Morning Light at Thousand Island Lake. Banner Peak in the clouds.
Couple years ago on an outing in the Sierra Nevada I “discovered” this spot near Island Pass. Banner Peak and Mount Ritter are visible from so many places we’ve been, but I had just never recognized them or their significance.
The idea of seeing the view from the top of Banner Peak was compelling. This July, we made it a reality. Great trip – Carol, me, Ken and Sean – despite some challenges from rainy weather.
Thousand Island Lake to Banner Peak pictures. Peak day was pretty rough – lots of talus-hopping, route finding on 3rd class rock, glacier crossing (Carol’s favorite part!), watching for lightning-bearing-death-clouds and so forth. Happened across a great quote that applies – “Remember, it doesn’t have to be fun to be fun!” – Barry Blanchard
Beta on climbing Banner Peak, “arguably the most picturesque peak in the Sierra Nevada” per Summit Post.
Me – late 50’s, bad knees, disinclination to suffer – all good reasons to work the “lightweight but comfortable” compromise to it’s utmost. I’m always searching for that sweet spot – the lightest reasonable pack weight with the most reasonable comfort. We tried out my latest iteration on a 2-night trip to Gable Lakes and Mount Tom in the Sierra Nevada, and I have to say it was one of the best backcountry camping experiences I’ve had yet.
I present this list as a reference point for you – budget, inclination, better research, personal preference – all may push you in a different direction. No worries, but if you find something better, I’d love to hear about it!
I’ll start with the Big Four (usually the Big Three, but in most places I go in the Sierra, a bear canister is a necessity) – pack + tent + sleeping system + bear canister.
Pack – Gossamer Gear Mariposa. I wound up adding a couple panels from a Thermarest Z-Lite to pad the back; doubled as a nice warm-on-my-butt camp chair. Also so light it works great as a peak pack – thus removing even more weight. Winning!
Tent – Marmot Pulsar 2. It was on sale and bigger+ lighter than our 2-person REI tent.
Sleeping system – Z-Packs 20 degree twin; Thermarest NeoAir Xtherm. The Xtherm is amazingly warm. Crinkly when you move. Not the greatest for sleeping naked, a problem which I’ve solved with silk long johns – light, warm and slinky!
Bear canister – Wildideas Bearikade Weekender. Love it and it’s the perfect height to sit on.
Water – we carry a an MSR Sweetwater filter and six Platypus 1-liter bags. Six may sound excessive, but I do not want my alpine start on peak day to begin with a trip to get water. Leave the Camelback or any other drinking hose system at home. Fussy + I guarantee you’ll drag the hose tip in the dirt + extra weight for absolutely no benefit.
Clothing. My rules – ultralight, does the job, fast drying (no cotton!). My list for a midseason trip:
1 pair SmartWool socks. Warm, fast drying and I’ve worn them for over a week at a time…
Boots – Treksta Mid GTX. What you put on your feet is highly personal; all I’ll say is the lightest footwear that meets the need is the best. I’ve climbed many California Fourteeners in cross trainers. Also, unless you’re planning on donning front-pointing crampons, heavy mountaineering boots are just going to make you miserable. Also, heavy boots make your feet sweat, leading to blisters and other miseries…
Pants – Arcteryx Palisade pant. I live in these every day I have pants on.
Shirt – SmartWool t-shirt and Arcteryx Skyline shirt.
Home made cooking pouch – for rehydrating home dehydrated meals.
Food. In the past, this has been a big problem for me. This last trip was the most successful food trip I’ve ever had, primarily thanks to home dehydrated food and the commercial eggs.
Fresh sandwiches, fruits and veggies for inbound day.
Personal Items.
Small toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, TP
Mentholatum. Excellent solution for high altitude stuffies.
Lightweight headlamp (Petzl e+LITE). Usually no extra batteries; I swap them out before going in and then use the partially discharged rejects in my key fobs.
One garbage bag – so many purposes.
