This past weekend I drove up to Coyote Flats just outside of Bishop. It was an amazing drive and pretty much let me drive my Jeep straight into the Sierras:
There are very few trips in which the drive is just as much fun as the hiking and exploring! When we got to the end of the Jeep trail we ended up on a cliff overlooking Green Lake in the eastern Sierras. In this picture you can see Green Lake and the highest point in the background is Vagabond at 13,374′
The point that picture was taken was around 11,500′ so the nice part about Coyote flats is you drive up to a great striking point for both Vagabond and Cloudripper. The only issue with driving up is that you do not have all the time hiking in to acclimate to the altitude, which is interesting when you live at the beach.
We ended up hiking down to the lake to explorer, acclimate and sleep for the night. Needless to say the lake was absolutely beautiful!
In the morning we hiked back up out of the bowl and ate a quick dry meal by the car to prepare for the hike. We also dropped off our sleep systems in the car.
When you first start off you will intersect a trail for a little bit, but that does not last long and its all route finding from there. Its mostly medium to large rocks and a little scrambling up to Vagabond.
Our route looked roughly like this:
I am not a huge fan of heights and my knees were knocking a little at the top of Vagabond so I didn’t take many pictures up there. Near the top though I got a good view of Cloudripper in the distance which was our next peak.
When we first woke up in the morning we heard an avalanche or a rock slide or maybe a little of both. It was a little interesting to hear rocks falling for a good 30-45 seconds when you are preparing to climb two 13k peaks. We believe the fall came as a result of some snow melt, so we were trying to plan our routes without going under to much snow. Our Path of Cloudripper looked something like this:
Cloudripper was absolutely amazing, and if you live within 7 -10 h ours of driving I highly recommend it! The view from the top was amazing and I even enjoyed it more then the Whitney trip I did.
I think I enjoyed the solitude of the Climb up Cloudripper. When I did Whitney I had Solitude along the entire High Sierra Trail on the way there, but when I got to Whitney there were a lot of people, which in a way was nice to have their words of encouragement. But Cloudripper had an amazing view looking out toward the Palisades Glacier, and we had it almost all to ourselves. I mean you could literally only fit two maybe three people on the summit. But you cant beat having a view like this all to yourself!
From that point there is a nice possibly class 3 scramble to the peak, which I got over without to much of a hitch. Hiking back is interesting because after going down Cloudripper you need to hike back up Vagabond. We stayed toward the left where it was a little bit shorter and the rest of the hike was pretty easy just climbing down. Again if you are in the area, I highly recommend you go climb Cloudripper it was amazing! I am looking to Climb Mt Sill next which is across the view near the Palisades Glacier.
If you have any questions please ask! If you are interested in Coyote Flats and the drive up, I have a more detailed post over on  my blog here. Wasn’t sure how Ultralighters would care about the 4×4 driving.
Hope you all enjoy the pictures!
