Thor Peak

8-9 Jun 2002 - by Aaron Schuman

We felt exceedingly Thoracic, so equipped with our precious Whitney Portal permit, we packed up the trail to Outpost Camp, Dave McCracken, Tony Stegman, Rosa Sayed and I. On the trail we had met PCS members Shree Mazumbar, Noelle O'Sullivan, and John Stewart. The cliffs of Thor Peak glared down at us, but we weren't cowed. We calmly lunched and napped beneath those walls, then rose up. We followed the trail to Mirror Lake and went cross-country to the bottom of a cliff band. Rosa returned to camp. We exploited a weakness in the cliffs, and passed over scree, beneath the line of towers, to a gap just west of the peak. We passed under the south side of the summit area, searching for the class 2 route up the steep blocks. Tony waited about 300 feet below the summit as Dave and I scrambled up the wall, over to the north side, and up to the top of Thor Peak. It was now 6:30 p.m., so we hustled down, racing the shadows. We reached the trail at Mirror Lake around 8:30, just as it was getting dark, and returned to camp by headlamp at 9:00. As Sunday morning cleared away the stars, we agreed that the complex route finding and the high quality rock made Thor Peak an underrated pleasure, one that we would recommend to others and even repeat another day.


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