After the previous day’s outing up and down University Peak, Shannon and I slept in a bit and got a big breakfast in town this morning. Smoke from several far away wildfires continued to impact the eastern Sierra, so conditions were not the best for a big mountain adventure today. I think Shannon may have had to do a bit of work as well or something, but I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to go huff and puff in the hazy air, so we just hung out in the AirBnB in the morning.

By the time afternoon rolled around, some wind had started to blow the smoke around a little bit and I figured I could find a spot to go get a bit of exercise. Having, unfortunately, gotten fairly good at reading tea-leaf combination of PurpleAir, CalTopo realtime satellite maps, and windy.com wind plots, I picked out the Little Lakes Valley as the best combination of not too smoky, not too far, and not too crowded (probably). After last week’s much-more-fun-than-expected outing up Mount Starr, I selected another lesser peak in the area that I figured I could climb in 3 or 4 hours: Lookout Peak, which rises just south of Ruby Lake off the Mono Pass Trail. So, off I went.

I got to the trailhead, snagged a spot in the main parking lot – no small feat at 2 PM on a Sunday afternoon – and headed off “running” up the trail with just the clothes on my back and my phone. I went up, made the right turn, and left the Mono Pass Trail just below its outlet from Ruby Lake. I made a daring, shoes-on rock-hop crossing of the creek and wandered through the light forest in the direction of the peak.

Before long the climbing turned to talus and got quite steep. I stayed very close to the ridge for an extra challenge, and encountered a 50 foot section of fun class 3 climbing before gaining a long ridge to the summit. I traversed the small-to-medium sized talus to the summit and took in the awesome view of the Little Lakes Valley.

Most of the major peaks of the Little Lakes Valley, from left to right: Bear Creek Spire, Pip-squeak Spire, Mount Dade, Mount Abbot, Treasure Peak (in front), and Mount Mills.

Close up of Mount Abbot and Mount Mills, with Petite Griffon in between. After a not-too-long break which included signing a rather unpopular summit register I headed back down the way I came, class 3 section and daring creek crossing included.

The creek coming out of Ruby Lake, with Ruby Wall behind.

Across the creek it was an easy jog back to the car, less than two hours car-to-car. A very worthy objective given the low commitment!