The Other Fourteeners

After summiting ten 14ers in Colorado in 2022, I couldn’t let this year end with a paltry four. And while I might be running out of 14ers in Colorado, there are fifteen in California, and I’d only done one. And so I was California-bound for more. Sort of.

My original plan was to summit four 14ers while I was out there. But I only had four weekend days to enjoy, and after some consideration and seeing how much else there was to do, I realized that big mountain slogs wasn’t really how I wanted to spend all my free time. It made sense last year to push myself that hard when I was training for Bolivia, but not this year. So I downgraded to two.

And then only one happened. I attempted to summit Mount Sill my second weekend, but I guess I should have read the AllTrails reviews of the route I chose more carefully because it wasn’t really possible. Pretty much everyone bailed on the route I tried. But I don’t really trust AllTrails reviews because you don’t know the experience level of the person writing it. I’ve seen plenty of “this was extremely difficult!” reviews on trails that barely register as medium difficulty for me. I read the Summit Post description too but that didn’t reveal anything about the impossibility of actually getting to the base of Sill.

Basically, after you turn right at the Brainerd Lake / Willow Lake junction, there is a trail for about fifty feet and that’s it. No more trail. Gone. Nada. Nothing. And you have many, many miles to go. So I futzed around for over a mile, trying to following the few-and-far-between cairns, referring to the little blue dot on my downloaded AllTrails map every 60 seconds, following gravelly paths that looked like trails only to realize they weren’t trails at all, bushwacking, wading through the stream several times. But when you’re doing all that, the going is very, very slow. At 10:30 AM, nowhere near the base and finally giving up hope of there ever being a trail, I called it quits.

I picked a great place to stop though. I was on top of my own little mountain, surrounded by a “moat”, with the moat surrounded nearly 300 degrees by jagged peaks that someday I’ll summit, maybe when I get a proper guide book. It was sunny and warm, and honestly, I could have taken a long, long nap on that rock if I didn’t have a two-and-a-half hour drive ahead of me that evening. There wasn’t another soul out there (obviously, because I wasn’t on any kind of trail; I was just an idiot in the middle of the wilderness all alone) and it was a gorgeous first day of autumn. And I still got in a good workout with 9.1 miles and 3,061 feet gain total because the trailhead is so low.

So yeah, I should have chosen Middle Palisade instead of Mount Sill (a left turn instead of a right turn at the Brainerd Lake / Willow Lake junction) and I would have bagged another peak, but the first 3.5 miles of this hike to that point are so lovely and easy that I won’t mind covering them again in the future.

But don’t stop reading yet! I did summit one 14er in California so that Shasta isn’t my only one in the state anymore. A nice and easy Class 1. And here’s that report.

White Mountain – South Face (Class 1)

Date: September 16
Summit Elevation:  14,246 ft
Performance: 14.68 miles in 5 hours 32 minutes with 3,467 feet gain
Report: This trek was unexpectedly different because I didn’t realize that I’d get to go through a spectacular ancient bristlecone pine forest on the drive out and I didn’t realize how much of the day I would spend above treeline. If you aren’t interested in hiking a 14er, I still highly recommending coming here to hike among the ancient pines. After my hike, I stopped in Patriarch Grove for a lunch and to wander among the trees. You can read about that on my other blog.

But let’s talk about White Mountain. Because the hike started at 11,600 feet, above treeline, the final four miles or so to the trailhead reminded me of being in Bolivia last year. Very desolate, no vegetation, windswept and brutal. I loved it. You do need an SUV or other vehicle with high clearance to get there, but I never had to engage my four-wheel drive.

There were about fifteen cars at the trailhead, and a bunch of tents. I had originally planned to camp out too, but changed my mind and opted for a long daytrip from Mammoth Lakes instead. Camping is not a bad idea for beginning 14er hikers, though, in order to acclimate.

Two miles up the trail is the White Mountain Research Center. It’s kind of annoying that you can’t drive up that road and save four miles off your roundtrip, but I get it. They can’t have a bunch of campers disturbing the sheep. Actually, if you had an ATV and it wasn’t prohibited, you could drive all the way to the summit.

After the research center is another 3.5 miles of hiking across a lot of nothing. Again, I was reminded so much of Bolivia. This type of trek doesn’t really happen in Colorado – 14.68 miles, 100 percent of which is above treeline, fully exposed. It wasn’t terribly windy but it was cold, even with my late 8:15AM start. I had on my big puffy and winter hat all the way until the final two mile summit push. This segment of the trail has a few big ups and downs, so the total gain on this hike is significantly more than just the difference between the starting elevation and summit elevation.

This is just a nice, simple class 1 hike, with a clearly defined trail, so reaching the summit is kind of no big deal, but it was nice to check another peak off my list. There’s a research building at the top and a box where people leave memorabilia. I sat for a bit and enjoyed my chili cheese bread from Shea Schat’s Bakery (almost as good as summit pizza) but it was too cold to stay long. The summit is spacious and flat, so I imagine in summer you can stretch out and enjoy yourself for a good long while.