Mount Carillon, East Face. From below, the topography of the ridges and faces around the Boy Scout Lakes is somewhat confusing. Seeing fine rock walls in the area of Lone Pine Creek’s north fork, Chuck Haas and I chose the attractive, steep east face of Carillon for a major new climb. The main wall, rising more than 1000 feet above the talus, has a series of slanting parallel crack systems and dihedrals and terminates on one of the southern summits of the peak. On July 21 we worked upward from the base to the left on interesting slab climbing, which gave access to a dihedral system that we followed to mid-face; A difficult deep crack was climbed by chimney technique. We then climbed an open chimney, where the face corners and a vertical wall were conveniently split by a 2-inch crack. We just managed to avoid aid on the last portion of the face by inching up a very awkward crack which cut a section of orange-colored but still sound granite. With the right foot jammed into the crack, we searched for high handholds, which miraculously were there—to the left—for a delightful finger traverse into a different crack. Such interesting solutions, the fine setting and exposure, the nature of the rock, all combine to make this a highly recommended alpine rock climb. NCCS III, F8.

Fred Beckey