Mount Stanford / Mount Morgan
Ascents of Mount Stanford (N) (East Slope, class 2) and Mount Morgan (N) (Traverse from Mount Stanford, class 3), November 5, 2019.
Timeline:
November 5, 2019. With the recent switch to daylight savings time and the short November days, this climb would require an early start. I woke up at 4:15 and after the quick drive from Mammoth, I started from my car at 5:45 by headlamp. It was my first time on the Hilton Lakes trail, a relatively flat and very well-maintained trail. The 5.5 mile hike to Lake 10,353 (the starting point for the climb) took me two hours, a slow pace. Lack of sleep and acclimatization were clearly taking a toll. From the lake, I followed a dry creek bed northwest over easy cross-country terrain to an easy saddle. This dropped me at a snowfield and dry tarn at the base of the East Slope of Mount Stanford. The East Slope is a scree and talus climb, and by staying to the right near the top, one encounters some easy class 3 climbing to the summit ridge. After traversing a false summit, I was on summit of Mount Stanford at 10:45. The views there were outstanding – south toward Pioneer Basin and the high peaks of the Bear Creek Spire group, west toward Red Slate Mountain and Red and White Mountain, and northeast toward Mount Morgan, Boundary Peak, and the Inyo Mountains.
Feeling fatigued, I briefly toyed with the notion of calling it a day, but the idea of having to return later to climb Mount Morgan via the Nevahbe Ridge did not seem appealing. I left the summit of Mount Stanford at 11:16. I started to feel stronger and the traverse was quite a lot of fun, over the numerous high summits that stand in the way to Mount Morgan. The ridge, first climbed in 1934 by David Brower and Norman Clyde, is purportedly class 3. This might be true if one stays religiously on the crest, but I found the climbing to be rather easy even on the very crest. There is a bit of exposure and what could pass for class 3 just before the last high point that one must climb over before dropping down into the barren bowl to the southwest of Mount Morgan's summit. The big grey talus fan that constitutes Mount Morgan's summit area (visible from highway 395 North of Mammoth Lakes) offers easy climbing over solid rock. I reached the summit of Mount Morgan at 13:33. The views here were nice too, though perhaps not as spectacular as those from Mount Stanford.
I stayed on the summit for about 20 minutes, ate half of my sandwich, and then started down the sandy southeast slope of Mount Morgan. This slope was perfect for boot skiing, and I descended 2,000 feet in less than 45 minutes. As Secor advises, I moved right at the 11,000 feet level, and more sandy terrain took me to an aspen grove just above Davis Lake. This required unpleasant bushwhacking and slowed me down. I finally reached the shores of the lake and the trail at 15:22, and took a break on a rock to eat the second half of my sandwich. I did not choose my spot well – there was fresh bear scat nearby, a freshly dug bear sleeping pad, and tell-tale bear claw marks on nearby trees. Realizing this, I moved out in a hurry. By then, there was only an hour and a half of daylight left to hike over 6 miles back to my car – it was going to be tight. I was still about 1.5 miles shy of the trailhead when night fell, and I took out my headlamp. That caused me to miss a critical trail junction, and instead of heading straight to Rock Creek Lake I dropped down some steep switchbacks to the Pine Grove campground. This added about 1 mile, and 400 vertical feet of elevation gain up the road to my car. I finally reached the parking lot at 18:04. (A 12:19 hour day, 19.2 miles, 5,700 feet of elevation gain).