{"id":4665,"date":"2021-05-16T19:26:12","date_gmt":"2021-05-16T19:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/?p=4665"},"modified":"2021-05-16T19:26:12","modified_gmt":"2021-05-16T19:26:12","slug":"olancha-peak-and-10000-foot-peaks-in-the-white-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/2021\/05\/16\/olancha-peak-and-10000-foot-peaks-in-the-white-mountains\/","title":{"rendered":"Olancha Peak and 10,000-foot Peaks in the White Mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s another drought year in California, not good. A side effect is that hiking in the Sierra starts earlier. Olancha Peak has been on my radar for a long time. I drove up to the Sage Flat staging area in the afternoon, set up camp, and turned in early since I wanted to start with first light the next day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Day 1:<\/strong>
I started hiking just when the first rays of sun hit my camp. I knew there was only one way\/trail up to Olancha Pass and just hiked without consulting the map for details. Turn’s out I didn’t know. After a while the trail started to follow the dry creek bed, still plenty of footprints and obviously a trail, but then it became quite overgrown. Something was not right and I checked the GPS. Oops, I was supposed to be 600 ft (180 m) higher up. I later learned that I had been on the Cow Driveway and not the hiker’s trail. The turn-off I missed is not at all obvious coming from the bottom when one is not looking for any turn-off. This little misfortune cost some energy. I had cut out a lot of switchbacks and thereby some distance, but the steep off-trail climb to reach the trail used a lot more leg strength than the trail would have used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Olancha Pass I hiked on a nice trail to the PCT and took it north to the foot of Olancha Peak. I made decent time, but now I had to climb 1,600 ft (490 m) through some rocks. No obvious route exists up there to the top. The reduced oxygen level at altitude tends to get to me around 10,500 ft (3200 m) when coming up from sea level. That combined with the route finding and climbing around rocks made for a slow final ascent. On top of that, I ended up a bit too far to the “right” (south) of the peak and got into some class 2-3 climbing. I avoided this on the way down. The view from the peak was awesome. 14ers (Whitney, Langely) and a bunch of 13ers and other Sierra peaks were right there in front of me. Some I’ve been on, others were calling to be climbed. All of them with very little snow for this time of year. I encountered no snow whatsoever on my ascent to the peak (12,123 ft \/3695 m), very unusual for May. I hung out on the peak for about an hour. Once back on the PCT I met a through-hiker and I recognized him! We had met a week before<\/a> further south on the trail, so we had a good chat. On the way down I decided to follow the approximate location of an old trail I had seen on the map because it crosses Bear Trap Meadow (who can resist a name like that? :). The top portion is non-existent, but below the meadow I found a recognizable path. There was even a trickle of water in a stream, so I filtered some water and was able to start re-hydrating on the way down. Back at the truck I had the beer I had been looking forward to and a quick dinner and went to bet early.
Hike stats:<\/strong> 21 miles \/ 6,500 ft gain (~33 km, 2000 m), 12.5 h away from truck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Enjoying a beer with Sierra views from White Mountain road camp<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Day 2:<\/strong>
I took Hwy 395 north, the 168 east to White Mountain road. I followed it to about 12 miles past where the pavement ends at Bristlecone visitor center. I parked along forest road 5S01 about half a mile from White Mountain road and headed straight up County Line Hill, from there I went over to Blanco Peak and from there to Bucks Peak, then back to the truck. I ended up with about 8.8 miles and 2,800 ft elevation gain (14 km \/ 850 m). While having an after-hike snack I decided there was enough time and strength left to do the short (1.3 mile \/ 750 ft gain) climb of Campito Mountain. Now it was time to find a spot for the night. On the way out I had seen several nice camp spots right by the road. I drove back south and ended up just below “White Mountains Peak 10920” which happens to be one of the 61 non-Sierra (ranked) 10,000 ft peaks. I walked up the 100 ft to the top, then set up camp. From the spot I had great views of the Sierra and Bishop below me. I was concerned that the night might be cold up at this elevation, but it bottomed out at 39 F (4 C). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Day 3:<\/strong>
There are lots of non-Sierra 10,000 ft peaks in the White Mountains and a lot of them are close to the road (vertically and horizontally). So rather than just driving back down and home I visited a few of them (some of these lack real names and are referred to by their approx. elevation). Hikes ranged from 1-3 miles with 450 – 1450 ft elevation gain: Peak 10620, Silver Peak, Clem Nelson and Peak 10920 (combined in one hike), Sunrise Mountain. In total that gave me 8.5 miles \/ 2,800 ft gain (14 km, 930 m) for the day. Silver Peak has lots of antennas and can be driven up to. I opted to do the short 1 mile \/ 450 ft gain hike from the other side and was rewarded with a nice crystal just lying there on the ground between the scree. After the last hike I went down a dirt road off the main road to find a spot to clean up, change, and take a short nap. I had about 5h of driving home in front of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(click on any image to enlarge \/ start slideshow)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It’s another drought year in California, not good. A side effect is that hiking in the Sierra starts earlier. Olancha Peak has been on my radar for a long time. I drove up to the Sage Flat staging area in the afternoon, set up camp, and turned in early since I wanted to start withContinue reading “Olancha Peak and 10,000-foot Peaks in the White Mountains”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hiking","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/PXL_20210514_004421132-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9x9nh-1df","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4665"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4674,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665\/revisions\/4674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.whitethaiger.net\/hikers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}