I’m two mountains closer, but still two mountains short, in my quest for the summits of California’s 15 14ers

For the third time in the last ten years, I’m heading home from the Sierra Nevada having fallen short of my 14er summit goals.

However, I am by no means heading home empty-handed having summited two of the lower 48’s more difficult 14,000-plus-foot mountains, Middle Palisade (14,018’) and Mt. Sill (14,159’).

Unfortunately, a second guided trip to attempt Mt. Williamson and Mt. Tyndall was cancelled because of an unusual (for California, in the summer) stormy forecast. It’s not the first time these two mountains have eluded me. Follow the link below to read an account of my failed attempt to climb Williamson and Tyndall in 2018.

https://paztripreports.blogspot.com/2018/06/will-aborted-quest-for-14ers-abort-14er.html

But enough about my bugaboos, Williamson and Tyndall. This post focuses on my successful summits of Middle Pal and Sill on an arduous, grueling five-day backpacking trip into a remote corner of the John Muir Wilderness in Inyo National Forest, west of Big Pine, California.

Me and Louie, 2 guys, 2 14ers.

 

 

I’m not going to lie, these mountains were significantly more difficult to reach and to climb than I thought they would be…and I certainly wasn’t taking them lightly to begin with. Every day of this trip the Sierra came pretty darn close to sucking the fuel tank of this 70-year-old man dry. Fortunately, I employed a 32-year-old mountain guide, Louie Allen of Sierra Mountain Center in Bishop, California, to help me, and I needed him. I could not have summited these two peaks without Louie’s help. It doesn’t please me to admit that, but it’s true.

I’ve summited all 58 Colorado 14ers, many of them multiple times, without a professional guide; most of them solo. But the Sierra Nevada are a different breed of animal than the Rockies, not unlike the difference between a snarling pack of pit bulls (the Sierra Nevada) and a litter of golden retriever puppies (the Colorado Rockies).

Compared to Colorado, the Sierra Nevada is vast, unforgiving, remote, lonely, rugged and tough…sometimes brutally tough. And 13 of California's 15 14ers are in the Sierras.

I’ve now climbed 13 of the 15 California 14ers and I’ve needed a guide to help me get to the summits of six of them, Middle Palisade and Mt. Sill this year; and North Palisade, Starlight Peak, Thunderbolt Peak, and Polemonium Peak (collectively referred to as the Palisade Crest) in 2015.

If you are really (and I emphasize the word really) interested you can read about my guide-assisted climbs of the Palisade Crest peaks, and/or my solo climbs of five other Sierra Nevada 14ers (Mt. Langley, Mt. Russell, a third summit of Mt. Whitney, Mt. Muir and Split Mountain), along with my solo summits of White Mountain Peak in the White Mountain Range and Mt. Shasta in the Cascade Range.

All of those climbs are detailed somewhere in the following links to articles I have posted on this same blogspot in 2015 and 2018.

https://paztripreports.blogspot.com/2015/08/california.html

https://paztripreports.blogspot.com/2015/08/split-mountain-redux.html

https://paztripreports.blogspot.com/2018/05/california-i-am-here.html

Middle Palisade (14,018’), USA 14er #71, CA 14er #12

A little over a week ago I drove about 1,000 miles from our townhouse in Buena Vista, Colorado to a rental condo in the town of Mammoth Lakes, California and met up with Louie the guide in Bishop, California (about 40 miles south of Mammoth Lakes) on the evening of August 14 to review and discuss my gear. Louie was all about shedding as much weight from my pack as possible. I would later thank him for that, even though there were a few things left behind that I missed having.

The next morning, we met up with Louie’s other client for the trip, Mikko, in the overnight hiker parking lot for the Big Pine Creek trailhead about 30 miles southwest of Bishop where there is a popular complex of Forest Service campgrounds and trails.

Louie is a 32-year-old Ohioan with a master’s degree in recreational management; a short, wiry former high school wrestler. Mikko is a mid-fiftyish Finnish-born polyglot who has been living and working the past 14 years in Orange County, California. His English is noticeably accented but impeccable.

Day 1: We split up the group gear, mostly food and cooking utensils, among us, with Louie shouldering the lion’s share of the weight, including the climbing rope and related gear that he would be using to help us get up the mountains. 

