Bear Creek Spire, Pipsqueek, Mt Dade

Andre on Bear Creek Spire

 There is a recursive recipe for Sierra happiness: The only thing better than climbing Sierra peak in a day is climbing two peaks in a day. Apply recursion.
Bear Creek Spire (BCS), Pipsqueek , and Mt Dade are the three centrally located peaks in the beautiful Rock Creek Canyon, Sierra Nevada. This popular summer spot, due to access road up to 10,000 ft, is even more awesome in winter. In the spring of 2010 Andre and I did a ski traverse linking the three peaks. 




 Bear Creek Spire is climbers' favorite with clean granite ridges, and a pointy summit pyramid. Mt Dade is a ski-mountaineering classic featuring the Hourglass couloir. And Pipsqueek provides the link between BCS and Dade.
The decision for this linkup was spontaneous. Andre, Jeff, and a friend had left their car earlier. I caught up with the group at the base of Hourglass couloir. Andre casually suggested that since we have the time, we should first bag BCS, traverse around the back side of Pipsqueak, and summit Mt Dade. Jeff and friend decided to go straight up Hourglass. 

Three peaks viewed from the east

 It was a long day, and a lot more technical than the ski-mountaineering label would entail. Past Cox Col, we approached Bear Creek Spire from the west. We stashed the skis below the rocks, and scrambled up to within 100ft of the summit. To our dismay the easiest route up was covered in ice. We each gave it a try. It was too dicey to climb in ski boots, armed with one Whipped and Alu crampons. 

The offwidth

 I suggested that we move on. Andre wasn't ready to give up; he worked hard digging steps, and cleaning the crack. It was pretty sketchy, and slow. I traversed over to the south ridge and spotted a clean offwidth crack, that seemed to be in the low fifth grade. Its not typical to climb harder than 3-4th class rock with backcountry ski boots, but I figured our bets were better on the rock.

Climbing the wide crack went well. We each had a claustrophobic moment, where a boot got stuck inside, but we made it. Andre is a natural offwdth climber. To gain the summit, there was an exposed traverse and a mantle move. Since we didn't have a rope, to get back we had to reverse all climbing.

Next awaited another obstacle: The Southwest side of Pipsqueek was not a snowy slope as we hoped but a steep and blocky granite face. We skied a short section to the ridge, attached skis on the packs, and proceeded with a cool ridge traverse. At times, route-finding was tricky, and some climbing moves were required. We made it to the summit of Pipsqueek. Views were beautiful, and the register was old and authentic. It felt special to be up on top of rarely visited peak; we smiled and relaxed on the California spring sun. 

Soon the weight of the situation sunk in: we were still far from Mt Dade on a ridge with uncertain difficulty. And I, haven't had planned for a such long day, was running out of water. Somehow, right before the ridge became precariously thin and broken, we down-climbed on the north side, to the edge of the cirque between Pipsqueek and Dade. We skied from there, traversing to the base of a large snow field. I was completely out of water, and quite dehydrated.  Andre shared his last sips of water, which helped me gain the remaining1000ft to the summit of Mt Dade. Skiing Hourglass was great. We quickly got down to the lakes, and skated back to the car, parked at the pack station, with the last daylight.       

Pictures: http://pbpl.physics.ucla.edu/~hristo/Mountain/Bear-Dade/index.html