TR: Mountaineering Middle Palisade and Mt Sill

[hobbitbook]

July 28-August 3, 2020. Middle Palisade, Northeast Face (class 3-4). Mt. Sill, Swiss Arete (5.6).
Charlie Huizenga (Dad), Jeanne Panek (Mom), Coby Huizenga (16yo)

Bare bones here for those who just want snow, glacier, approach and route conditions...
For full report, see Jeanne's blog: http://www.jeannepanek.com/mountains-an ... nd-mt-sill.

Middle Palisade from Finger Lake

We hiked out of the Glacier Lodge TH mid-day July 28, up the South Fork of Big Pine Creek, spending a night at Brainerd Lake on the way to Finger Lake to acclimate our lowlander lungs. Finger Lake has beautiful views, including our objective – the Northeast face of Middle Palisade. We departed Finger Lake July 30 at dawn, hiked across talus/slab and arrived at the Middle Palisade glacier around 9a. The glacier was still frozen hard. We roped up and cramponed to base of climb, spending way too much time trying to find Secor’s ‘easy 3rd class ledges at high-point of glacier’. Glacial retreat has left those ledges high and dry - now accessed by a few fifth class moves in an alcove with small, sloping ledges to the left of a loose, ugly chimney. We left our crampons and ice axes at the base and started climbing at 10a. We found the easy ledges above (huge cairn) and traversed right into the wide chute which is the Northeast Face route. We simul-climbed roped the entire day. The benefit was security climbing an exposed route, the risk was the rockfall the rope induced. We accepted the risk because we were the only climbers in the chute. We finished climb and returned to the glacier at 2:30p. We were back at Finger Lake by 4p.

Mt Sill from South Fork Big Pine Creek

South Fork is a beautiful approach to Mt Sill. We almost let ourselves be scared off by reports of endless talus, but while there was some talus, this route has less than many Sierra peaks. The approach (GPX track link on website, referenced above) follows a use-trail lower down along the creek and traverses large expanses of beautiful granite slab higher up. We found a beautiful sandy high camp in the trees near water at 10,800’ on the north side of the western tributary of South Fork Big Pine Creek, UTM 11S 0368374E 4107335N (WGS84). The approach seems little-used. We saw only one other person, that came through our camp after soloing Sill. Getting here was fairly easy following trail and some talus.

We left our high camp for Mt Sill at 6a on Aug 1 following the north side of the stream to a large marsh/meadow. We crossed it and climbed a ‘dry’ gully well left of main waterfall. At the top of the gully, we climbed slabs straight toward Mt. Gayley, passing many alcoves and ledges bright with beautiful flowers. We climbed over a couple moraines to a high point with a view of the saddle between Sill and Gayley. From the last moraine, we got through the cliff by following an improbable, but relatively easy scramble on loose sandy ledges to an obvious finger of rock on a buttress. Around the buttress more scrambling led to talus slopes and access to Glacier Notch.

We arrived at Mt Sill's characteristic L-shaped snowfield around 9a, just as two climbers high above us on the snowfield fell. One careened into the other, knocking them both down the slope. We shouted an offer of help, but they shouted back they were OK. Whew! The snowfield was in sun and fairly soft as we started climbing. We met up with the retreating climbers. They were chatty and seemed just fine, but warned of ice at the edges of the snowfield. Indeed, traversing the blue ice required axe-point and crampon front-point to gain the fourth class ledge that led to the route.

The Swiss Arete was gorgeous. We topped out at 4p, took the obligatory summit photo and down-climbed toward North Pal, following obvious cairns that led down and right to the rappel onto a ledge in the vertical gully behind the Sill-Apex notch. On the far side of the ledge, we climbed up (not down over slick slab!) loose sand into broken rock above and to the right of the Sill-Apex notch. Easy down-climbing to the notch. A steep but secure trail here let us skip a third of the snowfield before we had to don crampons, navigate the ice on the edge of the snowfield to the soft snow in the middle and crampon down to the talus below. We got back to camp at 9p under a bright and nearly full moon.

[Harlen]

Congratulations on the climbs, and in the company of you teen son too! I enjoyed your website, kudos for the good works and for putting it together for others to see. Ian

[giantbrookie]

Beautiful report of a great family climb. I have not done much "real climbing" (ie class 4+) but it was neat to read your mother's perspective on this because I have a sort of dual perspective from my childhood and now as parent. That is very cool and I can relate (both ways).