“Ten Essentials” bag w/ skeeter headnet, fire making, small bottle of sunscreen, etc…
Camera / extra battery. As if you didn’t know that…
We rock climb so much that I’ve basically been moving from one injury to another.
I recently became aware of a concept called “resting and taking time off from climbing” that many an online climbing blogger claims has some benefit in terms of injury avoidance and getting stronger in the long run. I know, right?
OK, but what’s a person to do if they’re not climbing? Oh, yeah, how about hiking some Sierra canyons and climbing some peaks. It is summer after all, and high season for the aforementioned activities. Plus, we’re in pretty good shape!
Arriving in Tioga Pass late in the evening in early July, we decided to try a hike from our “Tioga Tramps” guidebook, parked and headed up to Gardisky Lake. From the lake, looking up and to the south, there’s an easy Class 1 scramble to the top of Tioga Peak, so we headed up. The “easy” part would be if one had done any high altitude (>10,000 feet) hiking anytime recently. No matter, slow and steady usually overcomes most any obstacle, and before too long we were at the top with a pretty awesome view of the Tioga Pass area.
As has become usual for trips with Mat, short notice, late night driving and camping, big fun and outstanding results.
I made a nice HD video of the funs. It’s HD, so if you’re on a slow Internet connection, you’ll need to let the video buffer or it will stutter and restart. Here’s an explanation of how to enjoy HD videos on the Internet.
This time, the weather looked good for a trip to Yosemite NP – unseasonably warm and dry – sucks for our future water supply; works wonders for winter climbing trips. We spent our climbing time at Pat and Jack Pinnacle – an excellent crag to learn to deal with Yosemite cracks and slabs.
Climbs:
Knob Job, 5.10b trad, 4 stars, Mat led it twice, Carol and I followed twice. I haven’t yet gotten it clean; plan to go back and run laps on it until it goes clean and I’m ready to lead it.
Boneheads, 5.10b sport, 4 stars, Carol led it, I followed twice, Mat followed. The crux is right off the ground on slabby moves, be prepared to smear your climber onto the rock if they fall before the first bolt – there are ankle-breaking rocks in the LZ.
Babble On, 5.10a trad, 2 stars (can’t imagine this rating, it looks like awesome fun), Mat led, Carol followed and cleaned. More adventure maybe than she planned on, as she slipped and fell under the roof and found herself having to self rescue by ascending with Prusiks to get back up on the climb. Well done, Carol. I did not follow in deference to my sore shoulder – the climb looks really physical.
Golden Needles, 5.8 trad, 3 stars, I led the bottom pitch which goes at 5.7 (we saw the second pitch; looked burly and I chose to come back another day, again in deference to my shoulder). I had a couple firsts here:
– about 5 placements up, I looked up and realized I didn’t have enough hand-sized gear for the rest of the pitch, so I lowered, got more gear then reclimbed.
– I encountered maybe 10–15 feet of verticalish, pure crack – I had to place gear with hands and feet in the crack – a first for me and a real confidence booster.
We wanted to get back on Sherrie’s Crack, 5.10c, but it was busy whenever we were in the area. Climbers were running laps on it and trading off leads – some real inspirational stuff.
Speaking of inspirational – guy and gal are there; she’s running laps on Sherrie’s Crack while we’re doing our Knob Job thing. Once we’re off, she gears up to lead Knob Job; the guy starts backing slowly down the hill to get to the belay spot. I detect that something’s amiss; turns out October last he took a whipper on some Yosemite pinnacle, broke his patella (kneecap), had surgery to repair. He showed me the big scar and swollen knee – and next I know he’s going to follow his partner on Knob Job. As he puts it, “I can climb cracks, because I lead with the good leg, stand up and drag the bad leg, then place it in the crack while I move my good leg up again.” Wow.
We’ll be revisting this crag frequently to work those cracks and slabs – our climbing gym is excellent for learning to face climb, but slab and crack climbing opportunities are sparse.
Thanks to Mat for proposing the trip and getting us out and about!!!
