Gaylor Peak - when nature was stronger than my plans

continued...

I didn't sleep much in my tent that night. Not because I wasn't tired, just because the wind was shaking my tent all night long. A few times I was afraid that it might not hold up against it. At around 5 AM I decided it didn't make sense any more to keep laying awake in my sleeping bag but get up and do something. My original plan for the day was to climb North Peak from Saddlebag Lake via it's NW ridge, but I already kind of knew that it might be a bad idea to climb up an exposed ridge if the wind already blows my hair to a horizontal position down here in a relatively protected valley. Since I was up early I had plenty of time to drink my coffee, pack up my tent and go to Mono Lake and enjoy an impressive sunrise. After the morning show I drove up to Saddlebag Lake to get a feeling of the wind up here as well and decide whether to give North Peak a try or let it be. My decision wasn't hard to fall and didn't take long, because as expected the wind up here wasn't only even stronger, but in addition also ice cold. No way I'm going to pull this NW ridge off today under these conditions.

Instead I tried to catch some fish at the beautiful lake. Even though there were plenty of huge fish swimming by right under my nose, they didn't let themselves fool by my lure and just "grinned at me" instead ;-) After a little more then an hour of freezing cold wind and no luck in catching any fish, I decided to go to a place a little more comfortable. Near Lake Tioga I found a spot in the sun which was protected from the wind and - oh surprise - I fell asleep for more than an hour...

After waking up I felt like I should do a little bit of physical activity and at least climb some sort of a mountain. Remembering the peak I saw on the previous day from Dana Meadows. I decided to actually climb up there so I didn't have to return home without anything "in my bag" for the day, without knowing the name (I would have guessed Tioga Peak) or any route up there. I parked my car at Tioga Pass like on the previous day and found the name of the peak on a map there: Gaylor Peak. I also saw that an official path went close-by it's top. I walked up to Gaylor Lake Pass along the marked trail and from there followed the left side of the south ridge (T3, some path traces) to it's top. Boy was I glad that I didn't try anything exposed or difficult on this day, because the wind almost knocked me off my feet several times and I was lucky to never fall on the ground. As you can imagine I didn't stay up there all too long because it was just too uncomfortable, but walked down the way I came up shortly after.

On my way home I made several stops in different places within Yosemite NP and enjoyed another interesting encounter with a bear very close to the road.