Split Mountain, Black Mountain #5, Sunday Peak, Bohna Peak

24 October 1992

By: Patty Kline

Leaders: Patty Kline, Charlie Knapke

About 1/2 of the participants were stopped from coming by the hard rain on Friday night. It was clear on Saturday morning when the reduced group of 7 was ready to go at 7:30 am at the entrance to Tillie Creek Campground near Lake Isabella. This collection of 4 peaks in the Southern Sierra are some of my favorite HPS peaks. I love this area.

The clouds were still threatening, so we did Black first since it was shorter than Split. The former nice trail to Black has been destroyed by a fire fighting road.

The clouds looked bad and with intermittent light rain, we made our way to Split. The fire had burned just enough years back for poodle dog, a plant which can cause mild to severe dermatitis in many individuals, to grow in abundance. Thank goodness I was fully clothed on this cold day. We had lunch on top of Split in nice dry weather as the storm paused. After dinner that night at a Mexican restaurant in Wofford Heights, the rain really came down again.

Sunday, with our group down to 6, we did Sunday and Bohna. Charlie lead a great pathfinder route to Sunday from the Bohna access road. We found the register on Sunday completely vandalized. It had been an "older register" the week before with Julie Rush's group that Jim Fleming had enjoyed reading. With popular peaks such as these, if registers were hidden slightly off the summit, it would preserve them longer. Charlie gave us a nice pathfinder route to Bohna and then back to the cars, thereby completing our loop.

It was a very enjoyable weekend for all. The participants were: Don Borad, Peter Doggett, Joy McKinney, Helen Thompson, and Phil Reher. Special thanks to Charlie Knapke who did the navigation. Charlie took Frank Goodykoontz's place on this trip. Hazel, Frank's wife, just had foot surgery, and Frank was tending her at home.