Did a triple peak bagging hike on Sunday. Jobs Peak is Ogul #18 at 10663', Jobs Sister is Ogul #19 at 10823', and Freel Peak is Ogul #20 at 10881'. Freel Peak is the tallest peak in the Tahoe area. Hiked these with Carley and Lucy from NorCal Women Adventurers.
The hike up to Jobs Peak was steep and steady, but the trail was nicely maintained and shaded in the morning until we got up toward the saddle. Then it was much more desert like, with interesting rock formations along the ridge. We angled up to avoid a steep snowfield on the trail, and stopped for a snack before the push to the summit. We could see the peaks in Mokelumne Wilderness and out toward 395. The view toward Gardnerville was hazy. I think we all started getting headaches as we were now over 10000'. About 2.5 hours after starting, we reached the summit. We signed the register at the top and took pictures before heading back down to the saddle to tackle our second peak.
The trail over to Jobs Sister was faint, but we headed in a general downward direction. We saw a faint path a few times, but it petered out once we got to the bottom of the saddle. Unfortunately you have to lose about 1000' of elevation between the two peaks. We had some GPS tracks to follow, but we didn't see an obvious path or easy way up. We angled up and left, and the terrain was STEEP. This was a major b to get up and was super exhausting. We had to stop to eat and get more energy. This definitely took us the longest. We finally gained the ridge, and still had to go further up to the summit. However, the views from this peak were stunning! 360 views of Lake Tahoe, Nevada, Mokelumne Wilderness, and Desolation Wilderness. We had lunch up here and took in the views. Couldn't find a summit register though :(. We could see smoke from a fire on the Nevada side, which was probably contributing to the haze we noticed earlier. From here we could see the trail down and up to Freel Peak. It looked steep up the summit, but we were happy just to see a trail!
We headed back down the saddle and walked across a cool high plateau with some snow still remaining. We had to cross one small snowfield, but it wasn't steep. From there we started up the summit of Freel and were soon on top of our third peak of the day. Woohoo! We were almost done!! We took our celebratory photos and headed down a cross-country route to return to our car. We sometimes had a path to follow, but it eventually petered out and we just kept heading down. After a long day, we were happy to be back at the car and stuffed our faces at Brick's in Placerville. A long day, but totally worth it!