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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