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The Mountains that Defined the Pony Express - Picketts Peak and Hawkins Peak, CA · Off You Pop!

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is Off You Pop, the podcast for hikers and adventurers who want to be epic in just one day.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's a moment in Hope Valley, a very specific moment, where you stop looking at the mountains and start feeling like they're looking back at you.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It happens right where the meadow opens and the air thins, just enough to sharpen your senses.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: You turn your head and there they are.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hawking's Peak to the north and Pickett Peak to the south.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Two volcanic siblings rising from the same ancient fire, sharing the same skyline, the same wind, the same weather, and yet somehow refusing to share anything else.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: From a distance they look like twins, but the moment you start climbing, the illusion breaks.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkings moves under your boots like a living thing, a loose, shifting sea of volcanic gravel that never quite agrees to hold still.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett, on the other hand, stands rigid and geometric, a barricade of stone columns cracked by frost and pried apart by time.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: One mountain behaves like fluid, and the other behaves like architecture.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the trick of this place.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: You think you're hiking one landscape, you're actually hiking two completely different worlds stitched together by a single ridge.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Every step you take today will pull you deeper into that contrast.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Geology splitting into biology, biology splitting into human history, human history splitting into the raw physics of how people move through this valley.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins will tell you one story, and Pickett will tell you another.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere between the two you realize that the mountains aren't just scenery, they're characters, they're arguments, they're opposites.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is Pickett's and Hawkins Peak, and this is Off You Pop.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing you notice once you leave the softness of Hope Valley and start gaining real elevation is how convincingly these two mountains lie to you.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins and Pickett pretend to be twins.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: They rise from the same volcanic lineage, shoulder to shoulder like two siblings who inherited the same jawline, but absolutely none of the same personality.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: From the meadow they look like a matched set.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Two dark volcanic domes, two silhouettes carved from the same ancient fire.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the moment you step onto the trail, the illusion starts to crack.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett doesn't move.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett doesn't negotiate.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett stands there like a verdict.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: A vertical barricade of stone columns rising out of the earth, with a kind of geometric confidence only volcanic daysight can muster.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Even from a distance you can see the straight lines, the unnatural symmetry, the way the summit block catches the light like a blade.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: On Hawkins, however, the ground under your boots loosens, shifts, and slides.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's like walking on the memory of an eruption, a mountain still trying to remember what shape it's supposed to hold.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Every step sinks a little deeper than you expect.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Every rock seems to be thinking about rolling downhill.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins doesn't feel like a solid object.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like a process, a slow motion landslide pretending to be a peak.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Two mountains, same skyline, completely different intentions.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: As you climb higher, the contrast sharpens.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins feels like it's exhaling beneath you, loose, granular, and unstable.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett feels like it's holding its breath, rigid, angular, and waiting.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: You start to understand that these peaks weren't shaped by the same forces, even though they were born from the same fire.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins erupted outward, spilling debris across the ridge.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett froze inwards, locking itself into a single, impenetrable mass.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're not climbing a pair of mountains, you're climbing a disagreement, a geological argument, a split personality written into stone.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins invites you in, and Pickett dares you to try.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: The trail doesn't tell you this, the guidebooks don't tell you this, but your legs do, your ankles do, your balance does.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins is a conversation, Pickett is a confrontation, and somewhere between the two, you start to realize that this entire day is going to be defined by contrast, same mountain range, different worlds.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: The higher you climb, the more the mountains stop pretending.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins and Pickett may share a skyline, but the ground beneath your boots makes it clear they were born into two completely different fates.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And to understand that split, you have to go back to the moment the Earth tore itself open.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Ten to fifteen million years ago, this wasn't Hope Valley.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was a volcanic frontier, a chain of molten arcs stretching across what would one day become the Sierra Nevada.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: The round top volcanic complex was the engine of the whole thing, a massive boiling chamber of magma pushing upwards through the crust and cracking the earth like a fort line in slow motion.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins Peak came into the world violently.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a calm uplift or a slow calling, it was a flank vent, a side eruption, a pressure valve.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: When Hawkins blew, it erupted in thick, pasty waves of silica-rich magma that called too fast to become granite.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, it froze into brittle flows of andesite and rhyolite, unstable from the moment they solidified.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins was never a single coherent mountain.