Route to Ventana Double Cone

[Argyle]

Another Elliot Robinson Epic!

[Elliott Robinson]

So this whole conversation got me motivated to do something new. Went out to Ventana Double Cone on Saturday via Ventana Creek ...Much more serious than I thought. From the wading through Ventana Crrek to the steep escarpment up to the summit ridge Ventana Double Cone was incredibly spectacular with an amazing knife edge arete taking you to the ridge...didn't end up topping out on VDC though, decided to let good judgment seize the moment since the sun was setting and making sure I could find the trail down to Tin House Camp seemed like the right thing.. Turns out no trail, no path, no cairns, no tags. Alas. Decided the short cut to Mt. Manuel via Tin House Camp that was on the map was a classic bit of obliterated Ventana history (should have read the Trail Reports Forum, doh!)...so...since that trail, which looked so sensible on the maps, was clearly just a fantasy. I decided to head over to the next trail (on the map it looked like the main route down the backside of Mt. Manuel) so spent the night wading through the Little Sur on endless slippery stones to get to the far trail head. I was sooo convinced the trail would be a wilderness freeway...wrong, yep should have read those trail report..no trail, no tags, no cairns (a miraculous faint tread appeared a few times near the top...I was so happy.) So when I got to just past the spot where the trailhead should have been, I grumbled and head up a limestone arete that seemed less bushwhacky. I assumed something promising would appear. Well, I scrambled and bushwhacked up about 1500 or so feet and traversed about 1/3rds of the distance. eventually though the bushwhacking got rough and I convinced myself I was missing something (like a trail that should be there). So, I went all the way down to search for that wilderness freeway again...but eventually realized that, yes, the backside of Mt. Manuel is a horrendous bushwhack with complex route finding. Egad. Fortunately spotty cell phone reception came just as my wife was callng SAR (love them to pieces, but want nothing to do with them) and I could text it off (very strange wilderness moment) and keep on with an awesome adventure. Between 43 and 44 hours of walking through complex terrain. My feet hurt and I have the worst case of chafing imaginable. Good fun!

[jdoelman]

When I was last on VDC I noted an entry in the log by Scrarufi dated February, 2009. I hiked to the VDC in early march 2009, as I recall I encountered 2-feet of very old, (at least a month) crusty snow which was unpleasant to walk on. Imagine stepping up 2-feet, then attempting to take a step but instead postholing down 2-feet again and again. When I read his account in the log, Scarufi did not mention the snow. The log entry does give some evidence that he made the trip (day hike) but it also makes me wonder. Scarufi's log entry is in a different section of the "log book" than the only other 2 log entries for that winter, one by a helicopter traveller, and the one other dated march 2009. There is very little evidence that Scarufi actually did this day-hike, but there is this log entry. During this time x-country travel was relatively easy because of the 2008 fire, a direct route from Mt. Manual, over kandlebinder and on to VDC would have been much easier than it is today.

[casey]

js radford: i'm a little confused by what you mean when you say throwaway route in regards to hiking up ventana creek? Also, you said you hiked up Ventana creek 10 times, how did you get past the waterfalls when you did the route???

[Arrora]

The route description loosely claims to travel along the little sur river (it does look like the little sur river) , then ascend kandlbinder and traverse south of the summit without actually summiting, then cross the VDC-window-kandlebinder rigdgeline again and ascend VDC from the north. This is rediculous. The route from the South Fork Little Sur River to the top of kandlebinder during 2009-2010 was easy. There would have been no reason to travel south of the summit of kandlebinder, that area is extremely steep and traversing it would be foolish.

There are no photos of the summit of VDC, why? There are no photos of the Ventana window. The claim of a "route" to VDC is not credible.

[shtunk]

The photos do not support that Scarufi actually completed the hike BigSur-MtManual-VDC. In fact the photos lead one to the conclusion that Mr.Scarufi did not make it to the top and returned via helicopter.

[js_radford]

It is rather painful to read Mr. Scaruffi's route descriptions of modes of access to VDC, some of it rather suspect given my experience. What he describes is possible but so sketchy and oddly described that I wonder if he really got where he said.

Look at his photos. The ones labeled "mountains to the east" are VDC for sure; why not say Ventana Double Cone? Yet the ones labeled Double Cone and the VDC fire lookout don't look like any view I've seen of VDC and I've seen it from all 4 angles up close as well as distantly.