Here's a brief view of my experience with my dad and how I saw it, and then my experience with my daughter from "the other side". I began my Sierran wanderings as a peak bagger because that was my dad's primary focus in the mountains. My first Sierra peak was Alta Peak in 1967 a few months after my 8th birthday and it was climbed from Pear Lake rather than the usual trailed way (the Pear L. route is actually class 2 with an interesting wrap around high under the summit). The day after my 10th birthday my dad taught me how to self arrest with an ice axe because 1969 was a super heavy winter and we had some steep snow slopes to cross to climb Mineral Peak in Mineral King (day before climbed Sawtooth). I remember roping up when messing up routes (or not knowing we were on something harder than advertised). In those days my dad would simply lead the key pitch unroped then throw the rope down and have me tie on. I remember asking for the rope on a super exposed (but easy) ledge on the N ridge of Independence Peak in the early 70s and most memorably when I messed up the route of the west side of Ritter in 1973. I can recall my dad doing two unroped leads on that one. That trip was a watershed because it was the first one in which he had handed over the planning and route finding of the trip to me. It had worked wonderfully the day before on Banner (the route missed pretty much all of the difficulties many talk about with the standard route from Lake Catherine) but I really messed up Ritter. I wanted to abort. My dad felt we had cut off our descent by ascending what was to him a scary snowfield so he said our only chance to get off safely was to climb rather than retreat. While climbing I looked across the west face and realized my error and knew that I could get us down safely if we summitted; which we did.

Years later came another turning point and what might have been the greatest bonding experience I ever had with my dad. It was 1979 and we had become a formidable peak bagging team. We had this outrageous day planned where we'd climb Irvine, Mallory, and LeConte in the same day, pack up our camp at Meysan Lake and drive home (in a nutshell this trip was Lone Pine Peak, Irvine, Mallory and LeConte on an overnighter from Palo Alto). On LeConte we reached what years later became known as the "Waterfall Pitch". I didn't like the nature of the holds on this move so I opted for a series of parallel cracks to the north that expose one to a much higher potential fall. The cracks were awkward width and my daypack caused some awkward leaning finish things. This time my dad asked for the rope which was first used to haul his pack up, then belay him. The climax came on the descent after we summitted. I knew how it would work. I belayed him down and then downclimbed the cracks unroped. My dad calmly called out holds like chess moves. Later I knew my dad's heart must have been racing but he remained calm, because he knew if I detected fear in his voice is would mess with my head and potentially endanger me. For many years I marveled as his nerve. I could not imagine being in his position watching his son like that. Nothing put the exclamation point on our relationship like that moment did. The total trust in one another...

I doubted I would ever have the nerve to have my child in a potentially sketchy situation like that until...So it was last year summer and my daughter and I were doing our adventurous off trail backpacking trip in SW Yosemite over tons of snow. We didn't expect dangerously steep snow (or more accurately steep snow without runouts) so we didn't have ice axes. But not all of those slopes did have comforting run outs. So we get to the first of them where I would have liked to have an ice axe. It isn't all that bad and the steps I'm kicking are fairly deep, so I don't say anything. But then we get to a very hairy one. The snow conditions were sketchy--in some cases no more than about 2 inches over hard ice. There is no reasonable runout above a bunch of threatening rocks and the velocity reached on a fall would be high indeed. I know I DIDN'T want to remind Dawn that being careless would be potentially....well, you know-- because that would make her tighten up and endanger her. Dawn has a habit of being rather careless with her foot placements normally so I was very concerned but made sure not to let this slip in anything I said. I simply told her (only once) to make sure to follow my steps and put her weight on her toes. She did fine, of course. If I had better assessed the couloir from below I would have been wise to have aborted this route, but I misjudged it, so once we were on it we more or less had to finish it (finishing was no less safe than turning back). Then I finally appreciated what must have been in my dad's head so many years ago: "trust your kid".

Anyhow you can see why I find your report so beautiful!

[hobbitbook]

Thanks for your comments Ian, and your stories of climbing with your Dad and daughter @giantbrookie! Your Dad sounds so inspiring. I can only hope that the future holds more mountaineering trips with my son... best to you both. - Jeanne