Trying to end the year with death

Hike Track Link

Five Fingers is a prominent feature above the Indian Wells Valley. We can see it out of our kitchen window.  We decided to take a closer look.  Being flushed with the success of our recent peak bagging efforts, our plan was to hike up to the rocks and go up a reportedly easy class 3 scramble to the top.

Five Fingers

It was a good plan and we even had a route showing us how to do it, but our execution was poor.  First we didn't want to down climb, so we attempted to stay high and ended up in nasty chute.  I didn't like it at all, but eventually Bob helped me through that sketchy part only to find we were blocked by more rocks and had to down climb anyway.  Grrrr.

I don't want to walk back down there

Eventually, we made it to the summit block.  I looked at the easy class 3 route, declared victory, already having had what felt like a near death experience from the first chute of death, and found a place in the sun to have lunch.  Bob gave it a go, but gave up before the top.

Look for a small blue dot in the crack.  That is Bob

I zoomed in for you

Our path down featured a couple of very nice arches, and incredible views of the upper end of Indian Wells Canyon.  I really enjoyed this and would be willing to eat my lunch here sometime in the future.  Some of the rest of the hike, not so much.

The southern Indian Wells Valley

The northern part of the Indian Wells Valley

Bob after he decided eating potato chips was way better than the possibility of splatting

Yep, definitely don't want to fall off of that.

This is the view to Gold Canyon.  Stay tuned for more on this hike in a later post.