Culbertson Rock

Culbertson Lake from lunch spot

large tree

After parking at Loney Meadows, four of us took off cross-country from the split on the Rock Lakes trail towards Culbertson Lake.  We headed into a fairly open woodland with lots of downed trees, some of them quite large.  And some were eaten out at the bottom by termites.

We were looking to explore the rocky area that Akiko and I had seen on our hike of the three weeks ago.  We had observed an area that we hadn't explored just south of the ridge between Upper and Lower Rock Lakes. 

"floating tree"

Climbing the drainage

Ellen looking for a route

As we arrived at a very steep rock face, it seemed like the best approach would be to climb the steep, almost dry drainage.  As crawled up, we had to sometimes crawl under fallen logs blocking the way.  Soon we were on a sun-exposed mountain with amazing views.  We climbed using all fours on beautiful iron bearing rocks with mostly uncrumbling handholds and firm places for our feet.  We passed snowfields and tarns of snowmelt.  Flowers in the crevices were penstemon and phlox. 

Penner on the left and Culbertson on the right from top of mountain
 

Some pictures and map from Frank.

Find our way up talus and scree
 

We ate lunch overlooking Culbertson Lake.  Afterwards we went up further for more views of Upper Rock Lake, Sawmill Lake, and Penner Lake.  We were amazed at the proximity of Penner and Culbertson.  We had never noticed that from Penner. 

Wasps and unrelenting sun let us know that we had overstayed our welcome so we hastened off the 7258 foot un-named mountain to cross country and pick up the trail at Lower Rock Lake.  We had hiked only 7 miles but a lot of that was cross country, with quite a bit of rock climbing.  We were plenty tired by the end of it.