Look at his GPS coordinates. They are nonexistent except for a couple of the jct. of PRT with Ventana Camp Trail and the BS River at Ventana Camp (which coordinates actually mark the top of a peak south of the jct. of PRT/Ventana Camp Trail). Why so darn few exactly indicated coordinates for such totally unnecessary locations and a total absence of coordinates along the really extremely difficult routes? If he really seriously wanted to prove a route and make it something to follow, would he not give the exact coordinates for the hard parts? Maybe a GPS unit is too weighty to carry?

His supposed routes are way too blithely sketched. I've hiked Mt. Manuel to VDC once (dropped down to Ventana Creek after traverse due east from Mt. Manuel until ridge turned N, and thence up western wall of VDC - entailing a little mountain climbing) and I've hiked up Ventana Creek about 10 times. His experience doesn't jibe with mine much.

Ventana Creek route: This is almost a throwaway route but in my book is rather difficult. Why did he not mention the 85-ft waterfall 3/4 of the way up? It is way out of the ordinary and quite a remarkable, almost never seen feature. Also, since 1994, there is at least one small waterfall that would be very difficult to ascend. How did he do that one? How did he get around the 85-ft waterfall? It involves serious rock climbing or else a treacherous climb of a steep landslide section immediately adjacent.

Ridge routes: I got lost trying to follow his directions of 2 different ridge routes. Apparently, assuming he did the routes, he wrote about them from memory w/o benefit of map (which he otherwise displays so why not use place names, as has been commented by others?). One ridge route seems OK for a while and then he loses me later on with badly described zigs and zags that didn't make much sense to me, reading descriptions on one hand with topo map on the other side.

Anyway, either Mr. Scaruffi' did not actually do these exact hikes or he is a phenomenon of goat-like heroics. Actually there is one photo of him showing a person at least willing to get really down and dirty (fearless, at least). (What was the chopper ride about - did he have to get rescued?)

In any case, beware using his descriptions to repeat his supposed feats. You'll get lost or stuck in the middle of nowhere come darkness, on a "day hike" that I expect would take far longer.

Of course, all my experiences have been laden with pack (40-60 pounds). So unburdened, maybe one could do a 20-mile, 4500-ft climb and return through some extremely difficult terrain in a day, and that was his "easy" route! Possibly. Likely? Really?

[K Vandevere]

I'm not sure I see anything particularly remarkable in the trips described by by scaruffi/piero. Plenty of other people do those routes as well (although not necessarily while dressed for a trip to the mall). What I do find remarkable and unique are statements like the one about Pat Spring producing "filtered" water, or the passage implying that a trail exists "in theory" from the Double Cone Summit to the Tin House - and that only then must someone go cross-country to reach the trail near Pico Blanco. And while I realize that it's not essential that a person become a student of place names to have a good time in the Ventana, scaruffi/piero would save himself some time if he learned the name of the Little Sur River and didn't have to keep calling it "the northern creek coming down from Double Cone." A few basic place names would also make his descriptions a lot more useful to people interested in repeating his adventures (i.e. Ventana Creek, the Window).

[Betsy M]

Piero may not have the correct names of the features, and incorrectly describe the foundation structure on the Double Cone summit as the lookout, but he has an amazing willingness to attempt the kinds of hikes most of us are too knowledgeable to even try. This is the guy that hiked the entire Santa Lucia Trail from The Indians to Arroyo Seco, with a group of people dressed for somewhere less brushy than the Ventana (some of them looked like they were headed to the mall for an afternoon of shopping), in one day. Before the fire. There are photos to prove it. That is when you had to fight through miles of brush in the midsection of the trail.

I personally know better than to try any of these crazy things. I know they are impossible. That is why it is so amazing to see the photos, which are undeniably of the route described. The Santa Lucia hike, which looked like it finished several hours after dark, had the photos along the route. The photos of the Double Cone sure look like the Double Cone. Bravo to Piero!

[K Vandevere]

Going to the Window, or all the way to the Double Cone, from Mt. Manuel or the Tin House on the South Fork Little Sur was quite popular in the 60s ... and the route still has its fans. The "scaruffi" website's description of the route is very, very poor, however. The author does not seem to know many of the names of the features he or she describes (not even the Little Sur River or Ventana Creek), appears to believe there is still a lookout on the summit of the Double Cone, appears to believe the trail erroneously marked on some maps as continuing in the Tin House direction from the summit of the Double Cone actually exists, and does not appear to have actually made the entire trip.

My advice to anyone headed that way would be to take a close look at the topo map of the area. You will see that there is a ridge extending from the north summit of the Double Cone to the Window, over Kandlebinder (Peak 4653), and down to the divide between Doolan's Hole Creek and the South Fork Little Sur. That's the route. There is no official trail over any of it, but the fire has probably made the trip a bit easier.