Mount Irvine GPS Track - Google Earth KMZ File

  Video from the Summit of Mount Irvine:

 Mount Irvine Day Hike Trip Report: 7-21-2007

We awoke at 5:00 am at Lone Pine campground. The temperature was cool. Brian was already up making coffee. The others were also getting up; Scott, Brandyn and his friend John. I can never eat much for breakfast, so I force down a pop tart and drink a liter of Gatoraid and am ready to go. We drive up to the Meysan Lakes Trailhead near Whitney Portal above the campground, park and walk through the campsite to find the trailhead at 6:00 am. We head up past some of the summer homes, take a trail for a bit, then come back out on the paved road until we hook up with the main Meysan Lake trail (called forest trail on the sign). The temperature is nice and the trail beautiful as the sun rises giving everything a beautiful glow. The Foxtail Pine trees especially glow beautifully in this light. We are soon removing our fleeces, donning our hats and sunglasses. We are maintaining a 3 mph pace, which is good for such a steep trail. We take one break on the way up to the lakes. At the lakes we start to split up into 2 groups, Scott and myself in the lead and Brian, Brandyn and John trailing. We follow the use trail up to the west of camp like through the boulder field, on the return we take the much more direct route. Scott and I make quick time to Meysan lake. What a beautiful spot. Below is a photo that I took of the creek flowing out of the lake. After a while we had still not see the others come up over the ridge about the lake and we start to worry. Scott pulls out his binoculars, finally after over 30 minutes we see them at the top of the higher ridge. They had overshot the lake and had gained a good 500 ft extra elevation. I guess they had not looked at the maps I printed for everyone. I am anxious to get going, so as soon as we confirm that they saw us and are following us around the south side of Meysan lake, we start heading towards the East Chute just to the North of Mallory. The other routes still have a lot of snow, so I figure this is our best bet for this fairly inexperienced group (well, Brandyn and John are ex-Army Rangers, so I am sure they have done stuff way more technical than this). Scott, who is hiking with me, has little experience with anything over class 2 and is leery of our chosen route. We slog our way up, lots of loose rocks, sand and boulders. Not an overly enjoyable route and the inherit danger of rock fall is a concern. Every rock you see has been smashed hundreds of times before, you can see all the collision marks and could even smell fresh, rock smashing smell in some places. We continue heading up and up. Progressing slowly. Scott is very cautious. We encountered one section that would be considered easy class 3. Scott almost wouldn’t go any further. Near the top Scott refills his bladder in a small water fall. I give him some iodine to be safe. I am still hoping to hike both Mallory and Irvine and decide at this point that I can’t keep waiting and have to get moving. The route is clear once we come out the top of the chute and I take off towards Irvine. The route to the top is straightforward. Patches of sand and rock with a section of class 2 rock near the summit. The views from the summit are great. I could see all the mountains in the area clearly. My GPS was showing that the summit is actually further west from the point I was, but that was not possible as it dropped off towards Consultation lake immediately to my west. This was the summit, but I could not find any summit register. I take a short video and head down. On the way down I see Scott still coming up. I wait a while for him and then join him towards the summit. He does not reach the actual peak due to his fear of exposure, but he got pretty close. Then we both head sown, making good time, Scott is quick on his descent and has no problems keeping up with me. I had assumed that the other 3 had turned around, as I had not seen or heard anything from them. Since I know Scott would not be able to traverse some of the exposure and class 3 needed to get to Mallory, I had no choice but to the head down the way we ascended. We enter the chute and soon encounter the rest of our group. Too far committed at this point to hike back out for Mallory, plus I had already gained over 6500 ft and feeling a little tired. So I make some quick time of the descent, catch up with the others and take the lead. There were some sections where I could run/slide down, but most was tedious requiring careful footwork. We reach the lake and take a break on the need, square rock near the shores. From there we make really good time down. Taking a much more direct route to camp lake, following the creek draining from Meysan Lake. Plus we avoid the unnecessary elevation gain. I really don’t understand why this is not the main route. We reach camp lake and head along the south shore to regain the trail. I feel that I would like to camp a Camp Lake next time and dayhike the other peaks in the area. We all run sections of the trail down and make it to the trailhead by 3:30 pm. A nice dayhike with time to spare. Definitely feasible to climb more peaks as a dayhike, Mallory, Corcoran and LeConte for strong hikers. I want to return to this area and climb these peaks, maybe next year. We had planned to spend the night and do a quick hike of Lone Pine Peak Sunday, but having clearly seen the scree slog ascent route to Lone Pine from Irvine, with it being so Hot at our campsite and nothing to do to avoid the heat and to be able to spend time with the family, we decide to head back to LA.