Mt Russell, Mithral Dihedral (III, 5.10, 7P)

Jared Wood and I climbed Mithral Dihedral car-to-car. We started hiking at 3:30 am, and after whimsically taking a very interesting shortcut through Sakai Col, we reached the base of the climb about 5 hours since we first started. Jared accidentally linked P1 & P2, taking a 30 ft lead fall at the end of P2 (oops) but was unscathed. I linked P3 & P4 in a non-stop altitude-induced pant fest. Then I climbed P5 to finish the awesome dihedral. Jared led the next pitch and then we simul-climbed to the summit. The sun set as we descended the final scree chute to Upper Boy Scout Lake. Sleep-deprived, we took a few naps ACROSS the trail on the descent. I'm not sure how long the naps were (one must have been at least an hour), but we got back to the car at 1:30am Sunday, making for a 22.5 hr outing! The next day we found some nice arches for a future night photo project :-)

I thought I remembered there being a way to the SW side of Mt Russell from the SE side, and as I have been up to Iceberg Lake a few too many times, I suggested we try this other variation and Jared was game for it. We later learned that our route passed through what is called Sakai Col. This variation gave us some very interesting views of some seldom-climbed aretes on Mt Russell. Although this col requires an obnoxious amount of slogging on sandy side slopes and a big switchback, I think these unexpected views made this approach variation worthwhile.

2012-05-11 Mt Russell seen from the E Buttress of Mt Whitney. Sakai Pass, which we took to get to Mithral, is barely in view in this photo.

Jared had been feeling more confident with leading harder alpine trad, and by this trip he felt like he was solid in 5.7 and could maybe do 5.8. So we agreed that he'd lead P1, and then I'd take over from there as the P2 5.8 might be a bit tough for him.

However, Jared had trouble telling where P1 ended. When he shouted down to me, all I could shout back were some vague landmarks. At some point it became obvious that he had missed the belay and was leading into P2. I wondered if a 60m rope was enough to link the two, and my answer came as I ran out of rope, probably about the time Jared was about 10 ft short of the P2 belay. I was just about to untie from the anchor to start simul-climbing to let him finish when the rope came tight! There was no slack to lose at this point. Apparently Jared was on a thin part and got tunnel-vision about getting to the belay ledge, and slipped right before it. Since he was feeling confident, his last piece of gear was a ways down and he fell clean about 30 ft. Apart from a few scratches and maybe a bruised ego, he was fine, and led right back up the pitch, placing gear closer to the finishing crux this next time.

This corner was great! Never too hard, and although it was very physical and sustained, you could almost always get a good rest. I basically climbed a body length, found a rest, panted my guts out, then continued, ad nauseum. For extra value, we linked the 3 short pitches into two long ones. If you bring the rack suggested by Croft (or a slightly different one on MountainProject), which is on the heavy side (doubles to 3, and triples either in finger or had sizes), you will have enough gear to do that comfortably.

The offwidth is nothing too bad. Even with a pack on at altitude I didn't find it too hard. One especially nice thing about it is that there is a thin crack alongside it that takes good gear, so there is no need to bring large cams or run this section out. Very comfy.

This next OW was low angle and wide, so it was even easier than the last one. More like a squeeze chimney.

I hate liebacks, so I jammed the lieback flake. This led to some stupidity on my part as at the end it is better to transition right to a crack in the face. Hanging on a thumbs-down jam with my left hand, I twisted to my right and reached for the crack. My shoulder was not happy with this, so after some hangs to make sure I didn't dislocate it, I set my left hand jam thumbs UP and then transitioned. So much for getting this clean! Doh!

Unfortunately after P5, the real fun is over and there are a number of easy, wandering, mediocre pitches to the summit. They aren't bad, but after such a good route it was a bit of a downer.

After Jared led P6, we decided to simul-climb the rest to get it over with faster. That worked well.

After enjoying the summit for a bit, we descended the East Ridge to Carillon Pass, and then down the lousy scree chutes to Upper Boy Scout Lakes, reaching the bottom just after we needed to turn on our headlamps. It was an exhausting day, but an absolutely wonderful one in the mountains with a great friend.

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