North Ridge of Mt. Conness

We’ve spent a lot time on the east side of the Sierras this summer and soon I’ll have to get the blog caught up on some of the flights and activities.  Betsy and I had a great time climbing the north ridge of Mt. Conness and I thought my friend Graeme would enjoy it also.  I was already camping at Lee Vining with my plane for another flight (which I’ll share) so Graeme showed up with his car for the ride up to Saddlebag Lake where we got the last campsite.

We got a good “alpine start” at 4:30 am and reached the climb at 7:30, which gave us plenty of time to enjoy the fun ridge climbing and get to the top by lunch time.  It was cold and windy but lot of fun.

I was worried about the wind because I had to fly home that afternoon. You can see from the shot of Mono Lake it was indeed windy.  Luckily the cross wind take-off wasn’t too bad.  Because of the wind I headed south to Mammoth Pass and up to 12,500 feet so I wouldn’t get rocked too badly.  It turned out to be a good plan and the turbulence was manageable.

Dawn

The north ridge of Mt. Conness.

Kicking back. I figured that rock had been there a long time and probably wasn’t going anywhere.

You can see the rope being blown by the wind.

Wind pattern on Mono Lake