West Ridge of Mount Conness

With a dwindling number of days before having to work a 22 day backpacking course in the Southern Sierra, and a dark and ominous forecast of mega thunderclouds and deadly lightening bolts threatening to unleash certain doom, Jonathan Cooper and I decided that the best course of action would be to climb to one of the highest points in Northern Yosemite, Mount Conness. Coop is a young gun who I have had the pleasure of working with recently, and who was coming directly off of an all-you-cn-eat cruise in the Caribbean, where he was not exactly getting into mountain-shape...
The West Ridge is super dooper classic. You cannot help but have a smile on your face the entire time as you hand traverse the wild granite wave which sweeps over the massive Southwest Face of Conness.
We climbed it in a mellow day from the trailhead at Lembert Dome and decended down to Saddlebag Lake and hitchhiked back into the park to get my truck.
The day was capped off by Coop's mom coming to town and treating us to a feast of fish tacos at the Mobil Station in Lee Vining.


The Youth, Coop.





Kinda cool position...