Thunderbolt Peak to Mt Sill Traverse
14 July 2019
I love long, athletic days in the mountains, covering lots of ground on easier terrain. So essentially peakbagging. Maybe not the most fashionable thing to do these days but I never claimed to look good or be “with it”. ha!
Garrett and I had a false start on this one a week earlier — first, we were unable to get an overnight permit for the NF Big Pine Creek. So, we decided to day trip it. After getting almost no sleep (at least partly due to the big Ridgecrest earthquake that eve) we hiked up onto the glacier at which point Garrett’s crampons fell off his hiking boots. No way would he be able to front point up one of the north side couloirs. Shot down in flames! For my part, I allowed the lack of sleep to affect my mood, something I hadn’t really confronted before. Our combined “stoke” was running low and it just didn’t feel right.
The next week was a little rough after seeing the couloirs in such incredibly good condition. As Tom Petty prophesied, ” the waaa-aaa-iiii-ting is the harrrrdest part …. ” I had seen these magnanimous couloirs dumping rocks all through the drought years, and while Garrett and I lounged on the moraine, we didn’t hear a single crack of rockfall. It was perfectly still and the Palisades were just begging to be climbed!
Garrett was out of town the following weekend, so I had to find a new partner. Cam, a wild beautiful Australian with a heart of gold, put me in touch with Paul who was pretty much the best partner anyone could ask for. I’m very grateful to have met these two first class guys since moving to San Diego. I’m not 100% sure Paul knew what he was signing up for, as slogging a heavy pack onto the glacier camp through hordes of mosquitoes required a fair bit of suffering, but he never complained once!
Once again, we almost got shut down before ever reaching the climb. Paul and I failed to get the overnight permit, after braving the Eastern Sierra Interagency Visitor Center, and got stopped by a ranger within a few miles of the trailhead. To say the least we had to turn our charm up to the max. The ranger was a climber and he/she who is to remain anonymous seemed to sympathize with our plight. Basically we emphasized our Leave No Trace credentials and the fact we would not be camping anywhere near anyone else (i.e. at First, Second, Third Lake or even Sam Mack Meadow). After that, we pretty much just begged … and the wonderful ranger begrudgingly sent us on our way … thank you thank you thank you !!! … In the end, we did not see anyone above Sam Mack Meadow the entire time, and hardly anyone on our hike out either, as we left on a Monday morning.
The Palisades are without question the most alpine region of the Sierra and I’ll leave it to better writers to describe its inspirational qualities. The ridgeline as viewed from the glacier basecamp revved our enthusiasm into the redline! Our very own jagged line in the sky!
For once maybe I can describe some technical details regarding our climbing style. We cramponed up the deliciously crunchy neve of Thunderbolt’s North Couloir during the morning. Honestly we didn’t even start that early because we both wanted to get some rest after the big approach day. We wore mountaineering boots and we each had two tools, although really we could have gotten away with one tool each — the steepness might roll up to 40 degrees at the top but most of the way it hovers around 35 degrees — quite comfortable. Cam had lent me a pair of lightweight, Petzl Gully skimo axes and these babies were perfect for the job. I just don’t find myself lugging around a heavy bulky full-size mountaineering axe much these days. Owing to the amazing snow year, the bergschrund was completely covered. All this amounted to an extremely efficient means of reaching the rock.
Once on the rock, we lashed our boots and tools to our small summit packs and switched to rock shoes which stayed on all the way until we downclimbed off Polemonium. Although this isn’t really a good way to go light, I loved having the rock shoes on all day. It was just plain fun to take a few variations here and there, which had some harder climbing in a more exposed position high on the ridge, and feel great about it.
As for our rope situation, we brought a 30 meter long, 9.5 mm single rope and another 30 meter long, 8.5 mm half rope, which we essentially used as a tag line for longer raps. This setup gave us a lot of flexibility. We could lead short pitches on the single. We could also do short raps on the single without the hassle of flaking / tossing a long rope. And if we needed to do a longer rap, we could tie the two ropes together. Our sum total rope useage went as follows:
- Paul led Thunderbolt’s summit block (thanks for the toprope, Paul !!!)
