Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Thor Peak, 24 March

Four of climbed one of the couloirs on the east face of Thor Peak, a route I have lusted after for years. We descended the Secret Route and came out the North Fork.

Pictures at 2008-03-24 Thor Peak .

Point of interest: The Portal road is plowed to past the family campground.

Another point: The summit register, there as late as October of last year, is gone. Again.

Bob... great pictures and great captions. This climb, numbers around 65? By the way, how many ways (routes) are there up Thor, and how many of those routes have you climb? Any interesting ones left?

I liked the secret way down.

paul

On one of my trips up to Thor Peak (early summer 2003), we were headed to the southeast chute route. My son Matthew thought it would be fun to go up the right eastern chute...the one you went up with the large chockstone. We sent one person up the right side over the rock and tried to lift up our daypacks with a short 30 foot rope. One of the daypacks came unleashed and rolled back down the mountain...waiting to be retrieved. Climbing over the rock was not easy. It seems it involved sending the first climber up to help the others...I remember it taking a long time to get past that large rock.....at the time it didn't seem like a good trade. It slowed us way down. Years latter we were still talking about climbing over that big rock.

I think it would be cool to go up either eastern chute, filled with snow.

Thanks for sharing.

Interesting ... I too was lured by those 2 chutes. Looks more fun with snow. Last November I started up the left chute, then climbed some of the rocky ridge that separates the two chutes, and finished off in the right chute:

http://www.rickkent.net/ViewerPlus/viewphoto.aspx?ID=90679

compared to

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rockwellb/2362248808/in/set-72157604245713728/

Didn't realize there was a chockstone issue because I must have dropped in just above it. The ridge that separates the two chutes had some fun scrambling but got a bit too challenging toward the top for my liking. Descended in the dark.

I think like you I find Thor attractive because it is easily accessible and has such a variety of routes.

The last register must have disappeared just after October because I don't recall seeing one at the end of November.

-Rick

Very nice pictures!

I hiked to Thor from a campsite just south of iceberg lake, up and across pinnacle ridge on Sat. (3/23) as the final day of a few in the area.

There is a reason people don't usually climb the eastern chutes. They are STEEP, real leg burners that is for sure. My first trip to Thor Peak I came down one of the eastern chutes. It must have been the same one because there was a big giant boulder toward the bottom which we had to climb down over.

I love that picture looking 1500 feet back down the chute.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rockwellb/2361419655/in/set-72157604245713728/

It shows how long the chute really is.

GoneHiking:

A lot us used to descend the next couloir north. It has a big boulder at the bottom that is negotiated by sliding down its right side. Picture of it from the main trail, looking up (the big boulder is below and to the right of center):

Nowadays, my friends and I prefer the southeast couloir, the main advantage being that you hit the main trail a few hundred feet higher.

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Paul:

Your number guess is close. Here are the routes I have done, with the dark green one being the latest. Some of them have names, official and unofficial, starting with the one initiating near UBSL and going clockwise:

Dark red, Smiley Face

Dirty gray, Secret Route

Blue, usual east couloir descent route

Red-orange, southeast couloir (two different starts)

Dark purple, Stemwinder

Salmon, Satan's Delight

Certainly there are more possibilities. By way of Wotans Throne, for example, and the way labgloves did it (saw your tracks clearly on Monday).

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Rick:

You got it!