Got back last night from climbing Mt Russell, what an awesome mountain! The weather was perfect and there was practically no one on the entire route, so got to have some quality time with the mountain by myself. I spent the night at the portal campsite and overslept my alarm, no thanks to people waking up and banging around at 1:30 am (why wake up that early, is there any point?). I was on the trail by 5:20, which at least meant I didn't need a headlamp. I passed the normal approach off Clyde Meadow and headed up to Upper Boy Scout Lake to try my hand at the Rockwell Variation Approach.
Most of the info I read about this approach route was notional, but it turns out that's all that's really needed. You walk along the lake on the right and just follow the terrain up until you get to the chute leading up to Mt Russell (which you can't see from the lake). It's roughly 2000 feet elevation gain and took me about 2 hours. What worked for me on the approach was to keep as high as possible while hugging the right side of the route. Any time I found solid rock/boulders going up, I would head straight up and then traverse the softer stuff working left. This greatly limitied the amount of crap I had to trudge up. Mt Russell soon comes into view and the approach makes its way straight towards it. As you get nearer, there are numerous chutes on the right that look good, but don't try any of them. Reading online, folks get into trouble (class 5) if you take the wrong chute. The correct chute and way up to Mt Russell is easy to find, it's almost directly below the face of Mt Russell and you can't really go any farther forward. Again, keeping to the right of the chute leaves you with boulders and standard Class 3 scrambling up slabs. The chute spits you out right on the start of Mt Russell's East Ridge and you're ready to start up (after a break, that's a tough approach!).
Once you're on the ridge proper, there's some exciting exposure almost right off the bat. With all the route finding, focus on holds, and the fact that the granite is super solid, I found the exposure was more awe-inpiring and fun than worrisome. Like most descriptions point out, the East Ridge is chose your own adventure style with route finding. There's a million different mini-routes you can take depending on how close to the ridge you want to get and how risk averse you are (all roads lead to Rome...except those that don't). The alternative paths are almost entirely on the north (right) side of the ridge. I bounced around between balancing on the ridge, walking just to the right, or downclimbing right to take the easy way around some of the obstacles. Getting up to the lower East Summit is most of the climbing involved, and it's just a short trip to get to the true Western Summit. While a short trip, there is one fun balancing beam manuever and the "crux" of the route, the exposed mantle move up a large boulder. Sometimes being tall (6'4") helps as I didn't actually have to use a mantle move. As a side note, I decided to do a little exploring on the way down and found that if you want to skip the mantle, it is possibly to bypass by downclimbing 30-50 feet on the north side and working your way around it (bypass is still exposed though). I reached the summit at 11:00 and the views were amazing, plus you can see/shout at the people on the top of Mt Whitney. From the log book, it seemed I got lucky as July 5th saw quite a few visitors. The downclimb wasn't bad but does still require focus, especially on a few of the more "dicey" parts. I crossed the pass and decended down the standard approach to Clyde Meadow. While I can't imagine having to go up this way (way too much loose sand and gravel), going down was a blast as you can almost ski down half of it. Seeing both approach routes, my opinion is going up the Rockwell Variation and going down the normal approach route is the way to go. I made it down to The Portal by 3:00 and bought some much-needed cold beverages. Mt Russell is definitely my favorite California 14er climb, an amazing mountain.
Photos can be found at the below link. I didn't do a great job with taking shots as I was mostly concentrating on route finding and enjoying the views.
Russell Photos -Chad
