Trailhead: Onion Valley
Elevation: 11744 ft
Route: North Ridge
Difficulty: Class 4
Independence Peak is a great half-day peak out of the Onion Valley with a short approach and just enough exposure to keep things interesting. Although it is reported to have class 5 sections we found only scrambling up to class 4 on high quality granite which is good because we left the climbing gear at home and only brought day packs. In July the summit ridge is covered in paintbrush and there are beautiful old trees residing near Robinson Lake.
GG standing below the rocky summit of Independence Peak
Somehow during intern orientation I found myself with a 3-day weekend, a quirk I suppose of shift scheduling. I suppose I could have done something bigger with the time off, but my system has been a bit thrown off by the odd times of emergency room shifts and I spent a good deal of the weekend napping and lounging around in Bishop. Independence Peak is located both on my way back to Fresno (via the Southern Route) and is short enough for a half-day climb so we drove down to the Onion Valley and started walking.
To get to the route, we walked through the Onion Valley campground to pick up the Robinson Lake trail. After about 0.3 miles a small climbers trail branches off left (see gpx track) and begins climbing towards the north ridge. We picked our way upwards, sometimes following cairns and sometimes just following our noses, until we came to the clear start of the rocky north ridge.
High quality third class on the upper summit ridge with the Onion Valley Road in the background
I had some small amount of trepidation about this route since the truly unmatched Bob Burd wrote a trip report where he seems spooked about the difficulty of the rock climbing. Bob Burd is a bold hiker and I am a nervous rock climber and I tend to think we therefore have about the same risk threshold for walking about unroped. I was also a bit nervous because I don't particularly like the grade of class 4 since it seems to me that about half the time it is just class 3 and then the other half of the time it's 5.6 depending on who wrote the guidebook. However we were able to keep the route mellow by dropping off the ridge to the west whenever the rock got too steep or the quality deteriorated. The last part of the climb forces you onto the ridge proper, but it is enjoyable high quality class 3 with maybe some mild class 4 (whatever that means) near the summit.
We reached the summit just as a few drops of rain began to fall and thunderheads rolled in from the south. Cairns led to the south along the east side of the ridge before crossing back over to the west and the scree-ski descent. I was surprised by this as most trip reports suggest going down something called the "west rib" but our descent route took us due south before turning west. Looks like there are a lot of ways to do this.
Paintbrush along the descent route
The descent led us onto the east slope of a large valley containing Robinson Lake. I've noticed ever since I climbed Lone Pine Peak with GG that these shady valleys in the southern sierra seem to hold huge old healthy trees including my favorite tree, the Foxtail Pine, a relative of the white mountain bristlecones. I could see foxtails in this valley although they were far enough away from the descent route that I didn't get any good pictures. But we did see some handsome red-barked species that I think are red fir. I've been using this chart below with tree elevations to try and get rough identifications of things I see but it's more an art than a science (well I mean it's probably a science but I'm not a tree scientist).
From Norman Herr's excellent website
Beautiful big trees near Robinson Lake
The return to the parking lot is an easy jaunt down the Robinson Lake trail again. We arrived just as the storm centered itself over Kearsage Pass and began menacing all the backpackers with lightning and wind. I wanted to stick around to watch the drama but I had to make it back to Fresno and so I drove to the Frosty Chalet in Lone Pine to get a rootbeer freeze and some french fries.
Click on map to download GPX route
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