A thru-hike of the Dixon/Wilson Southern Sierra High Route (6/27-7/3/2016)

Superb trip, Austin! Art forwarded me the link to your blog, which I read thru before stopping by here. Good stuff and great photos as well. Congrats and thanks for posting.

What a great way to bid farewell(until next time) to the Range of Light. Thank you for sharing a sublime experience.

thanks for the inspiring trip report.

some more great beta for us, before we head out on the route next week.

your side trip up Russell makes me want to do that also, but not sure we will have time. can you offer more on that bit ?

@ Jacob D & @ Tom Kirchner — thanks so much for the kind and encouraging words!

@ Art re: Mt Russell — unfortunately I don’t have a whole lot to offer on Mt Russell. The main reason I decided to pull the plug on getting all the way to the true summit is b/c we hadn’t done any reading at all on it and had no idea about safe routes, potential problems etc. We got to the top of the Russell-Carillon Col, saw that Dixon writes something along the lines of “short and thrilling class 3 climb”, and since that was a mellow day for us, decided to go up as far as we could.

Our experience was: by the time you reach the Russell-Carillon Col, it is (relatively) a short climb the summit of Russell, and you’ve already knocked out most of the elevation. Probably would take an hour to get to the peak. The climbing and scrambling is easy, easier even than the climbing we had to do on Whitney, and is a total blast. We scrambled up to what the eastern ridge that leads up from the Russell-Carillon Col. After about half hour / 40 min we got up that and saw that you then have to contour around or something like that and then ascend a second more western ridge that then leads up to the true summit. However, at this point, while the climbing is still not technically any harder than the Col or than Whitney, the exposure just gets insanely ugly, way worse than anything on the Mountaineer’s Route or the Col. With the poor grip we were feeling on our trail runners and with the total lack of preparation or study for the ascent, we decided it was best to pull the plug.

I would say with adequate reading on the summitpost page for the peak, if you feel mentally prepared for it, and have good sticky shoes, you stand a great chance of finishing it up. Even if you only get out a little bit up the first ridge, you get unsurpassed views forward over your route the next day up the Mountaineer’s gully, the notch and the final 400, as well as backward over Lake Tulainyo.

Here’s an image of us on the way back down from the first (easternmost) ridge after we had turned back. The westernmost ridge (true summit) is not in view. However, the route to the top of the first easternmost ridge lies just above Elijah’s head, on the left frame of the photo. The angled slabs gives you an idea of of the gnarly exposure. Sheer drop off on the other side that is not in view. There is little if any protection from this point.

thanks for the Russell beta Austin. 2 of us on our trip are climbers, and one is not. we may skip Russell and call it due to time constraints since the Acrodectes variation will probably put us a half day behind.

Really nice report.  We did a lot of this trip last summer and it really took me back.

@ Art — hope your trip goes/went well! Can’t wait to hear about how the Acrodectes-Baxter variations went.

@ Ben C — thanks for the kind words! Glad to hear it brought good memories :)