North Palisade is a 14,249’ peak in the Sierras, the 4th highest in California. The Palisade Glacier on North Palisade is the largest in the Sierra, but not in California, the largest glaciers in California are on Shasta. There’s no easy route to the summit, no walkoff. The U-Notch Couloir route requires sections of snow climbing, ice climbing, and true 5th class, technical rock. It’s probably the pinnacle of mountaineering in California.
For everyone else West Ridge of Conness was the end of the trip, for me it was meant to be the warmup, but was a bit more than I had bargained for.
Sunday I was up at 8am, unable to sleep with the sun up, despite getting less than 3 hours of sleep after a brutal 25 hour day climbing and hiking Saturday. I was shocked to get up and see Buddy in his car about to start the long drive home, he’d gotten up before me, packed up, and was heading out, he must have gotten no more than 2 hours of sleep.
I was desperately hungry, so I headed into June Lake for some breakfast, then intended to come back and lounge around camp until I could check into my hotel in Mammoth.
After breakfast I head back to camp, and call my guide, Doug Nidever, to check in. We talked about logistics a bit, and what I needed to bring, and how much room I should leave in my pack for shared gear. Then I asked what time we should meet, to my dismay he says I should pick him up at 6am. That means getting up at 5am Monday morning. There goes my plan of sleeping in.
It’s still early, maybe 10am, I have nothing to do for hours, I figure checkin time at the hotel is probably around 3pm, I’m hoping they’ll let me checkin early, but I still have nothing to do for a long time, so I try to rest, I lay in my tent streaming netflix on my phone for awhile. But the day warms up quickly, and it’s soon too hot to be in my tent, I have to get up.
I decide to kill some time by heading up to Lee Vining to the Mono Lake Visitor Center and Museum. I drive there by the long route around the June Lake loop, kill a little time, tried to check in with my other partners from the day before. Devon didn’t answer. Scott did, he had made it back to his hotel all right, and was getting ready to head home.
I kill a little more time by taking the long way back around the June Lake loop, back to my campsite, and start packing up. I figure it’s after 1pm, after I pack up, and drive down to Mammoth it’ll be around 2pm, I’ll try to checkin early, if they say no, I’ve got some errands to run anyway.
I get to Mammoth, I can’t checkin, so I run all of my errands and go try again, they say no again, so I go get some food, and head back, it’s now 3:30pm, finally they let me checkin. I still have a lot of work to do. I need to unpack all of my gear, sort it, and repack for the next leg of my trip, I clearly won’t be getting into bed as early as I’d hoped.
I haul all the crap out of my car, into my room and start sorting and packing, and repacking. It takes a couple of hours, but I get most of it sorted out, it’s after 5:30pm, so I go to find some dinner. It turns out Skadi is back in business. Erica and I tried to have our wedding reception there, they went out of business after we had booked the place causing us quite a bit of last minute panic trying to find a new venue, then they reopened about 6 months later. Excellent timing.
I get back to my room, and decide I should probably move some of the stuff back to my car so I don’t have to do it in the morning.
Around 9pm I can finally turn off the lights and sleep.
5am, I’m up and start getting ready to go. I get ready, then start hauling the last of my stuff to the car. I get everything out of the room, leave the key on the table, and get in my car and realize, “Where’s my phone charger?” Damn it, I left it in the room, run all the way around the hotel, get a new room key, and go grab my charger, leave the 2nd key on the table, close the door behind me, and go get in my car again. Mental check, I’ve got everything this time for sure, and I’ve got that extra liter of water to leave in the car in my nalgene, wait, where’s my nalgene? Damn it, run around the hotel to the front desk again, get another key, fetch my nalgene, make extra sure there’s nothing left in the room this time, leave the key on the table, lock the door behind me, and drive away.
That made me about 10 minutes late picking up Doug.
We start the drive south to Big Pine where we can turn off of 395 and drive up to our trailhead, stopping in Big Pine at a little diner for a quick breakfast.
I hired a guide to do this climb. I’m not a competent ice climber, neither are any of my friends. And, even if any were, this trip is just too big to convince most people to do.
Even with a guide, I like to have some idea what’s going on, so I read up on it, and checked maps. Unfortunatley, google maps isn’t always reliable. It clearly shows a road climbing up to 8400’. I was surprised when the trailhead parking was actually at 7600’, and quite a long distance from where I thought the road would end. This was going to be a much longer approach than I had anticipated.