Carol sends "Tag Team", 5.10c at Kelly's Rock, UtahRoad Trippin'
Sixteen days, 8 different climbing areas in California and Utah, new rock climbing personal bests, new friends, old friends, givebacks to the climbing community, new climbers pushing their boundaries (and possibly spending less time underground and in canyons from now on!), dinners, drinks – just an outstanding outing.
Climbing friends, keep reading and I’ll be talking about some awesome climbing areas you may never have heard of and/or that I know you’ll want to put on your “must do” lists.
Guidebooks
Please buy guidebooks. I’ve done a lot of writing, and it’s obvious what a labor of love these books are – the authors deserve our support. In general, they’re full of useful data about the general area, climbing history of the area, and can lead to so many awesome adventures.
Climbing guidebooks for this trip!
1 – Pine Creek Canyon / Bishop, CA
Pine Creek Canyon – a place many climbers we’ve met have never heard of (ref. “Bishop Area Rock Climbs”), yet it’s full of beautiful Yosemite-grade granite (without the crowds). Over a hundred sport and trad climbs are listed in the guidebook.
One of our objectives on the trip was to push our trad climbing personal best, so with this in mind, we headed up into Pine Creek to the Barbershop Buttress. The plan was to sport climb “Just a Little Trim” (5.9, 3/5 stars) to warm up, then head to a nice crack nearby to climb “Vegetarian Delight” (5.8, 2/5 stars). Turns out I got schooled on “Trim” as it turned out to be slabby and thin – I bailed, Carol jumped on and soon found herself at the top. We spent the rest of the afternoon reclimbing it; though I reclimbed it 3 times, I never did feel like “OK, I’m ready to lead this” – so we’ll be back.
In the same area is Pratt’s Crack Gully, with 52 sport climbs 5.9 to 13a and 42 gear climbs 5.8 to 5.12a. Our impression is these are Old School ratings so you better bring your “A” game. We’ll be working this area for years to come.
Randy shows off treasures found in the White Mountain peak register
Early July of this year – I had just discovered my SNAFU with the dates for my Whitney Trail permit and Randy was one of the affected parties. Randy thought he could scramble and still make the trip, but together we arrived at the conclusion that 2 weeks in August would trump one week in July.
Randy arrived at SFO on Saturday 8/13; we picked him up and headed to Tiburon for some lunch and a view of San Francisco from across the bay. Crawling through Saturday afternoon traffic in SF, I was reminded why we’re seldom in SF on a Saturday afternoon in a car. Some lunch, a visit to the railroad museum, then it’s “you want to see more City or something wilder?” – something wilder it is. We headed down Highway 1 towards Santa Cruz, stopping to see a few sights along the way. Dinner on the SC Wharf and then home where Randy crashed after a long, long day – Alabama time being 3 hours ahead of us, he was coming up on 20 hours or so of being awake.
Next morning (Sunday), we went to our climbing gym for a little tuneup – turns out Randy, while a beginner climber, has some good intuition for body movement and climbed some nice routes. We abused him a little with a roof problem, some crack climbing and I think a mantel move or two, and all too soon we were all nicely burned out and ready to move on.
On the way home, we decided to head east and get into the mountains right away. We packed all our gear – and Trebuchet – into the camper and headed out; my plan was to sleep just outside the YNP west entrance and then get into the park early in the morning. As we were nearing our camping spot, just a little after dusk, a mountain lion ran across the highway in front of us. Nice. I would not have been more surprised to see a herd of unicorns.
The Donut Lady
Monday morning, up and out and off to the Tuolumne Grove of giant Sequoias. There’s no picture I’ve seen that does justice to how big these trees are. The best perspective we got was actually an old dead tree lying down – incredible. We headed on east, stopping at Olmstead Point to take a look at some big granite. Nice views of Tenaya Canyon, Cloud’s Rest, Half Dome and other et cetera, but the Donut Lady had her back to all the scenery due to other priorities. Takes a lot of frosted deep-fried simple carbs to achieve that profile, I guess.
