Peak 9,691′

Looking north off of Peak 9,691′. That’s Idaho Lake down below off the steep north side of the mountain.

7 JULY 2021 W6/SS-269

I had a few days to acclimatize before meeting up with a group of my old climbing buddies to undertake our first section of the John Muir Trail. I scoped out the SOTA qualifiers in the area, leaning heavily toward summits that had never been activated. There were likely candidates on either side of Kaiser Pass and I opted for the easier one to the west so I could get to Edison Lake in time to meet up with the gang.

I left my hotel in Clovis before first light about 4 AM. The road is very good up until just a few miles from Kaiser Pass when the road narrows and potholes began to appear. I saw quite a few deer browsing so I had to keep my speed down as a few bolted across the road.

I left the car at Kaiser Pass (ample parking) at 6:18 AM

Here is my track up to the summit

The hike is pretty easy at a mile and a half with about 500′ of elevation gain. The ridgeline is open with cattle/snowmobile/dirt bike tracks and the second two of three false summits are avoided by traversing along the south side of the ridge line. It took me about an hour.

There is good cell coverage from Verizon on the summit.

There is a double summit and I chose the east summit because it was a little more open with better views. I made 12 contacts including faithful chasers Martha and Gary in Kansas and Eric in Montana. My longest contact was with AC1Z in New Hampshire. I had one summit-to-summit contact to Colorado. Thank you all who chased me and help to activate this summit for the first time!