With two liters of water, food, clothes, tent, sleeping bag and my personal climbing gear (harness, micro spikes, ice ax, helmet), plus a day pack strapped to my larger backpack, my pack was probably pushing 50 pounds.

Mikko looks back on the first leg of our trip.

 

The well-named Long Lake.

 

We started out hiking about four miles on a relatively gently rising, not-well-maintained Forest Service trail in the drainage of the South Fork of Big Pine Creek, then up another 2.5 or so miles on a steeper use trail. In total we gained a bit more than 3,000 feet to reach the well-named Long Lake where we set up camp at about 10,800 feet just below the rapidly melting Middle Palisade Glacier that fans out below the east face of its namesake mountain.

 

The cathedral-like setting of our campsite (note tents near center of photo) with Middle Pal catching the last rays of the day's sunshine.

Day 2: Early the next morning, before sunrise and under head lamps, we crossed the creek one more time and headed into what would prove to be the first of many seemingly endless expanses of talus that would challenge and vex me for the entire trip.

Talus.

Talus is, essentially, fields of jumbled rocks that have been pushed down mountainsides by advancing glaciers. Thus, talus fields are growing larger as the glaciers steadily melt away. The size of the rocks in the talus ranges from a city transit bus or 18-wheeler size down to household appliances, like refrigerators and washing machines, with a healthy smattering of toaster-sized rocks scattered about in the crevices of the larger rocks. Occasionally, there are patches of bare ground in talus fields but crossing talus fields is mostly accomplished by hopping from rock to rock.

Generally speaking, the vast majority of the rocks in talus fields are stable, having settled and wedged into place over the eons. But there are occasional wobblers and rollers capable of sending a hiker crashing headlong, potentially catastrophically, into the rubble of unforgiving rock.

Some climbers are better at hopping through talus than others. I’ve never liked it. Back in the day I’d say I was an average to maybe slightly about average talus hopper. Unfortunately, those days are long gone.

Now I’m a 70-year-old man with declining balance, paper-thin skin and bench press numbers in free-fall. I worry about the stress on the pins holding a broken ankle together. I worry about the pounding that my knees and hips are taking and, most of all, I worry about falling and breaking something important in one of these vast talus fields. At one point I told Louie that, if I fell and broke a hip, they’d probably chopper me straight to the nursing home.

Oh, and by the way, did I mention that these vast expanses of talus are rarely on flat ground. More often they’re tilted at a significant pitch.

Talus, talus and more talus.

Thus, as Louie hopped along effortlessly through the talus and Mikko moved along at a solid clip I plodded along behind them, using my trekking poles for additional balance points and trying to maintain my focus on every tedious step in a mind-numbing, soul-sucking slog from rock to rock.

The gully on Middle Pal goes straight to the mountain top.

The gully begins @ the red rock.

Eventually, we reached the base of Middle Palisade and the nearly vertical gully of loose, flaky rock that rises, 2000-plus feet straight up to the mountain’s summit.

The entrance to the gully is marked by a red band of iron-stained rock and that’s where we donned helmets, harnesses and roped ourselves together to begin the real mountain climbing.

Louie was, of course, the lead climber sometimes using spring-loaded “protection” devices but more often by looping the rope over solid rock outcroppings to establish belay points that would ensure that if Mikko or I slipped we’d dangle by our harnesses from the end of the rope rather than plummeting a thousand feet down the gulley to near certain death. Just for the record, that never happened.

In groups of three climbers like ours the weakest climber is usually placed in the middle of the group. Guess who the middleman in our group was?

But I’ve always done pretty well at hands and feet vertical climbing and have a pretty high tolerance for exposure (i.e. the potential to fall a very long way). Mikko was/is a solid, capable climber and Louie was skilled, quick and efficient managing the rope that provided the three of us with maximum protection. So, the three of us moved along at a nice clip, steadily working our way up the gulley to reach the summit well before noon.

There was only one other climber on the mountain with us, a twenty-something from Santa Barbara; a nice guy and a very capable climber who was free-climbing sans rope or protection. I’ve free-climbed sections of rock somewhat similar to Middle Pal but, by myself, I’ve never climbed anything as sustained and complex, or with rock as loose and crumbly as the Middle Pal gully. And I most certainly have not free-climbed anything like it. Even in my prime I don’t think I would have felt comfortable on Middle Pal without Louie and his rope.

