Saturday, August 20, 2106 - Thunderbolt Pass

There are two ways out of Barrett Lake if your destination is South Lake. You can traverse northwest out of the basin and find your way up and through Knapsack Pass at 11,500'. Or, you climb 900' up out of the basin in a northeasterly direction and go through Thunderbolt Pass at 12,300'. Either way, the intermediate destination is Bishop Pass at 12,000' to the northeast of Barrett Lake. In 2010, we chose to follow the SHR description and go through Knapsack Pass. Besides, who wouldn't want to go through a pass named "Knapsack"?  However , we found the subsequent climb up to Bishop Pass from Knapsack Pass was drought with willow, granitic bands and other obstacles that made the climb up to it very difficult. We chose it also because we were not sure if the pass we now know as "Thunderbolt" even existed, and we did not want to climb 900' only to have to descend it and go through Knapsack Pass. 

Well, six years have passed, and with those years a little more knowledge gained. We learned of Thunderbolt Pass and that it is really no different than any  of the high passes in the Sierra. This time we decided to leave Barrett Lake via Thunderbolt Pass. 

Dave, Noah and I got up about 6:30 am, a little later than normal, but we did not have far to go. We fried up our fish caught the night before, coated with milk and then crushed Ritz Crackers. It was delicious, and filling. Fried in olive oil, meal was deep fried Ritz and fish. 

We headed up, directly out of camp and in 25 minutes had climbed the 900' to the level of the pass. It took us half an hour to negotiate the boulder fields in our traverse to the pass. It was beautiful. It is situated right at the base of the walls of the 14,000' palisades with sweeping views to the northwest and southwest. With a little studying of the distant peaks to the southwest we picked out distant Goat Crest Saddle, the second pass we crossed, on day two. We enjoyed the view and the rest for 

Our descent was across a boulder field (surprise!) then across slabs of granite (surprise!) and through meadows to Bishop Pass. Although we were 300' above Bishop Pass, we would have to drop at least 300' below the pass due to obstacles (ridges, cliffs) before climbing back up to it. 

We made our way over to A small lake just short of Bishop Pass and took shelter from the wind behind a small knoll and had lunch. Then it was off to the pass and down the trail off the pass to saddle rock lake and a camping site for the night. 

I washed my clothes in my now nearly empty bear can and swam in the lake to clean off. The campsite was super dusty dirt, so I found a little hollow in the trees that had a nice pine needle duff carpet to sleep on. Dave and Noah slept on the dirt and were filthy long before they ever fell asleep. 

The clouds had been building all day, and about 5:00 pm it started to sprinkle. Only a dozen drops fell, but it was enough for us to hide our gear in the dirt and dust under the tent before it quit. The skies stayed somewhat cloudy, so I arranged all my gear for wet, spin could quickly move them from my nook in the woods into the tent quickly if it started to rain after dark. I took solace in the old saying "It never rains in the Sierra at night", hoping it would hold true this night. It did.