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was a pile, a hardened memory of an eruption that never quite settled into a shape.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett Peak, just to the south, had a completely different berth.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett didn't erupt.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Picket clogged.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was the volcanic throat, a dense column of daysite magma that pushed upward but never broke through the surface.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the detail that defines everything about the mountain.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: When magma cools slowly inside a volcanic vent, it shrinks.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not metaphorically, not symbolically, physically.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: As the daysite inside Pickett's throat dropped in temperature, it began to contract.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: That contraction created immense internal stress, geometric tension inside the rock that needed release.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the mountain released it in the most dramatic way possible.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: It cracked, not randomly, not chaotically, it cracked along perfect mathematical vectors, splitting into vertical columns, columnar joints, like the ribs of some ancient stone creature.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is the moment Pickett Peak became Pickett Peak.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is the moment the mountain froze in place.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Those columns are not decoration.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're not curiosity, they're the architecture of the mountain's berth.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: The reason Pickett stands rigid while Hawkins slumps and slides.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: They are the reason the summit block looks like a fortress.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: They are the reason the ridge becomes a trap.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: They are the reason the mountain feels like geometry instead of terrain.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett Peak is not just a mountain, it's a volcanic throw locked into stone.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the story doesn't end with calling.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: For millions of years water seeped into the microscopic cracks between those columns.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Winter storms froze that water.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Ice expanded with thousands of pounds of pressure.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: The columns were pried apart one season at a time until the entire summit block became a shattered jigsaw puzzle of vertical stone.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins was born loose, Pickett was born locked.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins erupted outward, and Pickett froze inward.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Same volcanic arc, two completely different destinies.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: The ridge gives you the geology, but the biology or the absence of it gives you the verdict.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because once you leave the broken spine of Pickett's column and climb towards the true summits, the living world starts to reveal exactly how these mountains behave and who they allow to stay.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: On Hawking's Peak, life didn't just survive, it improvised, it negotiated, it adapted to instability the way a dancer adapts to a shifting stage.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: The loose volcanic gravel that makes Hawking such a maddening climb is the same gravel that gives its trees a fighting chance.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Moisture drains fast enough through the surface, but it doesn't disappear.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: It sinks deep into the debris, pauling in hidden pockets behind the scree, and the trees, the white bark pines and the limber pines, know exactly how to find it.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Their roots don't spread outward, they dive.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thick, flexible, cable-like roots plunge straight down into the sliding rubble, threading themselves through the chaos in search of water.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And because the wind on Hawkins never stops, the trees surrender their shape to survive it.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: They twist, they crouch, and they fold themselves into crumbholts, those stunted wind sculpted forms that look less like trees and more like wooden ghosts clinging to the slope.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins rewards flexibility.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins rewards surrender.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins rewards anything willing to adapt to a mountain that never quite holds still.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: But then you cross to Picket Peak and the rules change instantly.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: The moment you step onto the summit block of Picket, the trees vanish.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Not gradually, not politely, they disappear all at once, as if the mountain has drawn a hard line and said no further.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Picket Peak does not negotiate with life, it doesn't offer footholds, it doesn't offer soil, it doesn't offer mercy.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: The summit is bare, aggressively bare, a crown of exposed dayside columns rising into the sky with nothing but wind and stone to keep them company.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the part that stops you in your tracks.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: The only patches of colour up here aren't alive.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: They aren't lichen, and they aren't quartz, they aren't anything growing.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're scars.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: The white blotches splashed across the summit block, the ones that look like someone walked up here with a bucket of paint and marked the rocks at random, are the mountain exfoliating, case hardening.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: The outer skin of the day site bleaches under decades of UV and ice, becomes brittle and flakes off in irregular patches, exposing a pale, chalky interior.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: It looks intentional, it looks human, it looks like blazes, but it's just the rock shedding its own surface.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a perfect biological contrast.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins is the place where life twists itself into strange shapes to survive in stability.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Picket is a place where life is stripped down to nothing because nothing can endure the rigidity.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Same elevation, same weather, same wind, two completely different biological worlds.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: As you stand there halfway between twisted pines and barren stone, you start to understand the mountains not just as geological personalities, but as ecosystems with opinions.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hawkins allows life to adapt, and Pickett demands life to disappear.