Sawtooth Mountain

Continuing my trend of ass-whoopin' this summer, my brother and I hiked over 20 miles and 5,000 vertical feet only to get thwarted a couple hundred feet shy of the summit of Sawtooth Mountain in the Trinity Alps wilderness. The summit pyramid was a maze of castellated granite spires and we were out of time (turn-around time was 4:00pm and it was 3:52 I believe). We also had a good 10 miles back to the truck, so it was a wise decision to bail. I found out later you don't need gear to summit, but weaving your way to the top must take some pretty clever route finding.

The trip of course was not a total wash. Far from it in fact. The clean, white granite of the Canyon Creek watershed is absolutely stunning. I've said it before and I will say it again, the Trinity Alps are one of the greatest mountain ranges that almost nobody has heard of.

Beautiful Upper Canyon Creek Lake

Right at our turn-around point at about 8,500 feet

Upper Canyon Creek falls behind me flowing over stellar granite slickrock

Another reason the trip was not a wash is it gave the chance to scope out some of the obscure climbing in the Trinity Alps. If roads got anywhere near the high country here I suspect this would be a pretty decent climbing area. Information on the area is very hard to come by but you can bet I'll be doing some more research. Here are a few pictures of the so-called Stonehouse Pinnacle. My old Tim Toula's "Rock and Road: a Climbing Guide to North America" describes the formation as 1,000 feet tall with granite that is "almost as good as Yosemite." (citation needed). It didn't look quite that big, but it looked quality from where I was standing.

That chimney looks like a man-eater

Look at those cracks!

This is another formation across the canyon that I dubbed "the Great white face." Guess I'm going to have to head back with some gear sometime in the future. Anybody keen?