Clouds were forming before noon, so we didn’t spend a lot of time on the summit before heading down. Now Mikko, formerly the third climber in our rope group, was the lead climber helping Louie select the route down through the gully (Louie was “uphill” behind us providing belay protection with the rope). I thought Mikko did a great job of route finding and soon enough we were passing back through the red-stained rock and had our helmets and harnesses removed and the rope stowed away to begin the agonizingly slow, mind-numbing decent through the talus to get back to our base camp at Long Lake. I should note here that crossing talus going uphill is not fun, but hopping through it going downhill, with the constant tug of gravity pulling you forward, is even worse, especially on legs that have grown wobbly from the exertion of the previous day’s backpack to the base camp followed by the climb up and down Middle Pal’s long gully.

Suffice to say that, by the time we got back to the base camp at Long Lake, I was gassed. Louie filtered water and boiled it on a propane burner for soups and hot chocolate and cooked up some type of mac and cheese concoction that was ample and filling.

Day 3: After two nights camping at Long Lake, it was time to move to another base camp for the climb of Mt. Sill, and the day came with a couple of big surprises. 

Unbeknownst to me, Mikko was losing a toenail due to the pounding that feet often take inside even the best-fitting boots. Apparently, the pain was such that Mikko had told Louie he was going to drop out and go home.

I had no inkling there was a problem and was shocked when we stopped at a trail junction near Willow Lake to re-divide the group gear and bid farewell to Mikko. I nearly teared up. I liked the guy. He was/is a capable, strong hiker/climber and his disappointment at dropping out was palpable. We did a bro hug, and then he was gone.

But, as Louie and I turned west into the drainage of a different fork of Big Pine Creek, I also realized that Mikko’s leaving could be a good thing for me, because I now had the one-on-one attention of the guide and it would be easier for us to hike at my pace.

A second surprise for me on this third day of the trip was the difficulty of the hike. I was thinking/hoping that moving from base camp to base camp would be sort of like a day off. But it was not going to be a “day off” and that reality quickly set in.

I think Louie is trying to figure out where we are, and I'm wondering the same thing.

Instead, we moved roughly 3,000 vertical feet up a drainage that very few people have been in. Along the way Louie revealed to me that, in his 11 years guiding in the Sierra, he had never approached Mt. Sill on this route. Nor was he aware of anyone that had.

It was slow going through rugged, steep, uncharted territory in full backpacks that were now slightly heavier after Mikko’s departure. We negotiated a wide variety of challenging terrain, including thick patches of ankle-grabbing willows in the creek bottom, loose scree and some occasional hand and foot climbing through and over rock outcroppings that had me removing my backpack so the two of us could hoist it up some narrow, steep sections. But, a bit of good news, there was relatively little talus on the route.

Our grassy campsite by a mountain tarn was like an oasis in a sea of rock.

Finally, late in the day, at just below 12,000 feet elevation, when my tank was once again nearing empty, we arrived at an unnamed tarn (Sierra-speak for small pond) directly below Mt. Sill’s imposing hulk. And there we found, just steps away from the turquoise waters of the tarn, what we both agreed was one of the best, if not the best, campsites we’d ever seen. The site was roomy, virtually flat and covered in soft, thick grass! Yes, grass!! Soft green grass like you’d find in a suburban yard, something that is virtually non-existent and rarely seen on the east side of the Sierras.

That's me relaxing with a hot cup of soup under the imposing hulk of Mt. Sill.

I got buck-naked and walked through the grass to the edge of the tarn thinking I’d go into the tarn’s clear icy water Baptist-style (aka full immersion). But I quickly came to my senses (aka chickened out) and did more of a Presbyterian-style dip that allowed some of my more, ahem, "sensitive" body parts to remain out of the cold water.

Mt. Sill (14,159’), USA 14er #72, CA 14er #13

Day 4: In theory, with less than 3,000 feet of gain needed to reach the summit of Mt. Sill this could conceivably be a fairly easy day. That was a pipe dream. Mt. Sill is not a simple or easy mountain to climb, and there was plenty of talus that needed to be crossed to reach a gully still filled with frozen snow that had to be ascended to just to get started on the relatively complex Class 4 and 5 climbing.

Negotiating the frozen snow in this couloir was job #1.

