El Diente/Wilsons best route?

[jth221]

Hello guys,

We are looking to head to this area this weekend and were looking to do Diente first, traverse over to Mt. Wilson and then if everything is going well to hit Wilson Peak. What is the best way to get from Mt. Wilson over to Wilson peak? Best way to descend and reconnect? Any routes or trip reports out there? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[sarahw]

Hello!

There are several options for these peaks. If you intend to try them all in one day, I'd suggest a loop where you start at the Rock of Ages TH, descend from the ROA saddle into Navajo Basin, ascend El Diente via the North Buttress route, traverse to Mt Wilson, descend back into Navajo Basin and reascend to the ROA saddle. You could do Wilson Peak either en route to the traverse or afterward, but I'd probably recommend going for the traverse first so that you could return for Wilson Peak, the easiest of the 3 to access, if the weather turns sour; the traverse is a bad place to be in bad weather.

If you plan to do the peaks in 2 days, you could backpack in to Navajo Basin via Woods Lake or Navajo Lake TH (we did the Woods Lake approach this summer and it's fantastic), then go for the traverse one day and Wilson Peak the next, or vice versa. You could also do the traverse via Kilpacker Basin without backpacking in (though it's long), then drive around for Wilson Peak from ROA or Bilk Basin (longer but incredibly beautiful, and lightly-used). So many choices!

These are amazing peaks - have a great time!

[Mtnman200]

I just did a trip report that included El Diente's north buttress from Navajo Basin and the traverse to Mt. Wilson:

http://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=14319" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The traverse is a blast and not as hard as I expected. Have fun!

[ThuChad]

Several different options discussed here.

http://www.14ers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=40417" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[benners]

What is the best way to get from Mt. Wilson over to Wilson peak? Best way to descend and reconnect?

To answer this specific question, the best (and really only) way to descent Mount Wilson is via the standard route from Navajo, which is described in detail here:

http://www.14ers.com/routemain.php?rout ... iente+Peak

It's not the most straightforward descent, so studying the route down would be a good thing. Once in the basin you can attempt to save elevation over to WP as you see fit, or you can drop all the way down (might be faster than side hill talus hopping). Here's the route we took when we did it:



There many TRs out there that show the route from MW to WP in greater detail, just use the TR search function. Hope this helps!

[jth221]

That's all good information! Thank you all very much!