How To Fall Off A Mountain

Rich Benbrook

Using the Maps

Mount Whitney

Monarch Lake

Vidette Meadow

Cottonwood Lakes

Onion Valley to
Whitney Portal

Symmes Creek to
Mineral King

Mount Tyndall

Whitney Group

Mount Shasta

Mount Williamson

Palisades

Middle Palisade
Revisited

Thunder Mountain

Middle Palisade
Try Again

Middle Palisade
Take Three

Mount Sill

Thunderbolt Peak
Climbing Up

Thunderbolt Peak
Climbing Down

Thunderbolt Peak
Rescue

Aerial Photos

National Park Service Search and Rescue

Links

Mount Williamson

maps:

In early July, Kelly and I returned to Shepard Pass and completed the sixth and final peak in the Whitney group. Mount Williamson is a massive peak, and California's second highest. Furthermore, unlike Whitney which sits nearly hidden well back from the Owens Valley floor, Williamson rises up abruptly in front of all other mountain ridges, and appears even larger than its higher and more famous neighbor to the south.

We climbed Shepard Pass and crossed into the rocky Williamson bowl just days before the region's annual closure for bighorn sheep breeding. This terrain is truly inhospitable. A jumble of huge rocks stretching for miles in every direction, the area offers no decent campsites. Travel through the Williamson bowl is slow and tedious. There are no trails, and forward progress is measured in feet, not miles. We found a tiny clear spot not far from a small lake, and set up camp.

The next day, we started up the west face of Williamson. The route up this chute is not particularly difficult, but climbers must be always wary of the possibility of rockslides. At the top of the chute, a small cliff band presents the only notable obstacle. We had less trouble with this challenge than we expected, and soon found ourselves on the summit of Mount Williamson (14,375'; 7 of 15).

Earlier in the year, I had flown a sailplane over this mountain to observe the intended route, and made a few low passes over a group of people on the mountain top. As luck would have it, we were joined on the summit by friends of the earlier party. They said they had photographs of my sailplane flight over Mount Williamson, and promised to send copies.

Upon completing our climb of Williamson, we drove up toward the trailhead for White Mountain Peak. We stopped for a hike through the Bristlecone forest, and arrived at the campground just before dark. We had originally planned to rest overnight at this campground, and make a quick day hike up White Mountain. Unlike any of the other peaks we'd previously climbed, this one is easily accessible. The hike starts out at 12,000 feet, only needing to gain another 2,000' to the summit. The summit had been used at one time as a research station and an old road still exists to the top. The story is that volunteers would be picked up at sea level, transported quickly to the summit, put on exercise machines, and then researchers would try to figure out why they threw up. We were much better acclimatized for our trip, having just returned from Williamson the previous day.

As night fell, some noisy campers move in next to us. That, along with the bright moon, practically guaranteed that we wouldn't get much sleep. We changed our plan, loaded a few essentials into our backpacks, and started up the road to the top under the moonlight. We reached the summit of White Mountain Peak (14,250'; 8 of 15) a little after midnight, unrolled our sleeping pads and bags, and spent my first and only night above 14,000 feet, under the brightest stars I'd ever seen.