Middle Palisade

Middle Palisade 14,012′
Sierra Nevada
Archival Series (statistic approximate)- Climbed 9/23/2012
Total Time: 2 days
Distance: 16 miles
Elevation Gain: 6800′
Crux: Class 3
Trailhead: Big Pine Creek, full services

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After a successful backpack climbing a chunk of the 14,000′ summits in the southern Sierra Nevada, the natural progression was to set my sights on the Palisades. Home to another six 14ers, they represent a dramatic step up in difficulty. I was nowhere near ready to tackle anything technical in the North Palisade grouping, it would be years before taking on the traverse. Split Mountain at the southern end of the subrange was the easiest, but I felt like I should save it to do with Holly (as of now, it’s still my last CA 14er to climb). That left Middle Palisade. Rated third class with a little bit of glacier travel, I felt like it was within my abilities and would serve as a good introduction to the Palisades. After picking up my permit in Lone Pine, I headed north into Big Pine and turned up into the Sierras. It was my first visit to the trailhead, and the views are stunning almost from the start, Norman Clyde Peak and Middle Palisade at the head of the South Fork of Big Pine Creek.

It was late September, and I hiked through patches of Aspen growing along the creek as I slowly climbed up into the basin. At some point I missed a bridge and had to do a tricky creek crossing to reach on the trail on the east side of the creek, tough with a heavy pack. After ascending a few hundred feet, the trail began to aggressively switchback.

I quickly climbed up over 9,000′ to a flatter stretch above Willow Lake. Being late in the season, the water levels in the small lake were quite low and seemed a bit stagnant. Climbing above Willow Lake, the views open up in a side canyon to the west leading towards Contact Pass, Mount Gayley and Temple Crag high above. I continued along until I reached Brainerd Lake and the end of the officially maintained trail.

There were a number of great campsites, but I wanted to get a bit higher in the basin to make the following day a bit easier, continuing past on a well defined climbers trail climbing several hundred feet to the head of Finger Lake.

I boulder hopped around the western shores up to a short headwall and up to the next flat bench a bit higher up where I found a number of suitable spots near a small glacial tarn, spilling over the cliffs with water trickling down to Finger Lake below. I pitched my tent in a clearing near the stream, and scouted out my route for the following day before making dinner and heading to bed.

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With a long day ahead, I awoke well before sunrise. After making breakfast I continued up the basin, slowly climbing up the steep talus and boulder field above. The sun was just beginning to rise over The Thumb to the east and illuminate the glacier above. The Middle Palisade Glacier is split in half by a large central moraine, and I aimed for this as I climbed through the boulders, picking up a climbers trail on the moraine itself.

My goal was to reach a class 3 ramp on the southern half of the glacier that would take me to the large central chute splitting the East Face of Middle Palisade, leading all the way up to the summit. At the top of the moraine, I stopped to put on my brand new crampons, pulling them out of my large backpacking backpack, forgetting to bring a smaller summit pack with me for the ascent. Transitioning onto the glacier, I quickly found a problem with my route choice- the randkluft, or deep crevasse that forms where the glacier pulls away from the headwall, was about 10′ deep with a good 10′ gap keeping me from reaching the ramp. In spring time, when this gap is filled in with snow, reaching the ramp was trivial. Now, I was staring into a chasm with no clear way to get across.

I was actually about to give up entirely when a team of two came trudging up the moraine.

“Guess we should have brought an aluminum ladder!” one of them exclaimed as they moved across the glacier past me.

The two stood back and examined the route, and I sat down to watch them. One was clearly more experienced than the other, and dropped directly into the randkluft, finding some steps kicked into the vertical ice by other climbers. The ramp was now about 10-15′ above his head, and he scrambled up left before working back right and onto the ramp. The rock was steep, but he had made it look easy.

“Why don’t you go next?” the other climber said to me.

I dropped into the randkluft and started up the rock, finding it easily fourth class and all the more awkward with my large backpacking backpack on. I gingerly made my way to the first climber on the ramp. It was clear I had not made the sequence look as easy, and the lone climber left on the glacier was having some serious doubts. The two of us offered encouragement from above, and considering I had almost turned back once, I was all for having two others with me the rest of the climb in case I got into a bind again. But the third climber was not feeling comfortable even dropping into the randkluft without the safety of a rope, and I soon found myself alone looking up the massive chute splitting the east face of Middle Palisade. Route finding was at least straight forward, climbing directly upwards, although I was surprised at how sustained the scrambling was, fairly consistent class 3 with multiple steep steps requiring some mantle moves to work up and over.

It was close to 1500′ of climbing before I reached the Palisade Crest. It was difficult to tell which rock was the highest so I scrambled to a few of the rocky outcroppings before claiming victory, sitting down to take in the incredible views of the rest of the Palisades to the north, Split Mountain to the south, Kings Canyon National Park and the Middle Palisade Glacier below me to the east.

I didn’t spend long at the summit, the tricky downclimb to get back to the glacier weighing on my mind. So I started back down the steep chute, slowly scrambling down the steep third class. At one of the steeper steps, my large backpack got caught up on a rock edge, and I took it off and lowered it down to the ledge below me. As I set it down and scooted my butt to the edge to hop down myself, I watched in horror as my backpack slowly tipped then fell end over end, tumbling down the rocky chute hundreds of feet before dropping completely out of sight. The pack had two water bottles, my water treatment system, the rest of my snacks for the day, my crampons and most importantly, my car keys. I assumed my pack had tumbled all the way on to the glacier, my only hope was that it stopped somewhere I could access and not on a ledge out of reach. My pace quickened, a combination of mounting anxiety and no longer having the large pack on my back. I was about 2/3rds of the way down when I spotted it, miraculously having stopped close to 1,000′ down the chute on a ledge. One water bottle was destroyed with the other dented but intact. However my water treatment system, at the time of bottle of concentrated iodine beads that you add water to and then dump the shot of brown solution into your water bottle (pretty sure they don’t make this anymore), had completely shattered. Not only was there broken glass and iodine beads in my backpack pocket, the entire front of the pack was stained brown. I shouldered the dirty pack and made my way back to the ramp, carefully reversing the scramble down into the randkluft, then back onto the glacier with the kicked in steps up the ice.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief once I was back on the glacier, feeling like I had gotten away with one. I dropped down the central moraine, then made my way to the edge of the glacier, filling my water bottle directly from the glacial melt, feeling like it was probably the cleanest water I’d be able to find the rest of the day.

My pack hadn’t dried by the time I reached camp, and I tried to use my tent fly to prevent the rest of my belonging from staining brown- luckily everything would wash out at home. Hoping to avoid refilling my water in any of the more questionable sources downstream, I quickly packed my things and headed down the trail. I tried to hug the shores of Finger Lake but wound up having to wade through the lake at one point.

Clouds began to move in as I passed Brainerd and Willow Lakes, heading down the switchbacks towards the trailhead.

I stopped at the crossing of the South Fork of Big Pine Creek to soak my feet before crossing over and hiking back to the trailhead, hopping in the car and driving back home to Los Angeles.