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: The living world has taken sides.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's not subtle.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Most people think Hawkins Peak is named for John Hawkins, the pioneer, the rancher, the man who built the tavern and dug out the geothermal pools that would become Grover Hot Springs.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, John Hawkins was here early.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: He carved out a foothold in Alpine County when the region was still a raw frontier of silver dreams and wagon ruts.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth, the part that matters, is the real architect of Hawkins' legacy wasn't John at all.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was Mary.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Before she ever saw the Sierra Nevada, Mary Hawkins was Mary McKee Thompson, a 24-year-old Irish widow with a baby daughter and a life already marked by catastrophe.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Her first husband, a British army captain, was killed in the First Afghan War.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: She fled the grief by boarding a merchant vessel bound for America, hoping to start over.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: But fate wasn't finished with her yet.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere on Lake Erie, a gale caught the ship, the vessel broke apart.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Mary and her daughter were thrown into the freezing water.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: They survived, barely, crawling onto the beach with nothing but the clothes on their back.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then as if the universe wanted to test her one more time, a crowd of looters descended on the wreckage, they stole her trunks, her clothes, every heirloom she had left in the world.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: She was ruined and stranded, shivering on a beach with a child and no future.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then came the twist, the kind of twist that feels too strange to be true.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: One of the very looters looked down at her and took pity and carried her away from the chaos.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: He brought her to the home of a young Ohio pioneer who had just lost his own wife.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: His name was John Hawkins.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Two broken families pulled together by a shipwreck.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: They married, they pushed west, and when they finally reached Alpine County in 1859, it wasn't John who secured their future, it was Mary.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: She was the one who laid out$900 in cash, a staggering sum at the time, to buy the homestead from a local squatter.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: She filed the land pattern in her own name, she built the dairy ranch that fed the Silver Rush, and she helped carve out the tavern.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: She helped dig the boiling geothermal pools that would become Grover hot springs.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Mary's life was shaped by water, oceans, lakes, and hot springs, fluid forces that carried her from disaster to survival to empire.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Hawkins Peak, with its loose volcanic soil and shifting slopes, mirrors her perfectly.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's a mountain that rewards flexibility, resilience, and surrender.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: A mountain that never quite holds still, but always finds a way to support life.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: When you climb Hawkins Peak, you're not just walking volcanic debris, you're walking the legacy of a woman who refused to break, even the one the world tried its hardest.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere on that slope, somewhere between the twisted cromols and the soft sliding gravel, you can almost feel her presence.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not as a ghost, but as a reminder.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Some mountains are built from fire, and some legacies are built from survival.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: If Mary Hawkins' story feels fluid, shaped by oceans, shipwrecks, hot springs, and the slow movement of people across the Sierra, then Edward M.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett's story feels like the opposite.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Rigid and angular, defined not by water but by geography, by constraint, by the hard edges of a landscape that forced travellers into a single narrow corridor.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett didn't arrive in Alpine County as a pioneer.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't carving out a homestead or chasing a dream of fertile land.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: He came later, when the region was already threaded with wagon roots and half-built ambitions, and instead of building something from scratch, he brought something that already existed.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: A way station called Knotts Place.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't glamorous, it wasn't romantic, it wasn't even particularly large, but it was positioned perfectly at the mouth of the natural funnel where Hope Valley narrows and the land forces you to choose your path.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: To the west, the road climbed towards Luther Past.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: To the east, it dropped towards Woodford's, and looming above it all was Picket Peak, the rigid volcanic froat that shaped the terrain like a stone hand closing around the valley.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett didn't create the bottleneck, but he did recognize it.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he understood something else too.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: People always choose the path of least resistance, or the path of least expense.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Kingsbury Gray, the main toll road over the Sierra, charged a brutal fee, seventeen dollars and fifty cents.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Enough to make a family think twice, enough to make a freight hauler curse, enough to make a stage driver reconsider his route.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So travellers avoided it.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: They slipped through Hope Valley instead, following the toll-free bypass that threaded itself around the base of Pickett Peak, and every wagon, every driver, every freight team that chose to save their money passed directly by Pickett's station.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't need a silver mine, he didn't need a ranch empire, he didn't need geothermal pools or fertile meadow.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: He needed geography, and geography delivered.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett's Peak rigid volcanic architecture, the same geometry that makes the summit so hostile, shaped the human world just as forcefully.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: The mountains created a choke point, the choke point created a route, and the route created a business.