It is official Alpine Club Policy that ‘good style’ involves as many sports as logically possible for a given objective.
Unlike the white granite of the rest of Sierra, the rock of the Palisades is uncharacteristically dark and ominous. Beneath their northern aspects, and eight miles from the ‘nearby’ Big Pine trailhead, is the largest glacier in the range. About a month ago, Josh Gieschen and I put in a good effort traversing a ridge in this region, and I hadn’t written a trip report in way too long, so here we are!
IMPORTANT NOTE: This trip report introduces the Whimsy Scale, an objective rating of how whimsical each section was. Min of 1, Max of 5. Just because something was whimsical doesn’t mean it was safe (or pleasant, or easy), and vice versa.
Abstract
Over the past five years, Josh Gieschen and I had both, thrice, separately, attempted to climb routes out of the North Fork drainage, the most direct access point to the Palisades (to no avail). Undeterred by each other’s track records, we picked a weekend and marked our calendars. As the day approached, we furrowed our brows at the weather forecast. The temperatures were nearly identical to June 2024, when I had encountered isothermal sugary crap inside of the couloir. Thus, we decided to attempt the substantially longer and less snowy Thunderbolt to Sill Traverse instead1. The solution to being unable to climb one mountain in an area is to just climb five, right?
The plan: stash bikes at one end, hike up from the other, climb the route, descend and exit, get to our bikes, and finally bike forty miles back to our car to collect our prize.
Introduction. WS (Whimsy Scale) 3
After a quick round of everyone’s favorite game, ‘what did Mike forget this time?’2,3, we parked in a tiny turn-out to drop our bikes off in the forest. A pair of cops pulled over to tell us to move our car. They were entirely unbothered by the 6’4” man in pink crocs, carrying a camo tarp and a pair of bicycles as he trapezed through the bushes (that man was Josh, in case that wasn’t clear). To wit, “we don’t care about your bicycles”.
Having successfully dumped our bicycles in the woods, we drove to the Big Pine trailhead and began walking. We soon broke camp, enjoyed dinner, and called it an early night.
Big Mountain #1: Mt Sill. WS1
We awoke above Sam Mack Meadow around 3:30AM and made a slow start up to Mt Sill. While we’d hoped to enter the route via the Swiss Arete, we realized that tacking on some extra climbing might jeopardize our primary objective, the summit of North Palisade (Josh has a county high-pointing project). Opting for the north couloir instead, we cramponed up the gully and put on our harnesses. We made it up to the summit within a few hours, and began scrambling across the pass to Polemonium.
Big Mountain #2: Polemonium Pandemonium. WS2
This is where the real fun began. Wait, crap, we’re actually supposed to go there? Jesus christ… Welp… And Josh led down into the notch, across a dicy traverse, where I picked up the lead and took us over the sharp ridgeline to the summit.
We found an old rappel station, and our standard safety procedure for the rest of the day:
- Back up surprisingly decent-looking tat with our own gear
- Have the large and heavy Josh rappel on the tat, backed up by the gear in case it fails.
- Having ascertained that the tat can handle Josh’s weight, collect our gear, and have me rappel off the tat (this time without the gear), but with the confidence that it can hold a much heavier man.
Remind us again why alpine bolting is a bad thing? A few rappels later, we reached the base of the ascent to North Palisade.
Big mountain #3: North Palisade (After half a decade!). WS3
After dropping into the top of the U-notch, we began the only pitched climbing we’d do all day. Dispatching the chimney, we simuled up to the summit, and took the obligatory photos. After a short, mutual congratulation on finally having climbed this mountain, we got to moving off of the ridge.
As we began our descent of North Palisade, the weather cooled and the wind picked up. Before we knew it, we were hearing thunder overhead, and Josh’s ice axe began to vibrate. We quickly lowered off of the very top of the ridge, but kept moving: if it were to start storming, we would not want to be caught out up there.
Finally, we dropped down into yet another notch. This was the best shelter we’d seen in the last 200 feet, and the next section looked challenging. After some decision-making, we decided to wait out the weather. We set up tarps above and below for waterproofing and shelter. The sun had passed its peak, and we began to wonder if we were to spend the night on this tiny ledge. While we had jackets and sleeping bags, the prospect of sitting up overnight was pretty unappealing.
Thankfully, fate had other plans, and the weather system began to dissipate. At this point, we had about three hours till dark, so we took down our tarps and got back to moving.
Big mountain #4: Starlight. WS2
The little notch in front of us proved to be the hardest section of the whole day. Tied into an anchor, Josh did a lean of faith and squeezed his way up a short chimney up to more old tat. I followed suit, and we simulclimbed onwards up to the summit of Starlight.
