Late Trip Report
Last June, my wife and I did a 5 night backpack into bart dome and surrounding areas.
We were hoping to do this big counter clockwise loop to check out as many domes as possible. The trail to bart dome is straight foward and goes pretty quick.
On Bart Dome we climbed the first pitch of under the rainbow, a variant first pitch to aquaman and an unreported climb on the far right side of the dome. Aquaman looked like a groveling off-width scrapefest even though someone on mountain project told me it was a good climb. The wife veto'ed it at first glance.
perfect rock on Bart Dome
Aquaman with first pitch variant on far left
unreported climb - you can walk off after two easy pitches with a section of 5.8 runout slab
I'm not one for retro-bolting, but it would be rad if many of the first full pitches on this dome had rap anchors installed so you could climb the first pitches on the lower angle cracks and faces at lower grades and not have to top out.
There is a beautiful campspot right at the dome.
After two nights at bart dome we packed up and continued on our loop but quickly realized that a bit past bart dome, the trail essentially disappears.
We pressed on, located portions of the trail and some tree blazes, then schwacked off-trail down by stegosaurus dome where we set up camp.
We saw several bears out that way that were not scared of us at all.
We started up towards stegasaurus dome but turned around at the saddle when we saw the final steep approach to the outcrop. didn't look like our idea of fun.
But the views were great from the saddle.
The next morning, we ended up packing up and backtracking to a spot where we could set up camp, then go on an exploration day hike and maybe climb something. It was a great hike with all the climbing gear
but was too hot and no easy climbs with walkoffs showed themselves to us.
The next day we returned to Bart Dome, solo'd an easy corner on the neighboring dome, bouldered and punted on a first pitch of a climb on bart dome. I blame the very old looking leepers for the punt. I also wrestled with my tangled BD pull cord for too long and swore I'd never use one again.
On our exit day we detoured to a meadow with views of Church Dome.
After we were out, we camped along the Kern river, enjoyed dinner and good beer at Kernville Brewing, cooled off in the river and got a few craggin' pitches in at New Directions.
Cheers