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Edward Pickett, standing in the doorway of his waste station, became the beneficiary of a landscape that funnels strangers straight to his doorstep.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: His world was defined by constraint, by narrowness, by the hard edges of a valley that gave travellers exactly one good option.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: If Mary Hawkins' legacy feels fluid, adaptive, and shaped by survival, then Edward Pickett's legacy feels carved, like the columns of the mountain that bears his name, rigid and opportunistic, built not on movement but on the inevitability of a passing through.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And when you stand on Pickett's Junction today, the place where the old station once stood, you can still feel it.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: The land tightens, the valley narrows, the road bends around the base of the peak in a way that feels less like engineering and more like obedience.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Pickett didn't shape the mountain, the mountain shaped him.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: These mountains were the site of a story which exemplifies this harshness of the terrain.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: A pony express rider, a man alone on a horse in a storm, sees the mountains exactly as they are, and no one saw them more clearly than Warren Boston Upson on the night of April 4, 1860.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Upson wasn't a legend yet.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: He was a twenty-something kid from California, newly hired and eager to prove himself.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: He took the mochilla at Sportsman's Hall and immediately rode into one of the worst Sierra storms on record, a blinding horizontal blast of snow that erased the trail and turned the mountains into a white wall of danger.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: He fought his way up Johnston's summit, behind a pack train led by Bolivar Roberts, the station keeper who knew the Sierra better than anyone alive.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: The wind was so fierce that Upson had to dismount and lead his horse by the reins, feeling for the edge of the canyon with his boots because he couldn't see it.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: The trail vanished, the world vanished, only the storm remained.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: By the time he reached Hawley Grade, the descent was a nightmare.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Ice, darkness, and a slope so steep it felt like falling.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: He changed horses at Lake Valley House, mounted again, and pushed on toward Luther Pass, the storm still clawing at him, and the trail still dissolving under his feet.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally the land opened.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hope Valley, a broad meadow in the storm's grip, the snow swirling like smoke across the ground.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Upson rode into it half frozen, half blind, but still moving, because the male had to move.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And as he crossed the valley floor, the terrain tightened again, the ground rose, the corridor narrowed, and Picket Peak, the rigid volcanic throat, stood directly in his path like a dark mass in the storm.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Upson didn't climb it, he didn't skirt it, he didn't negotiate with it.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: He turned.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: A sharp instinctive turn at the base of the peak, the same turn every Pony Express rider made, the same turn freight haulers made, the same turn the land demanded.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Picket Peak didn't host the Pony Express, it redirected it.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Even in a blizzard, even at full gallop, even with death pressing in from every side, the geometry of the mountain dictated the line of travel.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Upson blasted past the spot that would one day be called Pickett's Junction, the storm hammering him, the horse labouring beneath him, the mochilla still strapped tight.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: He reached Woodford's half dead, soaked, shaking and barely able to speak, but he made it.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: He delivered the mail, he became the rider whose ordeal defined the Sierra Crossing.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Five weeks earlier, Billy Richardson had launched the first Pony Express run from St.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph, but in the Sierra, the rider who mattered, the rider who proved the route, was Warren Boston Upson.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the land he crossed, the land that nearly killed him, the land that forced that decisive turn was shaped by Pickett Peak.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Upson didn't know it at the time, but his nightmare crossing became the verdict on the Sierra.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: The blizzard he fought through, the blind descent of Hawley Grade, the exposed climb over Louvre Pass, and the desperate turn at the base of Pickett Peak.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: All of it became evidence.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: His near-death ride proved that the original line over Johnson Summit and through Hope Valley was too dangerous, too slow, and too unpredictable to carry the fastest mail in the West.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Within weeks, the company shifted the Pony Express to the Placerville Echo Summit route, aligned with better stations, safer grades, and fewer places for a storm to kill a rider.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hobson's ordeal didn't just test the Sierra, it reshaped the route itself.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: The mountains made their terms clear, and the Pony Express signed the contract.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get on the pop.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a confession to make.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: I had intended to do ogle peak bagging and to climb Hawkins, Merkleyville, and a peak called the Nipple.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: When I got to Hope Valley, I turned off onto the dirt road and just stopped to assess the situation.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was just before light, and so it was still quite dark, and I was about to go up into the mountain on a dirt jeep road.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to give it a few minutes just to settle in and experience the quiet of the valley and just let the light come up a little bit, which was really the secret.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was just trying to make sure it got a little bit lighter before I dove.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Into the darkness of the valley.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And my intent was to follow the Jeep Road up to Hawkins Peak.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: But as I made my way into the mountains and back into the wilderness, I was sort of half navigating with my app on my phone and half trying to judge how far I got back into the mountain.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought I'd reached a point where I had reached a turn off for Hawkins Peak.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I decided to take that turn off.