WHEELER PEAK (con't) After much discussion, we decided to do the peak and make a loop-trip out of it. We would climb the peak via the Lehman Creek trail and return via the road to the Stella Lake trail. We had a bushwacking 2800' snowshoe to our basecamp, as we watched the beginnings of a blizzard developing over Wheeler. We awakened Sunday at 7:30 and to a 25 mph wind, 6 inches of new snow, and in the midst of a blizzard decided to go for the peak. We were greeted at the 11,000 foot saddle by a 40 mph continuous wind blowing a frozen fog that felt, very much like sandpaper whenever it hit your face. It's normally a class 1 walk-up to the summit along the ridge from the saddle, but with visibility now reduced to as little as 40' and the driving wind, it seemed like a 5.8 climb. After what seemed like days, we finally reached the summit, but due to the heavy snow and cold, we were unable to locate the register. Paul had a thermometer and wind-gage along and recorded a temperature of 4º with a wind velocity of 40 mph. On consulting a wind chill-factor chart, I was surprised to find that standing on the summit, we had experienced -50° below zero cold. We spent just 5 minutes on the summit, as the weather appeared to be deteriorating rapidly. On the way down to the saddle, however, the storm broke and we witnessed one of the most beautiful interminglings of sun and clouds I have ever seen. Camp was reached just at sunset with the next day being a beautiful, but rather uneventful return to the car and home. WHIPPLE MADE EASY       or the return of DPS Dropout      John Vitz Rejoice DPSers--a new route from the firm that gave you the backside routes to Orocopia and Jacumba (thereby reducing both to trivialities), the interesting and obscure (but most direct) Spectre crack route as well as others. This amazing discovery cuts miles and hours off the ascent of this rarely visited desert crud heap. The old route of cross country, canyon, and ridge hiking has been replaced by a third class drive and a first class canyon walk. Using the same formula of map reading which led us to the aforementioned successes and numerous failures (such as the 8 mile each way hike across desert pavement to get Palen from the west or our northern Inyo exploratory to get Waucoba) we managed to stumble upon the Whipple Mine route. Since Whipple is an ugly mountain in general, any aid to its conquering should come as a great relief to many of you. Not counting, of course, the likes of Bill Banks whose idea of fun is to climb White Mtn. from Tonopah or Kingston from Interstate 15. Bill would rather do Whipple from Blythe than from our little mine. But for the peak baggers and not the masochists, we offer this little route description. Grab your topo and AAA San Berdoo County map and open to the proper places, even you, Paul. (Now that he has taken a geology course Mr. Lipsohn can almost read a topo). 1.6 miles east of the road to Big River and 2.2 miles west of Earp, a graded road leads 1.5, 2.7, and 14.8 miles to a mine in the southern Whipples. It seems that the AAA has not driven the last 3.5 miles of this road recently. About a mile after crossing the Aqueduct, the road leads into a wash and from here to the end it is definitely a VW type road. No serious difficulties except for clearance problems. The road ends at the mine, which was quite an impressive operation, and there is ample flat ground for camping. This mine is shown on the topo as the inactive mine on the bottom edge, almost due south of the high point. The obvious route is to cross the low ridge on which the mine sits and drop into the next wash to the west and follow it to the summit ridge. There are no difficulties. Have a nice time and climb.

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