exact location of Luther Rock

Was planning to check out Luther Rock this weekend. I had tried to go there a month ago with a group, but couldn't nail down the exact pull-out for the approach. There's a very large pull-out which is probably too far north. We parked there, crossed the road and walked towards the rock. It was pretty obviously not the right place as the approach was nowhere near as burly as it's described.

My question is: are the gps coordinates given on Mountain Project correct? (38.8091, -120.0104) That doesn't seem to match up with " .89mi from Portal rd" or what it says in the supertopo book either. Any locals or insiders have the scoop on finding a good place to pull over for Luther Rock?

caughtinside wrote:It's been a long time since I've been there but we used the supertopo directions and they were right on. It was either the second or the third pullout, whatever it says in there. We crossed the road, and found some cairns and the trail without much trouble.

Unfortunately, Caltrans has been doing some curb building roadwork up there and it may not be as obvious as it was before. Nevertheless, as Caught stated, there is a cairn that you can see from the road. If you are having a lot of trouble, the best thing to do might be to error on the side of parking too early and walking up the road until you see a cairn on the left side of the road. If I recall correctly, the cairn is usually sitting on top of smallish boulder/rock. The trail is very obvious from the cairn.

Thanks. Good to know that supertopo is right on in this case (I've been burned before) Actually .89mi from Portal Rd and 3.4 from intersection with Rt 50 do jive with each other, so I should have a good chance of it this time. Now, hopefully I will survive the approach....

I'm guessing this is where it is:
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I've always used an obvious three-forked tree to locate the correct pull-out. It's on the uphill side (south) of the parking spot. Once your parked in the right spot the rest of the approach is straight forward, if a bit strenuous. Have fun!

Thanks, everyone. We had no problem finding it. I blame the earlier issues on group-think that was happening when the climbing party gets too large. I even saw the 3-forked tree!

One little glitch was that we got the walls mixed up and accidentally warmed up on 11B Happy Hour, thinking we were at Detox Wall where the similarly positioned route is 5.9. A little too close to our leading limit - but it all worked out in the end.

Awesome place and the approach really isn't bad!