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And quite quickly I realized that the road didn't go very far at all.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to pull over and stop.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And when I stopped and checked, I'd come about a quarter mile up into the mountain, up towards Picket Peak.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I turned a little bit earlier in.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And as the sun is starting to rise and it's starting to get a little bit lighter, I can see Picket Peak up in front of me, sort of peeking towards the trees.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, you know what?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm out here for the day.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let me take on Picket Peak.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I hadn't really done my research.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't the plan for the day, but it was right there and I could see it.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, you know what, this won't take very long.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just go and take a little pre-hike warm-up up this small little peak.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I drove up the Jeep Road a little bit further and found a spur that started to climb quite aggressively up towards the peak.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then it came to a stop.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I pulled up beside and parked up my Jeep and threw on my pack and began what I hoped was going to be a pretty short, deep but short climb.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it starts off in the forest.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's not really any defined trail, but it's a direct line up through fairly soft, needle-covered ground.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I can sort of see some trails, some old logging roads.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And as I'm getting further and further up into the mountain, there starts to be a little bit of ground shrubbery, some manzanita, a little bit clawing, a little bit in the way as I'm making my way up.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm making pretty good progress and I'm finding pretty easy ways to navigate around those more aggressive shrub patches.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And occasionally I see glimpses of Pickett Peak through the forest.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not quite sure how to tackle it because there isn't really a defined trail to the top of the peak.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I know it's going to be a navigational issue that I'm going to have to tackle.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: I decide just to keep heading straight towards the peak and sort of figure it out when I get to the base to see what the best line looks like to get up to the top.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And as I get closer and closer, the magnitude of the summit block starts to become more evident.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of looming up above me through the forest.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: The closer I get, the taller it gets, and the more aggressive it looks, and the more barren it looks.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the very final part before you get to the barren stone of the final ridge is covered in a little bit more of a thick covering of Manzanita, testing you before you've even started the summit ridge climb.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: You have to fight your way through the manzanita to get to the bottom of the ridge.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm there at the bottom of the ridge.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: I am just to the west of the ridge, and I've managed to navigate directly at the midpoint of the ridge.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so the ridge is facing out.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it's going to the south and it's going to the north.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in front of me are these massive grey boulders that make up these huge scree runs that come off of the ridgeline.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I take a moment just to enjoy the morning.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just gotten light, it's quite chilly.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's September, the fall has come in.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just trying to figure out the best way to navigate up to the top of Pickett's Peak.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I look to the north and I look to the south, and what faces me is this wall of slowly sort of dying off early fall manzanita.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so one way or the other, I have to get into this large blocky screen order to navigate to a point.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so I look up and I can sort of see a way to snake my way up this large blocky outcrop.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I figure out a path and I start the climb.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And to begin with, the boulders are relatively small and quite loose, but quite easy to navigate.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's no real undergrowth once you get onto the scree run, and it's not super slippery.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: And as you start to ascend and it starts to get steeper, it starts to get a little bit trickier because the boulders themselves become much, much bigger.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Think of moving from like a football-size boulder up to a refrigerator-sized boulder.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so now it's a matter of rock hopping between these large boulders as you're starting to climb up to the summit ridge.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I found a pretty decent path, and it's a little bit challenging.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: You have to stop and think.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Pick the way you're going to be hopping across these boulders so you don't get caught out, you don't jam your foot in a hole accidentally.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: But fortunately, you know, this side of the scree, these large boulders, they're mostly pretty stable.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'll make my way up to a little bit of a solid outcrop so I can avoid having to continue hopping from boulder to boulder to boulder, just so I can find a quicker route up underneath this outcropping.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little loose, a little gravelly, but I make quick work of it.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: But then once I've got to the top of that, again there's more of these large refrigerator-sized boulders that are taking me up the ridge.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm about two-thirds of the way up and I hit the solid wall of the ridge.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no trail, nobody's been this way.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: If they have, I couldn't tell if they'd been this way because the rocks are very massive and very solid.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you wouldn't be able to tell if there was a trail that people have been coming up regularly or not.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I hadn't researched the route, so I didn't really know what the right way to get up it was.