Point 13618 - 13618' - Class 2+
October 2009
This peak Josh took me on the weekend after Iowa Peak. There was a bad storm coming in Saturday night that weekend so Sunday was out. I had morning swim practice that Saturday morning so we couldn't leave until 10am. This was probably one of the most difficult days physically I have ever had since I had a three hour swim practice followed imminently by a fast hard climb. We went over to climb unranked Point 13,618 on the Holy Cross Ridge but the funny thing was I still had no idea what prominence was so I didn't even know it was not ranked. Josh tried to explain to me but I didn't get it. By the time we got to the Holy Cross City 4WD road it was a little before noon so we had to be quick if we were going to make it back before dark. We even brought the bikes to help save time. We rode the bikes up the road to its end and starting hiking straight up the Seven Sisters Lakes trail towards Fall Creek Pass. We never really followed the trail much though and when we got to Hunky Dory Lake we lost it all together. We headed for a steep tundra slope going up Point 13,618. In the banner above it is the steep green slope at center left. Going up this was very difficult for me since I was already so exhausted. Eventually I made it with some encouragement from Josh and the final 300 feet on the ridge was brutal. Once on the summit though we had a beautiful evening view of Mount Whitney across the valley with a thin layer of low clouds. Below us lay Seven Sisters Lakes which some were frozen over. Josh decided to run over to Point 13,768 while I started the descent to Rock Island Lake. This talus ridden descent was slow going but once at the lake I was amazed how calm everything was...almost too calm. Must be the calm before the storm I thought because it was so quiet and there was zero wind and it was pretty warm out. I could hear Josh coming down right from the summit it was so quiet! I waited for him at the lake and when we met back up we were able to follow the trail all the way back. It got dark on us as we reached Hunky Dory Lake again and the rest of the hike out and the bike ride down the road was in the dark.
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