Bear Creek Spire, South Face, British Chimney Route. On July 5, I took Nigel Gifford, a veteran of British Army expeditions to Nuptse and Everest, on a day climb in the gentle wilderness of the High Sierra. While I hoped to introduce him to a challenging climb in my home mountains, I never anticipated that I was leading the two of us into an alpine epic. The approach from Rock Creek normally takes a brisk 3-hour walk. In the early summer of an unusually high snow year, we spent eight hours traveling through the worst sun cups we ever experienced in any mountains anywhere. The crests would not support body weight, while the troughs, always a few inches deeper than thigh-height, were filled with icy water. The one existing route on the south face, climbed in 1970, is, to the best of my knowledge, unrepeated. We chose a prominent chimney on the west side of the 1200-foot wall. The first few pitches were of medium difficulty and straightforward. Then came an overhanging alcove that we climbed by delicately bridging against a pillar of rotten snow. Hidden from view was the upper chimney, which had a back wall coated with a foot of bulbous water-ice. After numerous efforts to place nuts behind the ice, to throw #11 chocks over the top into a slot, and to climb the ice in EB’s, I discovered, to my chagrin, that the chimney could be bridged with very wide stemming. We avoided the ice altogether and continued up chimneys and jams to a steep headwall that required a short pendulum near the top. This was our only point of aid on the route, and we have no doubt that a party in less of a hurry could eliminate it. We reached the summit ridge just as the sun set, and decided not to go the last fifty feet for the summit. We had 2000 feet of fourth class rock and snow to descend to reach a campsite on the opposite side where we had left our bivvy gear. We reached the snow in total darkness, and proceeded across two miles of sun cups in EB’s. Several times I lost muscle control in my legs because of constant contact, from thigh to toe, with the wet, sun-cupped snow. We reached camp after midnight, where Nigel massaged my feet for a long, long time. The next day we drove 300 miles to get him onto a plane to England with minutes to spare. I lost sensation in one foot for three months, and Nigel must still feel that the Sierra Nevada is a rather formidable range. NCCS IV, F9, Al.

Galen A. Rowell