To save weight we brought microspikes instead of crampons and the snowfield we had to cross in a steep couloir on the north-facing side of the mountain was frozen solid, almost like a rock. Louie ventured out on what was, essentially, a steeply-pitched sheet of ice and set a belay to protect me as I stepped out onto the snow furiously trying to kick steps and pound my ice ax into the frozen snow in order to gain enough purchase to embolden me to try another step. It was, in fact, a moment of self-doubt. But, I eventually found enough moxie in me to move up and across the snow/ice sheet to the relatively stable rock on the other side of the gully where we removed our spikes and stowed axes and trekking poles to begin the real climbing.

By my standards, the climbing route was fairly complex with lots of exposure and class 4/5 maneuvering required.

We reached Sill’s relatively spacious summit block a little past 11 and stayed nearly an hour to enjoy one of the finest, clearest, calmest summer days the Sierra Nevada can offer. We could easily see Mt. Whitney and Mt. Russell far to the south. Looking east we could see Big Pine far below and across the Owens Valley to the White Mountains and even further beyond to the mountains in Nevada. With a cloudless blue sky and barely even a breath of wind it was, simply put, a spectacular day on a spectacular mountain.

We could see to Mt. Whitney and beyond on a remarkably clear day.

Sill's next door neighbors, the Palisade Crest and the Palisade Glacier.

 

Looking east over the Owens Valley, the White Mountains and on into Nevada.

Of course, we now had to get back down and off the mountain. Fortunately, the sun had softened the snow in the couloir, and it was relatively easy for me to kick steps and use indentations called snow cups to descend, more or less, straight down the snow field to – you guessed – a field of talus. Once again, it was painfully slow going on wobbly legs but I eventually made it back to our fabulous, grassy campsite and celebrated my 72^nd 14er summit with two big mugs of hot soup, another of hot chocolate and two heaping bowls of Louie’s chicken curry (which is nothing close to Betsy’s chicken curry but still tasted pretty good).

Day 5: One of the downsides of being in a remote place where few other people go is that you have to find a way out. Neither one of us had much interest in descending back down the same creek drainage we used to ascend to the campsite by the tarn so we decided to head north through Contact Pass and descend into the drainage of the North Fork of Big Pine Creek, a beautiful and popular area with a series of spectacular lakes and a well-maintained trail that would take us directly to the lot where our cars were parked.

Me and Contact Pass.

That sounds great and, compared to the alternatives, it was great. But it wasn’t easy. The ascent of Contact Pass was quite steep and we had to labor through thick, slippery scree; but the pitch was, relatively speaking, pretty short.

The descent on the other side of the pass was much longer and it featured the worst talus field of the entire trip. Because it was “young” talus many of the rocks had not settled firmly in place creating a substantial number of “wobblers”. So, once again it was a very slow, tedious grind to reach the flatter ground near the lakes and, eventually, the main trail.

Just as we nearing the bottom of Contact Pass and leaving behind the worst of the talus we encountered the first people we’d seen since Mikko left us two days earlier, a couple of guys and some elementary-aged kids that were all bounding and hopping, seemingly effortlessly, through the talus.

After they passed Louie became quite excited and asked. “Do you know who that is?”

I had no idea.

“That’s Tommy Caldwell,” he exclaimed.

Which told me, essentially, nothing.

“Full confession Louie,” I said. “I've never heard of the guy.”

Well, according to Louie, Tommy Caldwell is the best American rock climber of all time, famous for his ascents of complex, difficult routes on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park; and, because Caldwell is missing most of his left index finger. Louie was quite certain that the guy we encountered was Caldwell because he too was missing most of his left index finger. Apparently, Caldwell and his kids, along with a photographer, were in route to Temple Crag, a well-known rock-climbing mountain that can be accessed from Contact Pass.

If your knowledge of famous rock climbers is as thin as mine, here’s a link to Caldwell’s Wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Caldwell

Almost home. This is one of several lakes on the North Fork of Big Pine Creek that can be accessed from a well-maintained trail. According to Louie it's glacial silt that gives the lakes the aqua/turquoise color. The mountain on the left is Temple Crag, a frequent destination for rock climbers.

Soon enough, after a brief stop at a mountain cabin once owned by the actor Lon Chaney, we were back at our cars and the trip was over.

The next day the owner of the SMC guide service called to tell me the trip to Mt. Williamson and Mt. Tyndall had been cancelled due to weather.

So, I luxuriated for a few days in the Mammoth Lakes condo, spending most of my time eating, drinking coffee and working on this report before heading east for Colorado.