High Sierra Topix

How much snow was in the chute when you went up? Last year there was enough to make it so that you could easily climb up the first chockstone and the second one would have been made a lot easier.

I'm not sure where you would have gone up the walls to the left by the 2nd chockstone... From what I could tell it was major vertical crack climbing.. Above what I would be comfortable without a rope. I did have rock shoes but they didn't help at all trying to get up the second chockstone likely because my reach was a little too short or I couldn't perform the very specific friction move to get up the wall on the right side. I would be curious to know when you started to ascend the wall.. Whether it was directly below the 2nd chockstone or before the 1st one.

In terms of the rating system... It really is annoying to see a route like this still called Class 4 in books like Secor and even places like summitpost. Clearly it isn't class 4 by today's ratings and that's all that matters for climbers of today's era like Rogue and myself. And I understand that even today it's an imprecise system but at least we should try and spread awareness about routes like this that they are definitely Class 5.. Albeit low 5.

Yes, we had enough snow in the chute to at least access the left wall where it was not too terribly hard. I agree, that the macho attitude that keeps the 4th class ratings on older routes does not help anyone, particularly when most climbers are not aware of this oddity in the rating system. They should rate it as "low-to mid 5th class( Class 4 historically)"

Well we have succeeded once again with no injuries to report. 81 days in the Sierra. 42 peaks climbed for me and 44 for Alpinemike.

Middle Palisade was a piece of cake. We were up on top in under 3 hours from Finger Lake.

RoguePhotonic wrote:Middle Palisade was a piece of cake. We were up on top in under 3 hours from Finger Lake.

Hats off, you guys are studs!! I need to learn how to climb (and hike)!

Glad you guys made it out safe, what an adventure, thanks for sharing as always Rogue.

Very cool rogue! Congrats.

Did I give you a ride to bishop on sunday? Silver 4runner packed to the hilt?

Nope we were climbing Middle Palisade on Sunday and we had our vehicles at the trail head.

Hey, it's Brian from the parking lot on Wednesday. Glad you made it out safe. Did you guys make it to the top of humphries?

Hey Brian hope you had a good trip. We did indeed make it up Humphreys. It was quite cold but turned about to be a nice climb on great class 4.