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| Hiking | 8.30 Miles |
4,600 AEG |
| | Hiking | 8.30 Miles | 14 Hrs 4 Mns | | 0.59 mph |
| 4,600 ft AEG | | 20 LBS Pack | | |
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| no partners | | First note is that we paid for contributor access to get the route from this website, and staying on the tracks kept us off the sketchy/exposed areas and was probably the only reason we made it through. I highly recommend becoming a contributor to download the official route for offline use. You’ll need the Route Scout app, but that’s free.
We were a group of two and took the 4-3-2-1 route. We left the Lone Pine trailhead at 4:10 am. Get up to Amethyst with what you are comfortable doing, we’ll leave it at that. We made the summit at 7:07 am. Bring gloves because we ended up pushing through brush for long portions and kept them on nearly the entire time we were doing the Motherlode.
Coming off Amethyst we went to the east of the saddle to approach Sister. We got off the tracks a little and while trying to climb up we hit a slab that seemed too exposed to us. We looked back at the tracks and saw that everyone was clearly skirting this slab based on the big ‘U’ shape going around it. We backtracked, got back on the tracks, and found a really easy chute with basically no exospore and we were up Sister surprisingly fast. We had been worried about getting up Sister based on what we saw in videos, but it really wasn't bad at all.
Made it to the summit of Sister at 9:42 am. On the top of Sister, we saw people going up Amethyst on the legal route. They were on a spine with drops on both sides and were clearly good climbers moving like mountain goats. We also saw people at Brown’s and only Brother didn’t have anyone on it. Another interesting thing that happened is that we heard a helicopter and spotted it below us, heading to the mine.
Down Sister was the start of where it got stressful and stayed that way until we got to the saddle between Brother and Brown’s. We initially tried to stay on top of the ridgeline like the suggested route told us, but the exposure on both sides got to us. We decided to take an alternate route (still on the official route), backtracked, and went down the west side. We were able to follow these tracks north until we found a chute going up to the saddle between Sister and Brother. This saved us exposure and got us back to where all the tracks converge before starting properly on Brother.
Like everyone else says, absolutely stick to the eastern side of Brother. You basically stay on the same elevation as the saddle and just move north. This is the first time you can actually see a path every now and then, so stick to this. Looking at the official route, the first approach to the peak of Brother is the scramble if you want to climb. If you keep moving north before heading up, like we did, you can go straight up with less exposure (on the official route as well). Moving along the side of the ridge for so long was very annoying, and there was a lot of crawling through bushes. The bushes are annoying to break through, but also if you slip they catch you, so a love/hate relationship. Our push up Brother was really strenuous. We basically targeted where bushes were because it means there was enough flat ground for them to grow, and again the bush can catch you.
We finally made the peak of Brother at 2:07 pm, almost 5 hours since we were on the last peak. We took so long that my wife messaged my inReach to make sure we were still okay. While we were resting the group behind us caught up. They were a group of six and had taken the scramble up Brother. This group was much more experienced than us as climbers, while I consider myself a hiker first. Another guy showed up that was coming from Brown’s so we now had a group of nine that was all heading back together to the last peak (Brown’s).
We let everyone else lead since they were all better climbers than us, and this is where the only actual climbs of the route are. Down Brother had the most exposure of anywhere else on the Motherlode. All of it except for one section is still scrambling. The only climbing portion was very short with good handholds but had enough of a drop behind you to make you nervous about it. Having seen eight others do it ahead of me gave me a lot more confidence than if it had only been the two of us. We were down Brother quickly and started to go up Brown’s.
We took the middle chute up Brown’s and were up so fast I thought it must have been a false summit, but we finally bagged the final peak at 4:02 pm. The route down Brown’s is enough to be annoying at the end of the day, but we finally made it back to the trail and I was happy to finally be walking upright again.
Made it back to the trailhead at 6:14 pm, over 14 hours since we left that morning. This was the most stressful thing I have ever done for “fun” and I’m glad I did it, but I’m never doing the Motherlode again. |
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