Green Lake(edit)

Sights to See

• South Lake Trailhead

Rate this Hike

★★★★★


Temecula_Dan 1 year, 2 months ago
Vagabond & Cloudripper Peaks via Bishop Pass Solo hiked Fri 09/08/2023 – Camped at Four Jeffrey campground to get an early start from the Bishop Pass Trailhead (no overnight trail permits available). The wind was strong enough at Bishop Pass for a hard shell jacket and really picked up through the morning. Nixed the pipeline option on the way in and didn’t have to do any real navigating in the dark until the Brown Lake Meadow which was flooded. Glad to find a dry route through and reconnect with the Green Lake Trail at the meadow’s north end. After the climb out at Green Lake, the wind gusts really ratcheted up but the weather was dry and clear. Left the Green Lake Trail where it is closest to the Hunchback and used the peak above Thunder and Lightning Lake (Peak 12406) as a way point at the top of the first talus field. Scrambling up the rock on the first part of Vagabond’s north face was dry and great fun. The middle part up was the sun cupped snow field that is probably a bit shallower than a month ago but still took a little route finding to avoid the deeper cups. Then it was back to dry talus to the summit notch and down to the Vagabond-Cloudripper saddle. The saddle gusts increased enough to push me around a bit so I decided to keep moving up the talus on the north face of Cloudripper with another, smaller sun cup field and see if the wind would subside enough to make the summit. Once on the summit ridge of Cloudripper, the wind was still gusting but with occasional, 10 minute intervals of calmness. So I made the decision to go out on the backbone to the summit, using the east side as a windbreak. Amazingly the wind gusts stopped for 15 minutes when I tagged the summit block and the views were some of the best I’ve ever seen from any mountain peak. After the summit, I ditched my pack and other extras to go out on the snow covered ridge to the south pinnacle with a 15m cordlette/anchor set but the wind picked up again and the snow wasn’t helping (should have brought a 40m dry rope with the wind speed). That was the “turn around” and start back to the summit and then back to Vagabond in the strong winds. After tagging the Vagabond summit and signing the register hidden in a hueco, I headed back to the Green Lake Trail, taking a slightly different route down and exercising the pipeline walk option for the last 20 minutes of the hike. As promised, this hike was a really good workout with a lot of off trail scrambling. Glad I traversed the Cloudripper summit ridge/block as I almost turned back a few times. Highly recommend this hike for the view from Cloudripper and the fun rock routes that get you there! Logged 13.7 miles/4574 vertical ft. with Gaia
★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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