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Tuolumne Meadows and Lembert Dome during a summer storm, Yosemite National Park

The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (79% of Full)

Mount Conness

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AndrewF

Mount Conness
June 17, 2014 08:53AM

Registered: 11 years ago
Posts: 196

Saddlebag Lake -> Secret Pass -> Don't Be A Smart Pass -> Young Lakes -> Delaney Meadows. The plan was to continue back to the car via Mine Shaft Pass but the call of the Grill was too strong.

Still some snow left in 20 Lakes Basin

It seems that most people miss the easy way over Secret Pass. We met a couple of gentlemen who ended up going over the center of the saddle, which is much harder than the hidden-but-easy way on the far right side.

Don't Be A Smart Pass in the background

Upper McCabe Lake

Shepherd Crest

Don't Be A Smart Pass was easy, but it was nice to have ice axes going over it around 10AM when the snow was still firm.

Roosevelt Lake

The views of the Cathedral Range are excellent from that side of the valley

And a big (too big to post directly) pano from Point 10410. Click to see full size.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2014 08:56AM by AndrewF.

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yosemitejim

Re: Mount Conness
June 17, 2014 10:56AM

Registered: 12 years ago
Posts: 578

Cool. I thought about going through secret pass. Maybe next time. Great to see what it was like when I was nearby.

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chick-on

Re: Mount Conness
June 17, 2014 11:16AM

Moderator
Registered: 14 years ago
Posts: 7,421

Tanks for Sharon

Quote
Andrew
It seems that most people miss the easy way over Secret Pass. We met a couple of gentlemen who ended up going over the center of the saddle, which is much harder than the hidden-but-easy way on the far right side.

There gotta be 20 ways up...

http://yosemitenews.info/forum/read.php?3,67915,68233#msg-68233

Not sure have gone the same way twice... it's all good fun. Just blast up and figure it out... that's what I say.
Some turkeys put up cairns up Mt. Florence. Most of it makes no sense to my bird brain.
I find half the fun figuring it out myself.

So you saying that good way is even more right (north) ?

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AndrewF

Re: Mount Conness
June 17, 2014 12:10PM

Registered: 11 years ago
Posts: 196

I'm sure there's a bunch of good ways up on the east side. I always go to the far right, just above the north side of Secret Lake you walk around the right side of a boulder, do an easy mantle and you're on a nice class 2 ledge that shoots you straight to the Yosemite boundary sign. On the west side, the use trail is the only good way down. The guys we ran into went up the east side at about the mid-point of the ridge, then said it was too hard to traverse over to the north end, so went straight down through some cliffs on the west side. They also said it was pretty exposed on the east side. Not sure how any of that makes sense to be honest ... the east side is pretty easy everywhere and I've traversed the whole ridge when climbing the north ridge of North Peak and it's pretty straightforward IMHO. I saw them coming down the west side and the stuff they went through looked pretty nasty in comparison to the use trail.

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tomdisco

Re: Mount Conness
June 19, 2014 09:05AM

Moderator
Registered: 15 years ago
Posts: 1,876

Quote
AndrewF
I'm sure there's a bunch of good ways up on the east side. I always go to the far right, just above the north side of Secret Lake you walk around the right side of a boulder, do an easy mantle and you're on a nice class 2 ledge that shoots you straight to the Yosemite boundary sign. On the west side, the use trail is the only good way down. The guys we ran into went up the east side at about the mid-point of the ridge, then said it was too hard to traverse over to the north end, so went straight down through some cliffs on the west side. They also said it was pretty exposed on the east side. Not sure how any of that makes sense to be honest ... the east side is pretty easy everywhere and I've traversed the whole ridge when climbing the north ridge of North Peak and it's pretty straightforward IMHO. I saw them coming down the west side and the stuff they went through looked pretty nasty in comparison to the use trail.

Pretty exposed on the east side? I think they meant "their other east".

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tanngrisnir3

Re: Mount Conness
June 18, 2014 12:38PM

Registered: 13 years ago
Posts: 409

Very nice.

The wife and I will be at 20 Lakes Basin the entire 4th of July weekend. Hopefully there'll be some skies for photography.