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: But standing there, pretty close to the top now, just looking up at the skyline behind me, it's clear blue day, but the wind is starting to really pick up.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's pretty aggressive.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I had read there would be wind today and on this day, and so I was surprised it was picking up so early.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I found a way to sort of rock climb class three, a little scramble up to the final ridge, and I committed to it, and it wasn't too difficult, the drop-offs weren't too great, and the rock was really solid as you're climbing up to the final ridge.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I get up onto the ridge and the wind starts really picking up.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not howling, but it is a healthy, gusty, constant wind.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And up there and above the tree line, and I can see the landscape before me.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: I can see Hope Valley opening back to the highway that I had come in on the Carson Pass Highway over to some of the mountains that are blocking the view of South Lake Tahoe.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I turn around and I look south and I can see the enormity of the landscape that's before me.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: I can see Hawkins in the distance jutting out from the same ridgeline that I'm standing on, and then the round top mountain across the valley, and then this huge vastness of these little volcanic mountain peaks you can see dotted around as far as you can see.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I realize I'm a little bit below the high point of the peak.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have to traverse along the ridge.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: If I was to estimate the ridge, it's probably a quarter of a mile, half a mile long.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's fairly, it's fairly substantial.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't want to give up here, I want to make it to the high point of the ridge.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm starting to traverse upwards.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's these large refrigerator-sized blocks.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not too bad at this point in the ridge, but as I start to get to the high point, I start to notice the gaps between the rocks become much more significant and they turn into human-sized chasms that drop 12 to 15 feet.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's the sort of drop that won't kill you, but it could hurt you, and you could find yourself stuck down the bottom of a chasm where nobody's gonna hear your screams.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've twisted your ankle, you've busted your leg, you're gonna have a hard old time not only getting out of that chasm, but also getting off of the blocky, choppy ridgeline and down that blocky, choppy ridge to be able to self-rescue.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm having a bit of a moment, to be honest.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm a I'm becoming a little bit intimidated by the ridge, and I'm pretty close to the high point, so I keep going a little bit more, and then I'm standing on this one rock that is probably about the size of like a manhole cover, maybe slightly bigger than a manhole cover.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking to the left of me and there's one of these deep chasms, and I'm looking to the right of me, and there's another deep chasm, and the wind is sort of starting to you know blow through my hair, making a concerted effort to interrupt my progress.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just stand there and I realize I'm pretty much at the high point.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: If if I'm if I'm off, it's by half of a foot at most, and I feel like this is the time to stop and take stock and turn around because it's become a little bit intimidating to have these big holes that you could fall in at any point.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And although the rock generally feels stable, once in a while you just hit a rock that moves and wobbles a little, so it's not entirely stable.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm out here on my own, and I never meant to climb this mountain.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't leave this on like the itinerary that I normally leave at home, so nobody knows I've come to this mountain, save for the fact my Jeep is parked down at the bottom.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I take a few pictures, take a little moment, and realize I have to come back off of this ridge and I have to come back down that scree line.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's sort of jarred me a little bit how uh apprehensive I am and how tentative I've become about being on this short little side hike up pickets.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: I start to come down and I realize what's happened because I had seen a little bit of the geology from a distance that when you're standing there and you are standing on like what feels like a stone, a manhole cover-sized stone, you're kind of sitting on top of one of those columns that have been created by the slow calling of the magma.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the gaps are where a column used to be, but for some reason it's degraded, it's crumpled, it's full, it's fallen over, and it's left like a void.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so you suddenly get this impression that hold on, I'm I'm stepping on one tall column and then another tall column, and it could be stable or not, and it could give way.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes this sort of really weird mind situation where you're trying to figure out how do I get off this mountain.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I took my time coming off the mountain.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: As I'm starting to come off the mountain, I'm starting to notice these white blazes, and I thought, oh, somebody's left a trail.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just need to follow the white blazes.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I start following them back down the ridgeline, and suddenly I realize they're not they're not white blazes that humans have left, they're just completely random.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've been going a little bit off the left of the ridge, winging over to the right of the ridge, going down some gnarly little rocks, thinking that the white blazes were the way down, and they just weren't.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I I again I stopped and I reassessed, and I got to the point where I'd come up the ridgeline.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, you know what, let me carry on down the ridge a little bit lower.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's an easier descent.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I did.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: I headed south, going down, and the and the rock starts to become a little bit more solid as you lose altitude.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I found a scree run that was very loose, and it was small, gravelly, like pebbly rock.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, you know, I could I could make a quick descend down this and slide down back into the forest and feel a lot more stable, surprisingly, than trying to renavigate those large refrigerator-sized blocks as I'm going back down the scree.