Fortunately, most of the approach is on good forest service trail. We hiked on solid trail up to 10,900’, slowly. Doug’s preference is to walk 45 minutes, then take a 15 minute break. He was recovering from some illness, so I was hiking stronger than him, and started running ahead a bit, so I got to hike 30 minutes, then take a 30 minute break, 15 for him to catch up, then another 15 for him to take his break.
I was carrying water, Doug wasn’t. There’s a creek that runs along the trail most of the way, so whenever he got thirsty he just drank straight from the creek. I’d have to remember that for the hike down, and save myself 10lbs of water weight in my pack.
From here, we crossed the creek jumping on stones, and started a much steeper ascent on a good, but quickly fading use trail. Before long we were on talus, picking our way across the massive boulders strewn below the terminal moraine of the North Palisade Glacier.
After crossing the Talus we had to start ascending large rock shelves, trying to follow the cairns, but often losing them and just making up our own route for stretches.
Around 6pm we reach our base camp right at the top of the moraine in a nice sandy bivy that already had rock walls setup as a wind shelter. My altimeter is reading 11,900’, lower than I expected. We setup camp. Doug brought along a tarp tent, something that uses his trekking poles for the tent poles, there’s no floor, but it will provide shelter from rain. We stake that thing down hard. Shockingly we actually manage to get a couple of stakes in, but for 4 of the 6 stake out points we tie the tent down to football sized rocks, then stack extra rocks in front of and on top of those for good measure. Then Doug headed back down the hill to try to find water, unfortunately nothing is flowing up here as we’d hoped.
It takes Doug a long time to find water while I hang out at camp relaxing. He shows up and we start dinner with the last of the fading daylight. After we finish eating, we do the final preparations for the camp. The plan is to get up at 5am, so we don’t waste anytime getting to bed.
5am rolls around, Doug isn’t up. He’s still recovering from an illness, and decides to sleep until 6am. But I was awake at 5, eventually I’m too awake to stay in my bag, and get up, Doug follows shortly and we start breakfast.
Neither of us has enough water for the day, and no one wants to walk all the way down the hill for water again, so we find a patch of snow, and melt some water and fill up our packs, and head out around 7am.
We’re really close to the start of the U-Notch, probably about a mile. But, it takes us nearly 2 hours to cross the loose talus of the moraine, then the glacier to the base of the couloir.
At 9am, we start truly climbing. There’s a massive bergschrund separating us, on the glacier, from the couloir proper, and its permanent snow fields above. We rope up, Doug leads, he’ll be leading the whole thing. He climbs up onto the lower lip of the bergschrund, and I follow. Standing there, on the lip, you can look down into the bergschrund, I can’t see a bottom. We’re standing on debris piled up creating a bridge for us. It’s a little spooky.
Doug decides to make things more exciting by climbing up the steepest part of the bergschrund, near vertical ice, with an overhang at the top. Fine for him, he’s been climbing 40 years, and guiding for 30. I’m nervous about this, I don’t know how well I’m going to do. Doug had told me to only bring 1 of my 2 ice tools to save weight, how am I going to handle an ice overhang with only 1 tool? But, I manage the steep ice far more easily than I expected, partially due to the incredibly tight belay Doug kept me on for this. Up and over the steep walls of the bergschrund, past the first rappel anchor I’ll see today, good to see that they do exist, and on into the couloir.
The couloir is deep, rock walls extend 100s of feet over our heads. There are rappel anchors set 40’ above our heads, clearly the snow level can be much higher depending on the season and the year. The climbing is going well. Doug is running out full 200’ pitches, we’ll have to do 7 of these on the ice before reaching the notch at the top of the couloir. Ice climbing is brutally hard on your calves. You only penetrate the ice with your front points, so it’s not even standing on your toes, it’s standing on something slightly in front of your toes, and there’s no respite from this, except at the anchors.
After the 3rd pitch there’s a large rock fall. Like the one we saw on Conness, rocks that size, but probably about 20 of them all at once just let loose, and went raining down the couloir, bouncing off the walls. This makes me nervous, I talk to Doug about it, he says that’s why we’re staying to the left, the whole couloir is sloped to the right, so anything falling will quickly go to that side, making us more or less safe.
Smaller rock falls will be a common occurrence for the rest of the day.
Up and up we go, this kind of climbing is exhausting. After the 6th pitch of ice we can see the top of the couloir. We go off gear, and have to do 100-200’ of scary scrambling on loose rock, and sand on top of ice. At the top of that there’s 1 more pitch of ice to go, and we’re at the notch.
