Failed Attempt on Mt. Ritter - The Climb
The day of the climb, I woke up really early and headed up the mountain. It was hard going with lots of talus and rubble. I made it up to the final lake and then headed straight up.
At some point, I missed the right-hand turn to the second bowl and headed straight on pass it. It turned out that the rocks were too steep and after I knocked a basketball sized rock loose and it rolled and rolled and rolled, I decided to take some pictures and head down. It was only 7:03 in the morning when I decided to quit.
I headed back down the mountain, pausing to take this picture of the Ritter Lakes,
before getting back to camp. I decided that it would be a good idea to move my camp to the pass itself, so I packed up and moved my camp about 1/4 mile to the north and then went through the pass to look at 1,000 Island Lake on the other side.
At this point, as you can probably tell, the weather had taken a turn for the worse, and so I headed back to camp to button up for the night. The fog got really thick and the water loosened the rocks on the mountains, which I could hear tumbling down the mountainsides all night long.
At this point, I found out that my bivy sack was not waterproof, and by the time the night was over, I was sleeping in a puddle of water. It was the most miserable night I have ever slept through in the outdoors.