We crawled on through Yosemite, parked just outside the East Entrance, and headed out for a little leg stretcher up Gaylor Peak. The map on the signage at the trail head called out Gaylor Peak at 12,750 feet, an amusing mistake. Wandering along, taking our time, taking pictures, looking at stuff, we were on Gaylor about 45 minutes later – ostensibly having gained 2,800 feet in that time, we were definitely in shape for any adventure we could dream up! We contemplated the Gaylor Lakes basin, the Cathedral Range and other outstanding scenery while snacking. We then downclimbed off the north end of Gaylor and made our way up to the old mining works. On the way back to the trail head we discovered the wonders of the mosquito bloom after a late summer. Continue reading → Post ID 1511
Mountaineering /n./ – slow walking uphill while not feeling very well…
Polemonium eximium and Mount Muir
Mount Muir is located just off the Mount Whitney Trail, which means it’s in the Whitney Zone, which means it’s a PITA because of the Whitney Lottery. Last January, I collected names and exclusion dates from 3 friends, picked 10 2-night windows, and then sent in my application – and actually got a set of dates.
I misread the dates, thought it was August, got all the parties lined up for that window, then for some reason picked up the permit again early morning July 2 – while planning a different trip to Colorado and Nebraska – and oh, crap, the dates are in July and only 2 weeks away. Carol was flexible but I lost everyone else; long story short after casting a wide net I found 4 people (Michelle, Hugo, Delia and Justin) to make use of the 6 permit slots.
Another big oh, crap – living at sea level and having done no hiking or aerobic activities at all, we were ill prepared for the 18 miles and 12,000 feet of elevation gain and loss involved in getting from the Whitney Portal to Mount Muir and back – 12 miles and 8,000 vertical feet of that with backpacks.
Sunday 7/10 – packed, loaded Trebuchet in the truck, headed for the Sierra Eastside via Highway 120 through Yosemite. Near Tioga Pass, I said something about “we should at least get out and stretch our legs today”; Carol noticed a sign that said “Mono Pass” so we parked, grabbed gear and headed out. Nice, easy hike (apart from fording some flooded streams) and great views along the way. Camped for the night at one of our favorite spots in the Mono Basin. I won’t say where, ’cause I don’t want to find you there. 😛
Monday 7/11 – Mono Pass looked interesting from the west side; let’s go see what we missed on the east side of the pass. The hike starts at Walker Lake and climbs up through Bloody Canyon. Before we started, I assumed Bloody Canyon was named for the iron oxide in the rocks – not too far in, we decided it was named for all the bloody mosquitoes – Carol got to moving really fast once we hit the mosquitoes (of course our bug shirts were back in the truck). There were beautiful, Douglas Iris-filled meadows, but no one wanted to give enough blood to take pictures, so we kept moving. We ran out of food and water at Lower Sardine Lake, which was well worth hiking up to, and turned around. We had some fun along the way doing a short glissade and wading flooded streams with our boots around our necks (“Do not drop that boot in the water!”).
Tuesday – rest day.
Charlie the Mount Dana Marmot
Wednesday – Mount Dana. 13,000 feet, flowers (including one of our favorites, Sky Pilots – one of the Fourteeners, Polemonium Peak, is named for them), pikas, marmots, incredible views from the top – and a great test piece for high altitude acclimatization. We had never failed on a Fourteener attempt if we had climbed Mount Dana first. Great day out, Carol had her best Dana climb yet, snow fields to climb (and glissade on the way down), Charlie the Mount Dana Marmot was there to greet us at the top for the second year in a row. After snacks and some time spent enjoying the views, we made our way back down the mountain. One BIG highlight was getting to glissade down two long snow fields – number one, fun and number two, easy on the legs. Back at the car we headed for Lee Vining and Nicely’s restaurant, which produces the best fried chicken I’ve had anywhere (sorry, Mom) as well as an amazing bread pudding. We’re all about food rewards when we feel we’ve earned them.
