiked a ways up the trail before stopping for coffee & granola. The sun just began to illuminate the highest peaks of the Sawtooth Range as I ate breakfast.
Burro Pass became visible as just a small notch in the west ridge of Matterhorn Peak. My route for the day was to climb to Burro Pass, and then continue up the west ridge and southwest slopes to the summit. From this angle, the West Ridge looked impossibly steep. But one axiom that is almost invariably true in the Sierra is that nothing is as steep or as hard as it looks from far away.
I made the 800' climb up to Burro Pass in about an hour, and surveyed the route in front of me. It looked like I could climb the first 500 or so feet on the West Ridge, before being forced off to the sandy southwest slope. The SW slope then lead to a prominent notch in the ridgeline which would give me access to the summit.
The W. Ridge turned out to be a fun rock scramble with a few sections of class 2. This was followed by a miserable hour's or so work climbing the remaining 900' of scree to the notch. The notch had an impressive view south encompassing most of Yosemite, and an equally impressive view north to Twin Lakes and Horse Creek Canyon.
I dropped my pack, hoping a marmot wouldn't chew off the straps, and headed up the remaining 200 feet or so of class 2 or 3-ish blocks to the summit. I made it to the top at about 9:15 AM.
The view from the top was sublime, and I spent an enjoyable 20 minutes or so taking in the views. There wasn't a cloud in the sky- it was starting to seem like this trip was a good idea after all.
PART III – HORSE CREEK CANYON
Here I found myself at 12,200', with my car 5,100 feet and 5 or so miles below me. Part of my motivation for this trip was that I am planning on hiking the Sierra High Route, if not this season, at least some time in my life. Horse Creek Pass and Horse Creek Canyon form the last few miles of the High Route, and I wanted to get a taste for how difficult the SHR actually is. I've done a fair amount of rock climbing and scrambling in the Sierra, and wanted to know how the routes I have done stack up against a "real" section of the High Route.
I could see Horse Creek Pass from the summit, with a steep snowfield sticking out behind a rocky notch. I was able to scree ski 1,200' down the Southeast Slope of Matterhorn Peak in less than 15 minutes, and before I knew it I was staring down the pass. By staying far to the left, I was able to avoid the snowfield by climbing down relatively stable talus followed by a short 100' section of dangerously loose talus. It was only after I made it down this section that I realized there was no difficulty at all descending directly next to the snowfield, where a chute of what looked like stable talus bypassed the snowfield entirely. Oops.
The slope gradually lessened, and after about an hour and 1,000' of elevation loss I was mostly out of the boulders. I was able to follow intermittent use trails by this point, and Horse Creek had grown from a small flow out of the snowfield into a bona fide creek.
The water was quite cloudy with silt, which I haven't seen very often in the Sierra. I suppose this is a result of the permanent snowfields above.
As I continued to descend, I began to gain more and more respect for the group of guys I had seen plodding up the SE Slope on their way to summit Matterhorn Peak. Horse Creek Canyon is steep! The trail I was descending was way steeper than anything I had come up in Little Slide Canyon. In fact, dropping more than 5,000 feet in a little more than 4 miles makes this route approximately twice as steep as hiking to the top of Half Dome via the Mist Trail.
As one final indignity, the use trail was pinched off by a talus slope that reached all the way down to Horse Creek.
After a few more minutes of scrambling over this obstacle, the use trail could finally be called a real trail and about an hour later I was descending switchbacks back to my car at Twin Lakes. A final view of Matterhorn Peak over Horse Creek Falls was a nice way to close out the trip.
Here's a map of my route:
Thanks for reading!
Andrew
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