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I did.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: I made my way down this loose scree, sort of slid down, did sort of semi-little scree runs until I hit this point where there was the manzanita was closing it around the scree again.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: I just momentarily lost concentration and stepped on a bit of rock that had a bit of gravel on top of it and slipped on my butt and picked myself up, shook myself off, and continued on down.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I found the scree, the loose scree sort of gave up the ghost, and there was just a little bit, maybe a hundred yards, of the more solid stuff, more like the football side stuff.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit loose, a little bit tricky, but nothing too dangerous.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm in the wall of Manzanita again, and so I have to fight my way through the wall of Manzanita.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as I pop out the other side, I'm back in the forest.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: I just stop and I sigh, take a big sigh of relief that I made it off the ridge.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: I look back and it's sort of hidden again behind the manzanita.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: I can't see the drama of the ridge once I'm back in the forest.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: But back in the tree line, back standing on the soft pine needles, I just felt secure again, like I just suffered a trauma.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: I never I was back in the warm safety of the forest, and I thought to myself, you know, even if there's a bear right now, it's got to be a lot less dangerous than what I just did.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: So bring on the bear.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, a bear, a bear didn't survive, but I I had come off the ridge a different way than I'd gone up, and my car was parked somewhere down the hill, and so I had to renavigate down the hill, but it wasn't anything too challenging.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: I did find some what looked like trails that people had made through the forest, and I reconnected with an old logging road that took me right back to where I parked the car, which was great.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: So Pickett's was kind of jarring for me.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of unexpected.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't planning to climb it, it was a lot more abrupt than I expected, and it ended up taking an hour and a half, so it ate more of my day than I expected, and I still wanted to climb another three peaks that day, but this had been quite the hike on its own and had proved itself worthy of the day's challenge.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I I figured I would try and modify the hikes a little bit.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so next in line was Hawkins, the one I'd intended to climb first.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I got back in my Jeep and made my way back to the main road, would take me over to Hawkins Peak.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I made my way back down the mountain to Burnside Lake Road and turned towards Hawkins Peak, which had been my original destination.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: And as I'm starting to drive further and further into the wilderness, I come across a couple of deer that are hanging out on the road and they see me coming and they dart into the into the wilderness.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now the road itself is a little rocky in places, but it's fairly flat, nothing too dramatic.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Probably any two-wheel drive car can manage it.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I had done my research on Hawkins Peak, and there is a road that will take you all the way to the top if you've got a suitable vehicle.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't going to do that in my original plan.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to park sort of on Burnside Lake Road and then walk the road up to the summit block, but I was still a little bit shaken by pickets.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I decided, you know what, to shorten my day a little bit.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm going to do is I'm going to drive the Jeep as far as I can up to Hawkins Peak.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so I start driving up this road, and it's not too bad.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm okay.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm driving deeper into the mountain, it's getting higher and higher and higher.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then it gets to some points where it's a little bit steeper and a little bit more rugged, and probably the place where most people bail out and decide to walk walk the road to the peak.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I wasn't going to do that.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was pretty determined that I needed to have a little bit of a mind reset after Pickett had had uh played games with me somewhat.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just stuck in the Jeep and I I used all of its four-wheel drive capabilities to basically take me all the way up to the base of Hawkins.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a little bit over 9,000 feet.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I reached the base and I could see up, it's a pretty steep final summit ascent with a radio tower on top of it.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so I park up and I get out of the Jeep, and now the wind is is raging, it's really strong, you can feel it, and the views are spectacular of this whole wilderness area around Hope Valley and and Round Top and uh and the Carson Pass region.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I look back to where I've come from, and I look at Pickett's Peak in the distance, and it's standing there like a sentinel.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: And on the north end of the ridge, what I couldn't see when I was up close, you can see this very, very rigid column uh day site that's sticking up and forming the cone that makes the peak.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not quite so evident on the south side, but here on the north side you can see it plain and clear, and it's still well preserved.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're a little bit more ambitious and you have more time, you can actually drop off and make the traverse over to Hawkins.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're going to make a day of it, these two peaks, then I would I recommend doing that.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Find another way off of Pickett's and head south over to Hawkins.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: You'll maintain a lot of the elevation, and it's a really nice, exposed, but a really nice ridgeline to get you over to Hawkins.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I get out of the Jeep and there's a road that goes directly up to the peak, and it's probably a road that was used for folks who are up here maintaining the telephone tower.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I start heading up this road, and it's really steep, and so I got my head down, the wind is blowing behind me, and I go up the road maybe 400 yards, and eventually the road sort of gives up, and now you're in the mountain proper.