Thursday / Friday – rest, drop Trebuchet off for boarding while we’re in the backcountry, meet up with Michelle and Hugo, get permits set up, camp at Lone Pine campground.
When the weather at our favorite destinations is bad (like now), or we’re between outdoor trips (gotta come home sometime), or recovering from injury (frequently), Carol and I spend a lot of time at our climbing gym working on our climbing skills and strength.
Our favorite climbing gym activity is called bouldering, a branch of rock climbing that dispenses with harnesses, ropes and protection gear and focuses on making a few (let’s say typically less than 15) very hard moves relatively close to the ground. Protection from falls is provided by a crash pad and / or spotters (other climbers whose job it is to guide a falling climber onto a fall-friendly surface).
Bouldering is very compelling for a number of reasons, but my favorites are 1) the climber doesn’t have to tie up another person’s time being a belayer and 2) bouldering tends to be a very social activity with a number of climbers working the same problem at a time and giving each other encouragement, beta and tips on technique.
We had gone bouldering outdoors a couple times in the past, but had no crash pad, which severely limited what we were willing to try because of the risk of significant injury from a relatively short fall. Duh, huh? In October we went to a local bouldering hot spot called Castle Rock with our friends Eric and Brian; had a great time and decided to commit to getting a crash pad.
Since then we’ve been on a couple trips to the Eastern Sierra to try out the crash pad and are pretty much hooked. Our Bishop Bouldering guidebook lists 2,000+ climbs in the area, so we’ll not run out of things to do for a long, long time. The bouldering venues in the Bishop area are just unbelievable – the Sierra Nevada crest is to the west and the Inyos and White Mountains are to the east so the views from the top of each climb are just breathtaking.
There’s also a tremendous amount of variety in types of rock and in climbing skills required – from deeply pocketed gymnastic climbs on welded volcanic tuff to thin, technical slabby climbs on granite. We’re better at the former than at the latter ’cause it matches more with what we see in the gym – and it turns out you’re good at what you practice (how’s that for insight!).
We took a lot of video and I’ve spent some time editing them; I think I’ve come up with a couple fun ones.
I have to say I never thought we’d do something like number 4 on this trip, but we met some other boulderers that had done it before and we got some good beta and encouragement. It was so awesome we climbed it 7 times between us over 2 days.
I’ve included a scan from the inside cover of the Bishop Bouldering guidebook for the purposes of a little orienteering. The guidebook is really good – for instance, finding Pocketopia and the Catacombs involves driving around on the volcanic plateau on forest service roads, some of which are unmarked – but we drove right up to both these spots on the first try.
We’ll be off again as soon as we spot a break in the weather around Bishop – snow, rain and nighttime temperatures in the low 20’s don’t work for us.
Namaste, Rick
P.S.
We’re always looking for an excuse to head to the Eastern Sierra to do most anything. One of the best excuses is when friends or family want to go and explore, so help us out and propose a trip!
Email or comment (comments are moderated, sorry, civility is lacking on the Internet at times). I’m on Facebook, too: www.facebook.com/spanel
We love the Eastern Sierra, particularly the stretch from Mono Lake in the north to Lone Pine in the south. It’s a world class destination for outdoors activities of all kinds – we’re usually there for hiking, rock climbing, bouldering, mountaineering, hot springs – and so forth.
These days we’re usually headed to the Eastern Sierra for bouldering, rock climbing or mountaineering – which leads to the matter of downtime or acclimatization – how to spend days recovering from rock climbing and bouldering or how to acclimatize for high altitude mountaineering. Hiking the canyons of the Eastern Sierra pretty much always fills the bill.
Getting there
Click on the map to the right and it will take you to a Google Maps page – you can click “add destination”, fill in your location, and you’ll get driving directions. If you’re flying into the area, most of the guidebooks suggest Reno, NV as the nearest major airport with the quickest access.
Guidebooks
I’m maintaining a list of guidebooks here. The pertinent ones would be “Exploring Eastern Sierra Canyons”.