I’m concerned now. I’m exhausted, and my altimeter is reading just over 13,000’, that means there’s still more than 1000’ of climbing to go, and it’s already after 2pm. Doug says he doesn’t think it’s that much further, but his explanation of what’s left isn’t encouraging. He seems confident, so we press on.
From here there are 3 100’ pitches of technical, 5th class rock. Doug said 5.5, Super Topo says 5.2, either way, I’m climbing in heavy mountaineering boots, not rock shoes. But, this goes surprisingly fast, and is pretty easy. I’m far more experienced, and in shape for technical rock, than ice climbing.
We’re still at least 700’ below the summit, I’m still nervous about time, I ask Doug what our hard turn around time is, he says 6pm, it’s about 4pm now, but he thinks descending the route will be fast, about 30 minutes back to the notch, then 1.5 hours to descend the couloir. So, we continue up.
From here we’re still roped in, but we’re no longer truly climbing, it’s exposed 3rd class. There are places where you could easily fall 1000s of feet, but with the rope and short roping technique we’re secure. This goes on for quite a ways. I look at the clock, it’s after 5pm, we still have at least 500’ to climb by the altimeter, I ask again about the time, saying there’s no way we’re going to make another 500’ in the time we have at the pace we’re going. But, just then, Doug says, that’s it, this is the summit.
That can’t be, I think, I expect to get up to him and see it towering above us, but instead, I get up to him, and we’re there, there’s a summit register and everything, there’s no higher ground to be seen. This is it, my altimeter is just off.
We sign the register, take a quick summit picture, then waste no extra time. It is time to head down, 5:30pm.
We start scrambling down what we had just come up, it all goes surprisingly fast. Back to the technical rock, we start the rappels down. 3 rappels go fast, and we’re back at the notch, we’re making good time, I’m getting less nervous about getting down before dark.
For rappelling the couloir we have a full 60m (200ft) single rope, and a 60m, 6mm pull line, so we can do full 200’ rappels, and still retrieve the rope.
We do the first rappel down the couloir, and even manage to rappel past some of the loose sand and rock. That goes well, unfortunately we still have to scramble down some of the loose stuff to get to the next anchor. That’s a little slow, but we’re back on rappel and making good time again, down we go, rappelling the right side of the couloir, that’s the side the rocks fall down, but that’s also the side with most of the rappel anchors.
We’re working fast, no screwing around, get everything setup, double check, safety check, then rappel. We go down the 3rd rappel in the couloir, get on the next anchor and start pulling the rope down. The rope snags, it won’t budge. Doug hauls on the 6mm as hard as he can, he pulls and pulls until he’s exhausted, it won’t move. He hooks into both lines, and swings out into the couloir and uses mechanical devices to help him pull, the 6mm line is stretching, but the rap line isn’t budging, it’s stuck.
We both trying hauling on it together, it won’t move.
We had rappelled around a rock outcropping, it’s possible the knot, or carabiner in the system that allows us to retrieve the rope got jammed somewhere. Doug has to climb back up to free the rope, 200’ above us. I can see there’s an anchor that allows for a more direct descent, less chance of snagging, so after climbing up Doug moves the rope over to that anchor and rappels down to me.
That took more than an hour, now I’m getting nervous about time again, but the rappels are fast, as long as there aren’t more mishaps we’ll be fine.
We do the next rappel. Doug had stopped just short of the anchor so he could see me rappel, most of the anchors were set behind rock walls, to keep you out of the way of rock fall, so I rappel past him to the anchor.
The sling on this anchor is cut halfway through. But someone had tied another sling to that sling above the cut, I clip into that instead, to be safe. I’m off rope, and lean back on the anchor to relax. I feel myself sinking, fortunately it’s a good stance, so I stand up and look at what’s going on.
The sling I’m clipped into isn’t actually tied to the anchor, it’s girth hitched around both strands of the cut sling, it can slide right off, and that’s what it’s doing. I don’t know how whoever placed this survived using it, I was barely weighting it and it was about to fail. Doug is at the anchor now, I point out the problem to him, he ties a knot in the sling to isolate the cut portion out of the system. I reflect on how in a few more seconds, if I wasn’t paying attention that could have turned tragic. Leaning back like that, if I had fallen I would have tumbled more than 1000’ down the couloir bouncing off the rock walls, and flown either into the bergschrund, or over it and down to the boulder fields below on the glacier. Lesson learned, I’m experienced enough I should have recognized the problem before clipping in, I need to pay more attention to these anchors.
