PRINT: Rock Climb East Arete, High Sierra

East Arete

5.4, Trad, Alpine, Grade III,

Avg: 3.3 from 50 votes
FA: Norman Clyde, June 1935
California > High Sierra > 07 - Humphreys… > Mt Humphreys

Description

This is a nice ridge with a ton of 3rd/4th class climbing and a few short 5th class sections mixed in.

Follow the ridge towards Peak 13,151 staying on the ridge as it tries to spit you off to the left (South). Climb fun 3rd and 4th class and walk the cool knife edge ridge as pictured in Croft's guide. As you near Peak 13,151 you are forced off the ridge to the South and must make a few 5th class moves and meander back and forth to reach the summit of Peak 13,151. From here you descend the ridge and encounter a short steep notch, 5.7 downclimb or rappel. Continue down the ridge and up the next sub-peak and on the other side another 5.6 downclimb or rappel. You are now at the main notch where many people begin the climb via hiking up the scree gully to the South.

Gain the ridge again as soon as you can via a 4th class trough. Continue on the 3rd/4th class ridge to a headwall. Go around the corner to the left and up 5.2 cracks. 3rd class leads to easier ground and eventually a flat plateau. Turn right (North) towards the summit staying low to the left of the ridge to reach a notch, Married Men's Point. Pick out the easiest line and climb 100ft or so of low 5th class and then 3rd class to the summit.

Descent: Downclimb the route rappelling where necessary. From the notch take the scree gullies to the South and then head East over talus. In early season the scree gullies can be full of snow which can't be seen from the approach.

Location

West on Hwy 168 (W. Line St.) from Bishop for 7.5 miles and turn right onto Buttermilk Rd. There are many side roads off of this road, always take the most traveled road. Around 6 miles turn left at a fork to go towards McGee Creek. After crossing the creek turn right at a fork and at the next few junctions stay right until you come to a dead end. The last few miles of the road are very rough and require high-clearance and possibly 4WD.

Start hiking on a trail and then break left heading cross-country to the West. Stay left of the cliff bands and head up one of the sandy loose gullies sometimes on use trails. Before reaching the lake at 10,990 (a few bivy sites here) head Northwest to the saddle between Peak 13,151 and Peak 12,241. The route begins here.

Protection

Singles to 2", slings to reinforce rappel stations

Photos [Hide ALL Photos]

Walking the knife edge ridge.

A mid-November Humphreys jaunt.

Sketch of the route. Obviously not to scale.

Peter Pribik bravely walks the line on the East Arete of Mt Humphreys

The classic knife edge on the E Arete of Mt. Humphreys

Ridge scrambling on Humphreys

This shows the final section of the ridge. Lots of arete climbing prior to this.

From highway 168 take Buttermilk Road. Follow the blue path to what Google maps shows as the end of the road with a small loop. There is another short section of road not shown on Google that conti…

There is a short section of road (not shown on Google) that continues from the loop up to where the red X is. Park here. Follow the yellow line to the saddle.

Mt Humphreys, East Arete.

Matt (aka King of the Scree)

View of the whole ridge line in an early summer (after a record snowfall winter) ascent

Comments [Hide ALL Comments]

Tavis Ricksecker

Kind of a blue collar classic - long with lots of fourth class, some good rock and some choss, an amazing summit, and a scary descent. Not too bad ropeless as most of the fifth class sections aren't really a death fall scenario, but you do have to do some 5.6/5.7 downclimbing as was previously mentioned. At the crux you can opt for a more difficult but safer line above the ledge rather than traversing out left onto the exposed face. Descent gully was nasty scree, better and faster would be to reverse back over the sub peak. Aug 14, 2013

John S

Fantastic routes. However, if you plan on climbing the technical routes on the east side of Humphrey then ignore the posted directions on this site. The best approach is via Buttermilk rd. off of 168. Turn right on to Buttermilk road which is a dirt road. This road leads to the buttermilk bouldering area and is drivable in most vehicles. However, once you reach the Buttermilks which is obvious due to the masses of crash pads and the field of giant boulders the road quickly deteriorates past this point. You will drive over a cattle guard, there will be a left and right turn but head straight. Now the fun begins. Good clearance is highly recommended but I have seen a Subaru outback make the trek with patient driving and navigation. Essentially you want to stay on the main road till its end which seems like eternity. There will be turns and roads that branch off and it wont always be obvious which way stays on the main road. I can tell you at 2.3 miles from that cattle guard at the Bouldering area the road starts to curve significantly to your left. At 3.5 miles you reach a fork , go right. Drive through an aspen grove past some campsites drive over a small creek where the rd turns hard left and heads up a hill. This hill can hold snow depending on time of year. At about 4 miles the rd forks, go right, and then very quickly the rd forks again, go right again. At 4.4 miles stay right, shortly after you see a turn to the right stay straight and then shortly after a left turn, stay straight again. Continue on and at about 5.5 mile you head up a steep windy section. Follow the rd to its end in a small parking area at about 6 miles. If climbing the East arete continue reading. From the parking area follow the trail up the shallow wash for about a 1/4 mile. At this point the trail fades away and flattens out. Begin heading leftish through sage brush. You will see a shallow ridgeline in front of you that meets up with a small outcropping of granite. This is what you want to aim for. ***Do not go over that ridge and down*** Instead head around the rock outcropping to its left or right. Either way you have some steep loose terrain to hike for about a 1/4 mile but it will feel much longer than that. Head more or less straight up this hill till it flattens out a bit and the vegetation clears up. When you top out this small hill you will see a small lake and a drainage coming off of it. It will appear more or less to your left as you look up at humphrey. Laying just behind that will also be a chossy looking ridge line which is not the East arete. Instead head rightish and above that lake towards a notch. You will be traveling in some very sandy terrain on a gradual slope. When you reach that notch you are at the base of the East arete. Head left, staying higher on the ridge holds better rock and more exposure. Follow the ridge to the summit. Plan on a really full day to complete this route. Mar 29, 2014

Peter Lewis
Bridgton, ME

Is it possible to do that last few miles of the approach road after the Buttermilk boulders on Mt. Bikes? (The assumption here is that we have a cheap rental car with lousy clearance.) Apr 2, 2014

Chris Owen
Big Bear Lake

Good directions John.