The Canyons
I made the video from photos we took in three different canyons in three different moods. For Glacier Canyon, it was high summer and the wildflower bloom was peaking. It was fall color time for Lundy Canyon and the Sabrina Basin, and we got a nice surprise after our hike from Sabrina to Blue Lake – it snowed overnight and after about 30 nanoseconds of discussion regarding “should we do it again”, we set off in the snow to Blue Lake.
The video is stored at full DVD quality, so if you get stuttering during playback, you may need to let it buffer (let the little green bar at the bottom of the video grow) for a while. Hope you enjoy it!
Links to the still pictures (more pictures, and at full resolution):
We’re always looking for an excuse to head to the Eastern Sierra to do most anything. One of the best excuses is when friends or family want to go and explore, so help us out and propose a trip!
Email or comment (comments are moderated, sorry, civility is lacking on the Internet at times). I’m on Facebook, too: www.facebook.com/spanel
“Failure comes not from falling down, failure comes from not getting back up again” – Somebody
The cockscomb profile of Middle Palisade
Middle Palisade. 14,012′. The East Face. Class 3. Rated *** – for Awesome. Peter Croft (“The Good, the Great and the Awesome”) says “This route and the East Ridge of Russell are the best class 3 routes I’ve done in the Sierra.” We don’t have enough experience to agree or disagree with Peter, but we can say – the admission price for this climb is high!
Three years ago, Carol and I tried Middle Palisade, and experienced a perfect storm of poor route finding, insufficient conditioning and – more poor route finding (all on me). We did manage to get on the mountain, but it was late, we were pretty tired and we got on the wrong route; a class 4 chute with loose rock. Discretion being the better part of valor, we decided to turn around and live to climb another day.
This time, with almost 2 weeks of acclimatization and some success on Cloudripper under our belts, we decided to try again.
We headed out on the South Fork of Big Pine Creek trail, retracing our steps all the way to what I call “Dinky Lake” – it’s NOT Brainerd – then continuing on up to Brainerd Lake. A nice trail from ~7800′ up to 10260′. There is a use trail from Brainerd Lake up to Finger Lake that climbs 500′ of talus – fun with the ‘ol backpack on.
We found a campsite and turned in early (7 p.m.-ish). Our plan was to get up about 4:30 a.m. – we’ve learned that it’s rarely too soon to start climbing. Off by headlamp about 5:20 a.m., we crossed the Finger Lake outlet and headed up – more talus.
I’ll interject here that the nice climbing on Middle Palisade is about the last 800-1000′; before that you’ll climb mostly talus (with a few snow fields and some heinous scree thrown in) from 10,260’ at Brainerd Lake to ~13,000 feet on Middle Pal. Have Fun!
On the third class ledge, ready to climb
We made pretty good time (going uphill while fresh) and were on the mountain in climbing shoes and helmets, ready to climb, by 9 a.m. First ones on the mountain. We started climbing and found it was really pretty easy going. Guidebooks and internet trip reports had called it “sustained” third class; we still wonder what this means. About every 10-15 feet was a ledge where I could stand with my hands in my pockets – this doesn’t seem “sustained” to me.
A word about rock shoes – we brought ours and it made the climb more fun, I think. One thousand feet up and the same down, the extra security of rock shoes was well worth the extra weight, IMO.
Up through the initial couloir, then there’s a LH chute vs RH chute decision to make – I chose the RH chute as the rock looked cleaner. We fairly quickly found ourselves on steeper ground, but the rock was good and the climbing was easy. You just DO NOT want to fall, because pretty much any injury at all will become serious here 6-7 miles and 5,000 feet above the trail head.
frack-a-whack-a-ding-dong, there's the real summit
Topping out, I climbed up onto what I hoped was the summit blocks and – oh, frack – the summit is actually over there, a couple hundred feet away. Some pretty spicy down climbing off the other side and a traverse, then up toward the actual summit. A couple fun bouldering moves to haul up onto the summit blocks and we’re there; it’s about 11 a.m. First climbers of the day to reach the top. Just awesome views.
