California suffers from an embarrassment of riches when it comes to geography and nowhere is this shameless self-indulgence in beauty more clearly demonstrated than in the Sierra Nevada. Really, people, if you had a generous bone in your collective body you would send a mountain or two, perhaps an alpine lake, to Kansas. In the early eighties my good friend and long suffering climbing partner John Ferguson and I decided on an extended visit to the Range of Light before some radical “Occupy US 395” group demanded some elevational redistribution of assets to the High Plains states. After an initial flirtation with success on Matterhorn Peak, we headed down to Mammoth for a sojourn into the Minarets. The Minarets have always been one of my favorite places in the Sierras for their striking beauty and unusual geology. You just gotta love a piece of the supra-batholithic volcanic pile entombed as a giant roof pendant, I know I do. John and I humped our loads up to Minaret Lake and set up camp. I am just not sure there can be a more beautiful place to camp for a few days.

On the day of days, another cloudless beauty, we got a not-so-alpine start and headed towards the east face of Clyde Minaret. On the approach we discussed, as we usually do, the important quandaries in life; what’s cooler, the Spitfire or the P-51.

As I recall the guidebook indicates the standard east face route goes up some 5.7 ledges just around the left side of the face, joining the actual east face a bit higher up. We were attracted to some 5.6 to 5.7-ish stuff that led to some very nice dihedrals just left of a very prominent dihedral labeled “the large tower” on the supertopo topo (is that like Major Major in Catch-22?) as seen here: http://www.supertopo.com/tr/Direct-SE-Face-of-Clyde-Minaret-IV-5-9/t11498n.html.
Not sure why this is not the standard start as we encountered outstanding climbing with great pro. The angular fractures and finely crystalline nature of this meta-rhyolite is unlike anything we had previously climbed on anywhere in California.

One of the really nice things about the east face of Clyde Minaret is the wonderful ledges for belays at the end of practically every pitch. Although some of the lower ledges contained a certain amount of debris from rockfall, many of them higher up were wonderfully clean. The moderate difficulty (mostly 5.7 – 5.8 climbing), bomber pro, and killer belay stances made for a stupidly entertaining climb in a stupendous setting. This allowed us to feel like real alpine heroes at practically no psychological cost at all. Honestly, this has got to be what Heaven is like.


As we got to the upper part of the face we entered a huge dihedral that slightly overhung at the crux. The belay arrived at a point about halfway through this steeper dihedral and gave us our only crowded and inconvenient belay stance on the whole climb. On the other hand, it also allowed both John and I to enjoy a lead in this more challenging part of the route.

This route tops out at a notch in the ridge above the big dihedral, from which it is a 4th class scramble to the summit of Clyde Minaret. We arrived at the notch sometime in the early to mid-afternoon. The sky was still cloudless, with nary a breeze, and we celebrated with snacks and water before heading to the summit. We lingered on the summit despite the heinous conditions, pounded as we were by the relentless sunshine and hammered by the calm air.

For us the real challenges were about to begin, and I am not even joking here. The weather had been so beautiful, the climbing so sublime, that we were lulled into complacency about the descent. Getting off the summit of Clyde Minaret can be “interesting”. The day was moving deeper into the afternoon and we moved into the shadows for the descent. There are so many scrambling options getting off the summit and down the north side that it can be fairly easy to choose unwisely. Although I had climbed this route once before with my friend Peter Thurston from Reno, I still made a few false starts early in the descent. In places the rock was wet, the ledges somewhat mossy, and the odd rappel anchor rusty and/or manky, completely different than anything on the east face. John had the good sense to be wearing long sleeve polypro, but I in my cotton shorts and tee was shivering before we got all the way down and back into the sun. This was by no means the first time my youthful exuberance was weighed in the balance and found wanting in comparison of John’s more thoughtful approach to all things alpine – we’re kind of like the yin & yang of common sense. In the fullness of time we returned to our lovely camping spot, enjoyed a wonderful meal and many pots of tea. Honestly, I am not sure I have ever enjoyed a day in the mountains more than this one.