High sierra climbing conditions July 4th weekend

nikhilm Mm wrote:

While I agree in principle, in practice some of us are forced to be weekend warriors. When I only have < 100 days a year to spend in the mountains total, and getting to them requires driving 3+ hours each way, I want each and every one of them to lead to some meaningful progress in my abilities, rather than have to turn around and head to town or wind up in more trouble than it is worth. Beta is valuable for folks like me.

Beta is relative.  A good weather report and general mountain sense will get you pretty far without ruining the adventure.   Early season- bring aluminum crampons and a lightweight axe, drop them along the way if you don't need them.     If you want every trip to lead to you climbing harder and not have to worry about getting shut down, go cragging.    If you want to go climb alpine rock, go climb alpine rock.   There are plenty of spots to look at different aspects and elevations to get an idea of what gear you need.   If you want to get a better guarantee, hire a guide.    

Once again, everyone is right! :)

Conditions are "early Spring" and changing rapidly. Firm snow is going to be thigh deep and rotten in days to hours. Streams are full flood to trickle in a few weeks etc etc. So clarification for current beta is only so useful, but you can hardly blame people for asking!

"Climb the Mountains and get their good tidings....."

----John Muir

Cathedral Peak: down off the summit block and through the notch there's a boulder you can run some cord around--if you bring some--if someone else hasn't done it already and rap off to the NE instead of the standard descent. One rappel and a few minutes of plunge-stepping will get you through most of the snow and down onto the approach trail.

Here a bit of a late update for anyone who is curious how it went! 

I ended up checking out Bear Creek Spire with a friend. Before Gem lakes there is patchy snow, and the approach after Gem Lakes was entirely snowy and quite sun-cupped. We camped at Gem Lakes the night before the climb. The approach from Gem Lakes took us longer than expected, maybe just because of the altitude and heat- you are directly in the sun after about 8am. We got on the climb at 11am, and ended up getting within 30 feet of the summit (ugh :( ) before starting to descend just as the sun went down. The scramble down the west face has no snow. We then rapped down the notch in the dark, and hiked back to our camp. Everything below the notch is covered in quite steep snow- we rapped a pitch from slings at the notch, and then downclimbed/glissaded down the snow.

Our friends did the approach without crampons and an ice axe. They were much faster than us, but they turned back at Dade Lake or a bit after, because one of them got sick. Personally, I was definitely happy to have the crampons and ice axe on the steep snowy descent, but I had almost no snow experience before this weekend.

Best of luck to everyone going out there! The conditions are great, and I hope to get out there again soon :)

Just an fwiw, the better Bear Cr Spire approach is via treasure lakes, not gem

Adding on regarding conditions: anyone been up to the Incredible Hulk?

In general, any req right now for Northern CA climbing with reasonable weather, dry rock and dry approaches/descents?