Sterling lake, boulders

Chloe and I headed up to Cisco Grove to try to get to Fordyce lake again. We had tried this on a previous trip, but kept running into closed private roads. This time however, we eventually found a road (rattlesnake road) off of Cisco Grove which led to Sterling lake and Fordyce lake. It's rutted in a few places but is a pleasant drive past a creek and boulder strewn landscape. There is even a decent looking camp site along the way. I had selected this area both because it was one of the places which looked like it might house some nice boulders but also because there were several lakes which looked similar to Salmon lake -- one of our favorites. We parked near the boy scout camp on the west side of the lake and started walking north on one of the trails

Sterling lake itself looks like a great place to bring a canoe

and we immediately stumbled on a beautiful boulder with a narrowing diagonal crack.

I threw myself at it quite a few times but was unable to crack the fingery sequence. After giving up, we headed to the small lakes northeast of Sterling, through meadows and snow banks


And found a huge log which reaches out into the lake



We headed west and found a few chossy boulders with very difficult topouts and then down to another lake just west and down the hill.


After a bracing swim, I was wading out of the water when Chloe let out a shriek; a three foot snake had fallen out of the bush she was holding on in order to get down to the water! Unfortunately, it fell onto the one rock which made my egress from the lake possible

This was an extremely unwelcome development since I am terrified of snakes, and the water was pretty cold. Chloe eventually shooed it away and I was able to get out of the water without having to fight the snake to the death.

It was getting late, and we still hadn't gotten to the area which had looked the most boulder rich by aerial photographs. Just getting to this lake had been a bit of a slog, so we decided to start heading back to the car. As it turned out, within five minutes of walking we found an excellent grouping of boulders with everything from knobby slabs

to proud aretes

to scared-just-looking-at-them highballs

Amazingly, despite being located on a hillside, two of the last three looked like they had nice flat landings!

We also found this absolute gem
with an immaculate rounded flake and a thin start



with a leg shaking topout. I didn't relish the idea of falling on that pine tree, and we only had the little pad with us!

From here, it was a painful and exhausting bushwhack up the hill

to get to the trail back to the car. I saved GPS waypoints so hopefully I can figure out a better approach next time.

After more fun offroading in the subie


we had dinner at a pizza place in Truckee and then drove back to Berkeley