Mount Lawrence Grassi - Scramble

The parking area and beginning is the same as it is for Ha Ling Peak (Chinaman's Peak). You park at the Goat Creek parking lot on your right hand side as you head down the hill on Smith Dorrien Trail Spray trail. Once you are parked, cross the road, head up the rocky embankment and cross over the bridge. Now instead of meandering into the forest as you would for Ha Ling Peak, you will want to follow the gravel 'road' along the canal instead.

The very wide gravel path will slowly narrow and become a single track. Soon after you will snake through a lot of rock fall across the path and come to a entrance into the forest which was marked with a cairn.

From here the trail heads steeply upwards with nearly no level ground. One large point. Make SURE you pay attention to the trees. The path is marked reasonably well if you follow the tape nailed or tied to the trees. Unfortunately we missed one and ended up following this drainage for awhile before giving up on the trail as we reach a cliff wall with a small waterfall and turned back to find the trail once more.

Once you start clearing the tree line the view unfolds helping you along as you slog up the mountain side.

After the dirt trail comes a bit of scree that you have to head up. It is of decent size so you fortunately do not have to make three steps to make it up one.

You will come across a few step down ledges that you will have to down climb/step off of. They are only a few feet high if you follow them to the end instead of down climbing part of the way up. On your way back down make sure you go back up these or if you follow the ground to the left or right it eventually disappears and scrambling back onto the higher ground can pose a little challenge.

From this point the route itself is relatively easy to follow since you have cliffs on both sides of you so all you have is up.

At this point we had to turn around due to a thunder storm rolling in at a pretty quick rate.

The rest of the photo's and experiences are when I came back a week later to solo and had an idea to bivy at the top for some early morning mountain shots.

My experience here will probably sound harder than the route truly is due to it raining and being fairly windy. My headlamp also does not reach as far in the rain as it would without so there probably are easier ways up this rock that I did not notice.

I started around 8:30pm and being bogged down with a full pack for a bivy and gear, the sun was already set by the time I reached the point that we retreated from a week earlier.

Once you reach pass the rock ledges and scree the rock slowly narrows and the drops on both sides seem pretty looming. the 'crux' of the route I would say comes up around that point. It is a thinner down sloping section with loose rock that has a large drop on both sides. Due to the wind I had to crouch and hold on with my hands to make going uphill on this feasible without slipping.

After this you have pretty large scree you have to head up. Rather uncomfortable to try and move quickly on this stuff due to its large size and ankle/knee twisting nature.

After all that you will reach the summit and hopefully enjoy it on a nice warm day. I was not so lucky. Once I reached the top, the wind was so extreme that it was nearly impossible to hear yourself think or stay balanced. On top of that the rain picked up even more and the sky started lightning up like a strobe light to the west ranges which resulted in me bailing out as quick as possible.

Return the same way you came. Take care on the skinny portion and remember to gain the large ledges on your way down as you see them.