The rope snags again. We both start hauling on it, no luck. Doug is getting frustrated, understandably so. We have no idea why the rope is jamming. The last one wasn’t actually stuck, the rope and haul line had just twisted around each other a bunch of times. Not the state either of us rappelled down it in. After fighting with it for awhile, once again, Doug has to climb back up 200’ to fix it. More than an hour is wasted.
While he’s doing that, it’s clear we won’t be getting down in the daylight. This seems like a good place, with a good stance, to take off my pack, and get out my headlamp.
Doug finds his way back to me with the untwisted rope, and says the headlamp is a good idea and takes off his pack. He starts searching, but his headlamp is nowhere to be found. This is bad. We’re at the new moon, it will be very dark, down in this deep couloir on a moonless night.
I tell Doug to take my headlamp, he has to spot the anchors as he rappels, I just need to walk down a hill backwards, he needs it much more than me.
We pull the rope and start the next rappel. By the time Doug is down this rappel it’s dark. I am sitting in pitch black darkness. I have to unhook myself from the anchor by feel, and lower myself onto my belay device all without being able to see my footing, or anything around me. I’m very careful this time, I keep a finger between the ropes to keep them separated and untwisted, there’s no way it’s going to be an issue this time, it is definitely 100% untwisted when I get on the next anchor. This anchor is 2 ice screws Doug brought, he couldn’t find a permanent rappel anchor here. We’re standing in a runnel of water.
We start pulling the rope.
FUCKER! It jams again. Doug is totally blown out. He’s had to reclimb over 400’ of this climb. There’s no way around it, he has to climb back up and unstick this rope again. I stand alone in the dark hanging from 2 ice screws I can’t see while Doug climbs up to fix the rope again. He gets it unstuck, and comes back down. Before pulling the rope he warns, put your pack in front of you, this one may pull rocks down on us. At this anchor there were no rock walls to hide behind, we’re just in the couloir. So, we both take off our packs, and put them in front of us, then try to make ourselves small targets, and pull the rope, fortunately nothing falls. We setup the rappels. I’m nervous about leaving the ice screws. There are at least 2, maybe 3 more rappels required to be back on the glacier, what if we need screws later? These are the only 2 we have.
Doug thinks it’s not an issue, so we’re leaving both of our screws here. To prevent the lines from twisting Doug decides we’re going to rappel both strands of the rope, the single rope and the 6mm, it’s a simple system that eliminates the carabiner that forces the lines next to each other. Both ropes have been sitting in the runnel of water for awhile, and are now starting to freeze. I’m not excited about rappelling on 6mm, I know it’s strong, probably to about 1700lbs, but in general that’s weaker than I’d like to be trusting my life to.
We setup the rappels, and Doug takes off. Once again, I’m left alone in pitch black darkness. I can’t see the anchor right in front of me. Once Doug is off, I carefully trace the line of the sling from my harness to the anchor and unscrew that carabiner, and unhook it and lower myself onto my belay device, and start the descent heading for the light of the headlamp 200’ below.
As I descend, I see a 2nd light come on. Thank God, I think, Doug has found his headlamp, and there must be a good ledge here. I get down to Doug, he gives me my headlamp back. I can finally see again. I look down, I can see the couloir rounding off, and becoming less steep below, that’s the bottom. I look at the anchor, I recognize this one, it’s the one right above the bergschrund! This is it, the last rappel to the glacier. The rope pulls easily, I don’t know if it’s because of the new setup, or the frozen ropes, either way it’s an improvement.
Down we go, onto the glacier, this rope pulls easily as well. Safety at last. It’s 11pm, and we start the walk back towards camp across the glacier.
It’s very dark, the mountains are just shadows, it’s hard to navigate. Doug thinks our camp is at the highest part of the moraine, so that’s what we head for.
I get to the base of the moraine, I can see where it ends above me and start climbing up. I’m exhausted, Doug is more exhausted than me after all the extra hauling and climbing, so he’s falling behind as I scramble up the moraine. Up and up I go, tired, but I can see the end is near. I push hard for the top, get up, and look, and see all I’ve reached is a terrace, there’s 200’ more moraine to climb above me. My water runs out.
No sense in putting it off, I just want this day to be over. So I start climbing the next bit. This feels like it goes faster, I top out, and look down and recognize the flat, smooth rock I’d been sitting on in the sun the day before. At the top of the moraine there is a strong wind ripping past me. More than 40MPH, and sustained, with stronger gusts. I look back thinking I’ll yell to Doug to tell him where the camp is. He’s well behind me at this point. But, then I rethink that, a lot of this terrain looks similar, maybe I should make sure this is actually our camp first.
