Forty year journey ends on Tresidder Peak
(A Tresidder climbs Tresidder)

7 Sep 2002 - by Rob Tresidder

I decided Lower Cathedral lake was just a tad cold for a swim. I hiked/scrambled up the magnificent slabs between the lake and Tresidder Peak. This brought me to a shoulder which I traversed towards the rocky ridge like summit which from here seems like a twin to the Columbia Finger. It wasn't clear to me which was higher the N or S summit, so I climbed both but failed to make the traverse between them. I thought the grade was about British V.Diff or Severe. A webpage I had checked out earlier suggested it was 5.6: it certainly was not as hard as that. I was dismayed later to find it rated only Class 4 in "High Peaks of the Sierra". I then hiked the long broad ridge to Columbia Finger and found that much easier, though also rated Class 4. Here I found Braden Mayfield's summit book which included an account of the epic traverse of all ten Echo Peaks.

This trip was something of an odyssey for me. The idea had started with a fuzzy B&W photograph of Tresidder Peak taken by my then girlfriend (now my wife) from Glacier Point in 1966. Was mine the first Tresidder ascent of Tresidder Peak? I don't think it would have been climbed by Donald Tresidder of Stanford University after whom it was named.


To file a trip report, please fill in the Report Entry form or contact the webmaster.