To the north, the North Palisade complex is in view – Mt Sill, Polemonium, North Palisade, etc. To the south, Split Mountain seems just a traverse away, and it was easy to pick out the profiles of Mount Tyndall and Mount Williamson. Glaciers, peaks, basins for forever. Amazing.
We goofed around, taking pictures and videos, eating and drinking, signing the peak register, watching other climbers approach us for a good 30 minutes or more. A perfect day, no wind, forever views – doesn’t get any better.
With only half the climb done (there’s the whole getting-down-safe thing, too), we sadly departed the
good times on the summit block of Middle Pal
peak and started the long, long way back to camp. We went down via what would have been the LH chute going up, and found we were right – the rock was cleaner in the RH chute. Down climbing 1000′ of third class rock with scree on every ledge waiting to ball bearing your foot off the ledge – requires lots of attention and careful movement.
About 1 p.m. we were off the mountain, onto the glacier and starting the long trip back. The glacier was fun, then the talus and scree started again. Going downhill on unconsolidated talus with relatively tired legs – our progress could have been tracked with a sundial. But, whatever, I much prefer to go slowly and carefully and finish the day uninjured.
After what seemed like forever (4 hours back to camp), we arrived in camp around 5 p.m. 11 1/2 hour day, but we took it easy on the way up to save energy for peaking, and took it easy on the way down just because. As much as I am not a big fan of simple carbohydrates, the GU’s and Skittles a couple miles from camp helped bring me home.
Back at camp, we dug into the bear canister (Carol calls it “that heavy MoFo”) and ate the heaviest things we could find – so we (I) didn’t have to carry it out. Food, water, a little stretching and we crawled onto the tent around 6:30 p.m. I slept for almost 12 hours.
morning in camp at Finger Lake
Up at the COD, we broke camp and headed out. Somewhere around noon, we dropped packs and I went and fetched the truck. Shortly thereafter, beer, cheese, meatloaf, chips went down and then a quick trail head nap.
We packed up, headed into Big Pine and stopped at Carroll’s Market for our ice cream treat we had been discussing for, oh, about 3 days. It was 100 degrees in Big Pine and when the clerk asked us if we “were ready for it to get hot” we were kind of confused – apparently, it got hotter later that day – we got outta town.
Stopped at Von’s in Bishop to buy yummy things to eat, then off to the Mono Basin (20 degrees cooler) for an awesome evening.
A great trip, a great Fourteener.
Click here for Middle Palisade Pictures (best viewed as a slideshow).
Be careful reading online Middle Pal trip reports. Some writers, I think, over-dramatize the climb (clearly, I have never / would never do that!). The climb on the mountain was really pretty straightforward (ideal conditions); we just were careful not to fall.
We got some beta that you could not approach the start of the third class climb over the glacier without crampons / ice axe. This is not true when the snow is soft, like it was for us. The glacier was one of the easier parts of the climb.
You’ll read about the terrible bergschrund – we had no trouble. I stepped right across; I gave Carol a hand both ways just because her reach is smaller.
IMO, the hardest part of the climb is the approach and exit. Climbing on the mountain (apart from being above 13,000′) was a cruise.
Rush Creek to Thousand Island Lake pictures. Ken and Sean enjoyed the hike in from the Rush Creek Trailhead so much that they returned to the trail head by a different route.
Thousand Island Lake to Banner Peak pictures. Peak day was pretty rough – lots of talus-hopping, route finding on 3rd class rock, glacier crossing (Carol’s favorite part!), watching for lightning-bearing-death-clouds and so forth. Happened across a great quote that applies – “Remember, it doesn’t have to be fun to be fun!” – Barry Blanchard
Panoramic view from Banner Peak. Click through, select “full screen”, pan and zoom, check out the snapshots of landmarks…
North Peak hike pictures. Beta on climbing North Peak.
