t**********p
发帖数: 2672 | 1 This trip report is written by the guy got lost while going solo to Triplet
Rocks last week. From my own experience on 10/16, getting lost on that
ridge is pretty much impossible, but this guys didn't pay attention where he
went and where he is going.
If you missed the news, it was featured in ABC7 news.
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/inland_empire&id=7759260
Here's the full trip report:
http://socalhikes.com/2010/11/4-days-on-triplet-ridge-a-trip-report/
The summit register now has 3 signatures (shoot!), who wants to be the fourth? :)
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4 Days on Triplet Ridge – A Trip Report
The hiker who was on Triplet Ridge for 4 days graciously contacted me and
and wrote up a nice account of what happened.
Ze,
when did you start? camp out on Twin peaks?
Your 4:30 am start had impeccable logic on its side, but my night-owl hours
didn’t give me much time for sleep on that schedule; so I started later
than I wanted to, getting to the trailhead at around 7 on Friday morning.
East Twin makes a good warm-up, and then you get a great view of that
masochists dream: a twisted mass of rock and trees and manzanitas that is
the ridge to Triplet Rocks. But no, I didn’t start on Twin, since I wanted
to do the full hike as a dayhike.
how hard was it to travel down the ridge? see some parts of a faint “use
trail”? Where did you make it down to? I’m curious if you made it to the
20′ downclimb, or 6834′ or past that even.
I did find an occasional “path,” but I couldn’t tell if it was human or
animal, being very faint. It was always a welcome sight for me though; a
little touch of civilization (perhaps) in this lonely area. Definitely a
workout, this one, with the route-finding very devious at times! At one
point I was on a steep slope embedded with stones, carefully working my way
across, when a big 50-pound stone came loose and crashed…crashed…crashed…
down the slopes. It seemed to keep falling forever, pulling down scores of
stones and boulders with it. I suddenly felt very alone out there. These
abundant steep slopes and loose rock are what make this route potentially
dangerous. All in all, though, I seemed to be grinding things out at a good
pace…until I hit that gully!
Brief aside: For navigation I had a compass, a map of the Triplet Rock area
(from Bruman’s 106 Tops), the Tom Harrison San Gabriel map, and Erik
Siering’s trip report. I had meant to copy your report but forgot to do
that in rushing out on Thursday night; the gully pic would have been very
helpful. Unfortunately, at some point — most likely crawling through the
manzanita — I lost the Bruman map and Siering report. (Reports listed my
having become lost after losing my map, but I had the two maps.)
It’s at the gully that your pics would have particularly come in handy, and
I ended up wasting time checking for the best way down. I settled on a
large gully and had to crawl through an ugly batch of manzanita to get to it
, then down the seemingly endless gully itself.
It never was easy, and after getting to areas that looked easier to navigate
from above, it turned out they were still laced with plenty of dead ends
and backtracking; but I finally got to a rock wall, with some class 3 moves,
onto a little plateau, and…could it be? Was that Triplet Rocks right there
? Or would some other obstacle be thrown down? But no, I made it! Sweet! It
was 1:30 pm. (The Triplet Rocks “summit” area is a very cool place, indeed
.)
Since your register entry, seven more people have done it — kidding! Of
course, there’s only three entries in the register now. I wonder what
happened to the first register, and how many names would be in that one? I
used a third page to sign in — a one page-per-summit group trend, which
doesn’t seem an inefficient use of space for this particular summit’s
register! Ze, you must have a strong grip, because I had a little trouble
opening that damn register can.
Was there snow on the ridge, or down on the north east side? Stopped because
too icy, or ran out of water, or couldn’t see, or all?
The weather was great on Friday. So no snow issues or such…on that day.
In heading back to Twin, I realized that I should have made better mental
notes of where I had come from — my main navigational mistake on this hike.
The ridge down to Triplet looked so obvious that I forgot the hiker’s
cardinal rule of looking back occasionally. Perhaps Triplet Rocks hypnotized
me into keeping my greedy gaze on her? At any rate, I’m sure I would have
made it back to the trailhead that day, as my energy was going strong. I
should have used this trip as an excuse to pick up a GPS, since marking
waypoints would have made the return much easier, especially with what
happened on the second day.
But no: I ended up wasting a lot of time scrambling up what turned out to be
the wrong gully — which had a scary 20-foot steep wall of class 3 dirt
with embedded rocks near the top: a tedious and nerve-wracking affair of
testing holds, then standing up, then testing, then standing. (Is loose
class 3 actually class 4?) But I could see that I was near the top…and
pulled over and found myself amid a mass of fifth-class steep granite. This
ain’t right! I wasted time making a long traverse along the walls to the
top of the ridge and “trail.” I continued on, but my late start and time-
wasting had brought the hour late; so it looked like I was going to need to
spend the night on the mountain, roughly half-way back. So much for day-
hiking it, but it was still a great adventure. |
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