Weldon Heald in the February, 1957 SUMMIT, and Cecil Ouellette in the June issue, had quite vividly described Wheeler Peak, but I wasn't quite prepared for it. Very few mountains in the United States or Canada tower over you so overwhelmingly as does Nevada's second highest summit as you approach its main face via the north face.
But let us begin further back. After driving all night from Los Angeles, we got to Baker, Nevada in the early morning. The Forest Service ranger station there had been closed, but luckily we were able to get some information on the approach to the northeast face from Ralph Kaufman who lives in Baker. We then drove to the public campground on Lehman Creek, three miles above Lehman Caves National Monument. From there, a five-mile trail goes to Stella Lake, but we lost it as the snow level was down to about 8,000 feet. It was soft, slushy snow, the kind that reminds you of wading upstream with your boots on. One and one-half miles from Stella Lake, we turned southwest and literally pushed our way uphill through knee to waist-deep snow. Once we had to dig Harvey out. Our base camp was made finally just below timberline at 10,000 feet.
A portion of the. face was visible to us. It became more and more apparent that this was going to be a real climb. We began planning for a night on the cliff. In our climbing packs we stuffed a few more warm clothes than usual, a large lightweight tarp, a two-man bivouac sack, and some extra food, consisting of a rich date-nut cake, bologna, cheese, and the inevitable chocolate, nuts and raisins. I had bivouacked before and knew that spending a night out
Fortunately for us, it froze that night, so at 4 o'clock a.m., when we left our base camp, we were able to walk up a long snow gully which took us directly to the great Wheeler cirque and onto the Matthes Glacier. From there the Northeast face began to look even more formidable.
A series of unconnected chimneys divides the face, with the right-hand side appearing to be somewhat less severe in angle. By this time we were willing to settle for a route that would go-not one which would add to the climbing difficulties. A short snow tongue led to the first of the chimneys. Here we started the real climbing by
It is an unfortunate fact in a climber's life, that most of the high mountains seem always to have main faces made up of cliffs with the rock overlapping downhill. Wheeler Peak is no exception.
In addition, piton cracks in the quartzite were hard to find. Cracks just didn't exist, or if they did they were mostly too shallow. Another problem on a real tremendous mountain face, is to correctly estimate the climbing