Took my Subaru Outback up this road once to the trailhead, got a few bangs on the bottom, came down a lot better because I could crawl with the brakes on, whereas I had to rev the poor sucker to get it up the steep windy section and didn't have a lot of precision - didn't hit bottom once on the way back. Noticed a few rocker and exhaust dings at the trailhead. On the way home I thought the hood was open but alas it wasn't; I had twisted the front subframe by about 1/2".

Maybe the road is better now, or perhaps some people are better drivers, but be warned that sometimes there's no substitute for a high clearance truck with low range. Apr 14, 2014

bumbum
Velveta

youtube.com/watch?v=UduvDLu… Dec 26, 2015

Chris D
the couch

Has anyone traversed the ridge from Humphreys to Emerson? Looks amazing. Sep 1, 2016

Derek Field
Nevada

Chris D: I've done it. Dropped off the true crest once to bypass one of the final towers coming off Emerson. It is indeed amazing! Jan 7, 2019

Bryan G
June Lake, CA

I don't have a high clearance vehicle, and i prefer hiking loop trips, so i parked at North Lake and trekked cross country to the East Arete. It's a little burly with some shitty bushwhacking near all the creek crossings, but coulda been a lot worse. 4 hours from car to the saddle where the route starts, which is a fast time i think.

From the summit i descended the Northwest Ridge (the reg route) into Humphreys Basin and picked up the trail at Piute Pass for an easy class 1 walk back to the car. Not a bad way to do the route I think, but definitely a longer day than doing it out and back from McGee Creek. Sep 15, 2019

Braden Downey
Bishop, CA

Ropeless solo beta: On the ascent, the "10' 5.7 downclimb or rappel" on J.Smith's written topo felt like a bit of a sandbag. I'd describe it as comitting, slopey, downward/traversing holds around a blind corner with no feet. Go prepared to deal with it. Nov 15, 2019

Stephen L
Atl GA

A superb day out. High quality rock the whole way. The 5th class is very secure, big holds or perfect hand cracks. We had an 8mm 30m rope for rapping in two places for speed, the rest ropeless (30m came up short for rapping the hand cracks at the headwall so we ended up down climbing half of it). Jul 15, 2020

Paul Morrison

Climbed this route on 8 May 2021. To add what I hope will be a little more information about the "5.7" downclimb: if attempted directly under the rappel anchor, it does indeed seem unreasonable. There appear to be two alternatives, neither of which I attempted, as I only saw them after rappelling. On the north side there is a low-angle, sloping hand crack, which terminates at a slightly overhanging wall, down which one would have to lower oneself about a full body-length to reach a solid foot hold. The exposure here, while not immediate, is severe, as the landing spot is sloping and only a scant few feet above the brink. On the south side there is a stem box with a tight hand crack in the left-hand corner (looking down), reminiscent of the descent from the summit block of Cathedral Peak. The advantage here, if any, would be that there is a large boulder blocking the chute below this feature, so a fall here would be short.

The second rappel anchor is almost superfluous, as the climb down at that location is obvious and much easier. May 10, 2021

aleday

Mr. Downey’s evaluation of the 5.7 down climb is corroborated. It is a consequential fall and a non-trivial move. As of 2021-06-12, a kind soul installed a fixed line for a quick rappel at that point. I found a 40m skinny line to be a good length to rappel the upper cruxes. Also, mini gaiters for your shoes help make the gully descent faster and marginally more comfortable prior to the impressive and well-behaved Boulder hopping down to the meadows below. Jun 13, 2021

Adam A

Did this on Aug 10, 2021. Lower ridge had some interesting stuff, especially a very nice knife ridge. It is possible to climb the "orange dome" directly, but with a consequential and marginal move on the left side at about 5.6.

The 5.7 move looks sketch, but may be better doing the crack rather than the sloping ledges. 5.6 DC was pretty easy.

Upper ridge is mostly not that bad and could be soloed by the confident. Cruxes are an awkward corner OR the 5.5 handcracks and then thr last pitch before the summit- hardest near the ground.

We had a 35m rope and, using the lower of two anchors from the summit area, just got down. 2nd rap was just before the notch and the descent gully (that avoids the awkward corner move or handcracks). Aug 16, 2021

Natalie Brechtel

Another decent option is to retrace your steps for a while, and then drop down towards the South Basin – walking below Checkered Daemon and the backside of Mt. Emerson. Very pretty, but maybe not any faster.

I wrote a full trip report: gutzjourney.com/trip-report… Feb 17, 2023

Billy Ray Cypress
Truckee, CA

Hit this yesterday. Lots of good comments here so will try to leave out redundancies.
Road has further deteriorated after our historic winter. If you care about the clearcoat & undercarriage on your awd vehicle, may want to find a buddy with a beater rig.
Route finding is tricky even with beta pics in hand--attention to detail is key.
Good rock but lots of decomposed gravelly bits, and many, many are ready to roll. Test before you make the move.
Last water source (on this side) is 11S 0353336E 4126306N @10994'. Few hundred meters off the route.
Enjoy! Oct 22, 2023