- I led Starlight’s summit block (much easier than Thunderbolt’s, although very exciting)
- We made a double rope rappel shortly after leaving the Starlight summit area
- We made a short single rope rappel over the infamous notch between Starlight and North Palisade
- Paul led a short chimney pitch on the single rope up to the North Palisade summit (some loose rock in this area convinced us to break out the rope)
- We made two double rope rappels to reach the U-Notch from North Palisade
- We belayed the downclimb off Polemonium’s summit toward Mt Sill (by this point we were both tired and it just seemed like the safe thing to do, belaying the last exposed technical climbing of the day)
This left a lot of room for soloing long stretches of ridgeline which we both enjoyed immensely. To really go fast, and it is amazing how quickly some climbers can run this ridge, you’d have to downclimb all the rappels and ideally run up and down the tricky summit blocks unroped as well. There’s a lot of faffing about involved in lead climbing the summit blocks, as both the Thunderbolt and Starlight blocks are just kind of in awkward positions with big holes between the boulders that you have to hop around and try to get the rope situated nice.
The most memorable sections of unroped scrambling we did were:
- a nice 4th class pitch above the top out on SW Chute #1 to Thunderbolt, followed by an exposed ledge traverse to the summit block
- downclimbing a 5.6 chimney off Thunderbolt along with the 3rd class cracked slabs back to the top out on Underhill Couloir
- staying high on the ridge, instead of dropping into a snowy gully, to reach Starlight’s summit area (there was a crazy fun thin ledge walk we used to stay high)
- the 4th class / easy 5th run up to Polemonium (head to the right and wrap around the back side)
- in between these bits, just lots of fun blocky third class here and there …
The other thing that would help speed things up (obviously) is a familiarity with the routefinding. We spent a fair bit of time discussing our instincts as to where the natural line seemed to go. Steph Abegg / Mark Thomas’ beta pictures were also very helpful. Simply put there’s a lot of decisions to make and this was all part of the fun and games!
All in all, I thought we did pretty good considering Paul and I are alpine noobs. We made it up to Thunderbolt’s summit area around 10:00 am and reached Sill’s summit just as the sun was setting (must have been around 8:30 pm) for a total of ~10 hours traversing the rock. Hell, we finished it!
Unfortunately I have to take the blame for botching the descent off Sill as it got dark, and this really added a lot of wandering to our climb. I had scrambled Sill a few years ago and thought I remembered what to do. WRONG! It turned out we launched off the ridge onto the descent about 100-200′ BELOW the standard descent which accesses the ledge system leading to Apex Peak. This put us on some ancient rappel route down the northwest face. Even more disorienting in the dark. All I can say is, Paul handled my mistake all in stride and really showed a lot of character, staying positive the whole way. He handled most of the responsibility in rapping first, and building solid anchors which was by no means the easiest thing to do — the northwest face was pretty damn chossy.
Some long hours into the night, we found ourselves downclimbing miles of snow back to the Palisade glacier. The rhythms were strangely soothing as we let our minds drift into sublime thought-LESS-ness like the emptiness and peace mountain monks reach through concentrated meditation. We walked down together and basked in the moonshadow of the ridge we had just climbed cast onto the glacier a perfect jagged outline of the whole awesome massif. I think we were both very tired by this point and not moving too quickly. No matter, I really like this feeling of being so tired and knowing you gave it your all.
Some time shortly before dawn we finally reached our camp. It was a fine sight and we crashed hard. We slept in and had a big breakfast. I packed up camp so slowly and just wanted to sleep all day … but we both had to get back to work or at least make an appearance at the office and show some semblance of getting something done. For the next few weeks I had such sweet dreams of running across the ridge … bluebird skies … and the snowy range beyond … thanks to Paul for being such a champion partner and sharing a great adventure!