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see the ridge of Hawkins, it's sort of a big outcrop that heads upward toward toward the radio tower, and there's no really any clear guidance on the way to go again.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's no trail, you have to sort of find your way the mountain at this point.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I make a decision that the wind is really, I mean, it's pushing me, it's really tough, it's really hard, it's whipping right across that valley and smacking into me.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I thought maybe if I go around to the east side of the peak, I'll get a little bit of shelter.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I start climbing up through the rocks, sort of making my way up uh what looks like animal tracks until I get to the base of the outcrop, and I find a little way to get up and behind the east side.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: And to my surprise, the wind is blowing even harder on the east side.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I've I've made my bed, I'm gonna lie in it.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm on the east side of the main summit ridge, and I start climbing up this sort of broader open plain, and there's a line of pines that have been twisted and bent by the wind that are standing like a sentinel guard between me and the summit.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I get up to them and I start getting into them, and the wind dies down.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're acting like this sort of perfect windbreak.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can still hear the wind howling around me, but while I'm in the trees, I get a little bit of respite.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I continue to climb and pick my way through the pines, and then I find myself on the on the east side looking up at the summit block, the final ascent to the up to the telecom tower.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, where I've come on the east side, I can't really see a good path up.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like it's pretty dramatic and there's a fairly steep drop-off.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I realize that most people just go up the west side and just make a direct ascent up to the telecom tower.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to switch back over to the west side as I'm starting to pick my way up the summit block.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: And toward the bottom, it's fairly consolidated.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can sort of pick your way up through this manzanita and the rock, and it starts to become a little bit more barren, but it also starts to become a lot looser.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of this loose rock into interspersed with shale and gravel, it starts giving way a little bit, but it's really just choose your own adventure up the mountain.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I just tried to make the most direct pathway up to the telecom tower, but the wind is now really howling.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm struggling to keep my hat on and I'm struggling to stop the mountain pushing me.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: So as I'm getting higher and I'm doing some little tricky class two moves, you know, maybe moving from a big boulder to us to a bigger boulder with um with my hands, the wind is like catching me and blowing me off balance, so it's becoming real tricky to get to the top.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not because of the terrain, but because of the wind.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the terrain is a little bit loose, you do have to be a little bit cautious so you don't slip and fall.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: But a fall won't be necessarily dramatic.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are a few places where it's a little steep and tricky, but head down, fighting the wind, I'm making my way up to the top, and then I find myself right below the telecom tower, and I'm nearly there.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: Just take a quick breath and then pause and get to the final ascent to this little telecom tower, and now the wind is just roaring across the ridge.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: I pick my way through the tangled mess of old wires and a solar array to get to the ridge, and there's this little perfect platform that somebody's built, a perfect flat platform where you can stand and you just look out at the glory of Hope Valley and all these volcanic peaks popping out of the horizon, just dramatically out of this sort of soft valley.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: Future peaks to be bagged, to be sure.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: I stood up there just enjoying the force of the wind and the and the view and decided to make my way back down.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went back past the little telecom tower and started to send.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: I thought the descent would be relatively easy, but it is a lot looser than you think when you're coming off, when you're coming up.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: Going down, it becomes a little bit more treacherous because there's a bit of solid rock and then a lot of loose, gravelly stuff.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so you get this sort of pebble marble effect if you if you're not watching where you step.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not finding a good path, you might find yourself in little loose scree runs.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing too dramatic, nothing too exposed, but enough that it'll hurt if you you fall, you know.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a little bit jagged, not too too round and soft.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually I make my way off of this sort of shaley nightmare, and I'm back on more consolidated stuff.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just make a direct line cross country back to the car, and you're coming off a nice soft slope at that point through little scrubby bits of of sagebrush or whatever's clinging to the side of the mountain, and eventually make your way back to the car.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's really interesting how close these two peaks are and just how different they are.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: And remember that they're made from the same volcanic system, erupting in approximately the same era, but because one was a little bit more explosive, it exploded out of the mountain, it takes on a completely different form to this other cone, the Pickett's cone, that was actually plugged and then called very slowly, and you get this completely different hiking experience.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say if you've got a morning five, six hours, and you want to have this different type of experience in two peaks, you can link them together, you can drive between them, but you get two very different experiences.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: But what you really get is this magical view of the landscape around Hope Valley that is sort of this contrast between the soft alpen valleys of the inner Sierras and then these dramatic volcanic cones that are sticking out of the horizon.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, absolutely a spectacular way to spend a morning in these two peaks that are so close and yet completely contrasting.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, off you pop.