With maybe an hour remaining till sunset, things were getting a little tense. In the interest of time, we decided to skip Starlight’s summit block (next time!) and began descending towards Thunderbolt. We soon decided that the gully beneath us was a good option for getting off the mountain, and started carefully plodding down loose scree to finally get off of this ridiculous ridge. Our hope was to get out of steep terrain as it got dark.
Further into the gully, we discovered that to descend this thing, we would need to do one, or possibly more than one, rappel into the darkness. It was just after sunset, and after some consideration, we decided that it might be safer to sleep in the gully than to continue descending in the dark.4
Denoument: Dirty Gully Bivvy. WS5 (MAXIMUM whimsy)
We put down our packs, and prepared for sleep. It was a pitiful sight: My dinner was half-a-beefstick, a handful of peanuts, and as many gummy worms as I could stomach (this has now happened twice in one year; I ponder the choices that lead me into these situations). I looked upon with envy as Josh enjoyed his pack of emergency ramen. He dutifully gave in to my request to sip a little bit of warm broth for morale. Since Josh’s sleeping pad had punctured the previous night, it felt only right that he got the nicer site.
Twenty feet below, separated by a short scramble, was a bivvy site I can only describe as visionary. Filled with wet rocks, approximately flat, and approximately the shape of my body, my head went right between the two largest boulders. After wasting a good deal of time redecorating, it finally resembled a place where someone could sleep. I lined it with my tarp, put down my pillow, and closed my eyes. To keep this from getting boring, every few minutes, muddy meltwater seeping out of the rocks would drip onto me. At least I was sheltered from rockfall by the wet rock wall above me.
We decided to let nature take its course, and wake up without an alarm.5 We came-to moderately refreshed, but not feeling fantastic. Bad sleep at 13000 feet will do that to you. We thankfully both had some coffee left, and emboldened by caffeine, began to emerge from our cozy sleeping bags. The descent was slow; it turned out that the gully had not one, not two, but five rappels to get out of it… thankfully, all had pre-existing gear; again, not sure why ‘muricans hate anchor bolts so much.
We had eight miles of travel through one of the most scenic trails in the Sierra to go. It was one of the classic ‘wow, I would really appreciate this if I wasn’t so tired’ escapes from the mountains. Lakes were filled to the brim with snowmelt, and some sections of trail were totally submerged underwater. We moved fairly quickly, and finally made it back to our bikes around noon.
Epilogue: Escape from South Lake. WS4
Don’t worry, we’d sort of forgotten about the bikes too. We loaded them up with all of our mountaineering gear, and began the descent. Thankfully, getting to Bishop was an AWESOME bike ride – we covered twenty miles in under an hour with our massive packs, descending nearly six thousand feet from the South Lake trailhead. Favorable winds then brought us from Bishop to Big Pine in high spirits.
We were now separated from our car by only seven miles of road and four thousand feet of elevation. Cantankerous from our delays in the mountains, we decided we would try and hitchhike from town instead of completing our ride. We arranged our gear to look as ‘please help us poor mountaineers’ as possible, and began to wait.
We set up our hitchhiking shop in a dirt pullout. The local ants seemed very excited about all this, and had a lot of fun exploring our gear while we waited. After nearly an hour of drivers unwilling to take us, finally, an outdoorsy gal stopped by to help us out. She drove Josh to our car while I waited with our stuff; in penance, he threw her twenty bucks. Ironically, after they left, three separate parties came over to offer me a ride as well. Not exactly sure what the lesson is here – maybe I’m just really cute for a hitchhiker. In any case, Josh soon returned with our car, picked me up, and loaded our bikes. After a quick taco stop, we began the long drive back to our respective beach towns.
What a weekend!
PS Along the way, we picked up a couple paragliding pilots who needed a ride back to their launch point. No, there was not space in the car – gear was stacked so high they had to lay on their stomachs. They also threw us a couple twenties for the favor, and so we came up cash positive from all of the hitchhiking silliness.
1 Not to be confused with the Full Palisade Traverse, which is seven times longer and reserved for the pathologically insane.
2 It was mountaineering boots, btw. I realized said fact about one hour into my drive out of San Diego, and did not want to drive back. Unrelated, if anyone wants to buy used, size 42, full-shank 3-season boots for 125 bucks, hmu.
3 For my regular partners: I’m working on it guys, I’ve got a system now.
4 To be honest, I’m not sure which was the better option.
5 I chose to omit the poop-rock fiasco for sanitary reasons.