Lower Cathedral Lake from the north.
On the horizon from left to right: Cathedral Peak, the Cockscomb, Echo Peaks, and Tresidder Peak.

In keeping with our recent propensity to go "off trail", we looked at the map of Tuolumne and said "Yes, we'd like to go to Cathedral Lakes and the base of Cathedral Peak, but lookie here, if, instead of taking the trail, we go up between Medlicott and Pywiak domes, it's only a mile instead of 3 miles". That's what we did. I think we found a great way to get there.

Medlicott Dome from highway 120

Medlicott Dome Bachar/Yerian follows the largest black streak on the left, Raging Waters, 2 streaks to the right. This view is looking straight up 500 feet!

After a short hike through the trees, we third classed it up slabs onto the shoulder of Medlicott Dome, where we were amazed at some of the rock climbs there. Medlicott has one area that is very red, streaked with black water streaks, and it is home to some of the hardest climbs in the Tuolumne area, such as Raging Waters (5.13c) by Steve Schneider and the classic Bachar/Yerian(5.11c) by John Bachar and Dave Yerian.

We walked up the ramp below the climbs and onto slabs at the southwest end of Medlicott Dome, where we contoured around (I was tempted to take my shoes off and walk barefoot on the granite, like John Muir used to do so he could "feel the granite music in his bones") and there, on the other side of Medlicott, was Lower Cathedral Lake! It seemed we'd hardly worked at all to get there (well, except for climbing those slabs, and I told Keith that I hoped we'd find an easier way down than that, especially since we hadn't started until 1:20 pm, more on that later, and didn't expect to be coming back down until dusk).

Medlicott Dome

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