It’s after 1am. I scramble down the other side of the moraine, and head down to the camp.
Something’s wrong, the tent is missing. No, wait, it’s not missing, it’s tied down by 1 rock now flapping in the breeze. And the other stuff …
Both our bags and pads are gone! They’ve blown away! Shit! It’s a LONG walk back to the car from here, and without bags it’s going to be a cold night.
I forget about Doug, drop my pack and start searching the terraces headed down the hill hoping the stuff didn’t get very far.
Before long I catch a glimpse of something, and run over to it, it’s my sleeping bag! Thank God. Then, shortly after that I find a stuff sack. There’s hope. I climb back up to camp and stuff everything into my backpack to prevent it from blowing away again, and go to look for Doug.
He’s just cresting the moraine, I signal to him and call him over. It takes a few minutes. As he walks up I tell him I’ve got some bad news, the bags and pads blew away. But I found my bag already. I tell him if he wants to make some water, I’ll go look for the bags, but he’s wiped out, he says he can’t do anything, he needs to go to sleep. I say ok, he gets to work repairing the tent, and I run down the hill again looking for stuff. A ways below where I found my bag I find his. Awesome! I continue down a bit further looking everywhere, no pads.
It’s dark, the pads are rigid, who knows how far they might have gone in this wind. I give up and head back to camp. I give Doug his bag, he’s shocked I found it. And I get to work making some water, so I’ll have something to drink.
Doug has the tent set back up. He’s about to head to bed, I ask him what time we’re getting up for Mt. Sill in the morning? He replies, “Noon.” I think we both know Mt. Sill isn’t going to happen. The tent is getting battered by the wind, it’s flapping very violently. I decide that looks miserable, there’s another bivy spot, almost in a cave about 20 yards from this one, I tell him I’m going to sleep there.
I finish making a little water, grab my stuff, and head over. My new Gregory Alpinisto 50 pack has a removable framesheet to be used as an emergency bivy pad. I put that under my butt, and rest my back against my pack. The ground is hard, but I’ve got enough insulation from it now to keep me warm. The wind is violent, and sounds like its getting worse, I’m protected, but there’s dust blowing around, so I tie my bandana so it covers my eyes and mouth, and manage to fall asleep. I was too tired to even touch the water I’d just made.
Morning rolls around. I can’t sleep past 8am. The wind died down as the sun came up. I spend some time lounging listening to an audio book I’d downloaded to my phone to make the drive more pleasant. At 11am Doug is up. We start packing, and start the long hike down at noon.
At first we hiked down the terraces looking for the pads, thinking we might get lucky. But, my guess is they blew down the hill 1000s of feet over a big cliff, and off to the lakes far below. They were gone.
I push hard for the first creek, then stop to wait. I drink, and drink and drink. Just sticking my face straight into the creek. Trying to recover from dehydration. Doug catches up with me there.
It’s 1pm, we’re back at the forest service trail. I tell him I’m just going to push hard for the car from here, but he can take as long as he wants. I just want to get down, and clean myself off in the creek, and put on my shoes, and sit in my car and listen to my audio book and dream about the cheeseburger I’m going to have once we hit town. Then I take off.
I stop only a couple of times where the creek is conveniently close to the trail so I can gulp down as much water as I can stand, but otherwise push hard for the car, finally arriving at the bottom at 4:11pm.
I wash off using my magic no rinse body wash, take off my boots, get out fresh socks, but decide to let my feet air out for awhile. I had a liter of fresh water in the car. I use my Nuun tablets in it, get in the car, turn on my audio book, and air conditioning, and relax. The Nuun makes me feel like I’m finally rehydrating. Doug shows up about 1.5 hours later. We pack up our gear, and start the long drive home.
In Bishop we stop for Mexican, not the cheeseburger I had been dreaming of, but it will do. Neither of us had much of a breakfast. I’d had no lunch, no breakfast, no dinner the night before, no lunch the day before. I’d just eaten a small bit of dried fruit in that entire time. So, I was hungry. I order 2 full meals, and manage to eat most all of it. I drink several large glasses of iced tea to rehydrate, and caffeinate myself, I won’t be getting home until after 1am for sure.
After dropping Doug off in June Lake, he offered to let me stay the night there, but I was anxious to get home to Erica and Nibbler, so I set off, tired but well caffeinated, and as expected arrive home about 1:30am.
