After my longer outing the previous day, Shannon very reasonably asked to use the car this morning. I had basically been laughed at by the car rental agencies in Mammoth and Bishop when I asked about getting a rental car, so we were limited to sharing our car for this week. I joined her for an easy run on the trail out of the Rock Creek trailhead before cleaning up back at the condo. With fewer remaining hours and not as much energy I selected a peak that could be climbed with a shorter drive and hike: Mount Warren in the south part of the Hoover Wilderness just east of Tioga Pass. I planned to climb from the Warren Fork as described on SummitPost and elsewhere.

Mount Warren is the site of one of Bob Burd’s more… interesting trip reports. I hoped not to repeat his adventure.

After returning from our run in the Little Lakes Valley, I cleaned up, packed up, and headed north, stopping at the Whoa Nellie Deli for breakfast before heading up to the Warren Fork trailhead.

I parked on the side of the road, crossed the highway, and headed off on a trail through the woods and past some walk-in campsites. The trail mostly parallels the Warren Fork of Lee Vining Creek. I watched my GPS to identify the correct creek at which to leave the trail and climb up towards Mount Warren. There were some very nice meadows along the creek at around 10,000’. Around 10,400’ the creek narrowed into a gully and I was left climbing scree and small talus. It wasn’t particularly difficult.

Looking west towards Mount Conness from the creek drainage.

Mount Warren ahead. I continued climbing over the scree and small talus in the north-south section of the drainage just south of Mount Warren before heading directly up the south slope of the peak.

Mount Dana, Mount Lyell, and Mount Maclure to the south.

After a couple of hours of effort I was on the summit. There was a nice view of the southern portion of the Hoover Wilderness.

Mono Lake to the east.

Mount Conness and North Peak to the west.

Mount Dana, Mount Lyell, Mount Maclure, and some of the other high peaks of Yosemite to the south west.

The Sierra escarpment to the south. Figuring I had some extra time for a small adventure, I checked Peakbagger on the summit to see if any of the nearby summits were on the site and indeed several of them were. I plotted a route that would head southwest to “Warren Fin,” then south over “Talus Palace” to Lee Vining Peak, finishing atop “Canyon Peak” before descending the nearer branch of the Warren Fork back to my car. So I traversed west off the summit of Mount Warren to “Warren Fin.”

Mount Warren from “Warren Fin.” Descending east off of “Warren Fin” was steep, but not difficult.

The view south from “Talus Palace.” Again, it wasn’t difficult to gain this minor summit. I headed south from here over easy slopes and grass to Lee Vining Peak and climbed to the summit from the north.

Mono Lake from Lee Vining Peak.

Mount Warren from Lee Vining Peak. There was a hard-to-find summit register atop Lee Vining Peak in a glass food jar. I signed it before heading southwest for “Canyon Peak.”

Mount Warren and “Talus Palace” from somewhere west of Lee Vining Peak.

Near the saddle between Lee Vining Peak and “Canyon Peak,” I got a flurry of text messages. There had been a reasonably large (magnitude 6.0) earthquake just north of where I was. Shannon felt it in Mammoth and my parents felt it in Fresno. While I was closer to the epicenter than both of them, I hadn’t noticed a thing.

I noticed a particularly dark looking thing lodged in sand somewhere near “Canyon Peak.” Thinking it was a piece of plastic, I picked it up to pack it out only to discover that it was an arrowhead. Very cool! I put it back, trying to make sure it was slightly more discoverable for the next party that happened upon it.

The view of Mount Dana from “Canyon Peak.” From here, I followed the path of least resistance down towards the creekbed that heads down into the Warren Fork. It wasn’t bad at first, just some clusters of Whitebark Pines here and there. But before long the forest became thicker and it required some zigging and zagging to find a way. Near 9,800’, where the creek makes a slight diversion around a steep rockband, there was thick brush and the creekbed got quite steep, so I traversed a bit south and searched for a way through the brush. The last 500’ or so down to the trail were a mix of following game trails and bushwhacking through the shrubs. Eventually I ended up back at the road, but found myself on top of a road cut that I couldn’t easily get down. So I had to cut back right for a hundred or so feet to rejoin the trail back to my car. This whole descent was probably the most difficult part of the entire day, all of the rest of it was quite easy.

I headed back south to get some dinner and plan up another hike for the next day.