On July 28, Dave Spies, Steven Stosky, and I climbed what we believe to be a new route up the east face of Mt. Humphreys (13,986’), just west of Bishop. Our route ascends the center of the very prominent pillar on the far right (north) side of the highly dissected 1,200’ wall.

In his report about the first route up this aspect of the mountain, Galen Rowell described it as the southeast face, but the wall faces only a few degrees south of east, and a more accurate descriptor would be the east face. The only other known route is the South Pillar (1,200’, III 5.8, Jensen-Rowell, AAJ 1976) on the far left side.

Starting just before noon, we climbed directly up the center of the north pillar, aiming for a string of highly conspicuous splitter cracks high on the face. The lower half’s mixed bag of rock gradually increased in quality until we found ourselves joyfully jamming those perfect hand cracks we had eyed from the ground. Our eighth pitch brought us to the top of the pillar, where we danced delicately over decomposing hoodoos perched 1,200’ above snowfields. We called our route Humphrey Dumphrey (1,200’, III 5.8).

After topping out the pillar, we unroped and joined the classic East Arête (5.4). With the sunset almost upon us, the three of us decided to turn around just shy of the summit at Married Men’s Point—a fitting conclusion, considering I got married six days later.

– Derek Field, Canada