Hello,
I just went to Middle Palisade last week. I failed to summit. I was looking for some advice.
We hiked up the South Fork of Big Pine Creek. After passing the turnoff to Willow Lake, we passed the small pond: then used our GPS to orient us in the direction of Finger lake. This was the climb over the big, nasty rock pile. We walked along the left shore of Finger Lake, then up past the waterfall to the un-named glacier lake below Middle Palisade. Here we made camp.
The next day we climbed over the rock buttress above camp. This seemed to be a good decision, because both "easy" ways left and right were full of scree. The only negative was that we encountered a class 4 pitch where we actually roped up.
We arrived at the point where the moraine, glacier, and main face of the mountain meet. I had read about the approach to the diagonal terrace via the glacier; and this was our goal From what I saw, there was a climbable diagonal shelf in front of us. We needed to climb over about 15 meters of glacier to get to the rock face of the mountain. I brought minimal gear, in order to keep weight down, so no crampons. We tried climbing up the glacier to get to that point. But the glacier was near solid ice and we could not stick a foot more than half an inch into the glacier. The glacier is inclined at this point, at maybe a 45 deg. angle. We could just not climb up that last 15 meters. We moved onto the moraine. It was all steep and somewhat technical. I brought with me 30 m of rope, 3 x 3/4"-2" cams, and a half dozen slings. I climbed Mount Sill last year. I found it to be a rock pile and a few largish cams and lots of slings were fine. At Sill there were lots of horns and pinch points for cams. Here, there was rock with vertical cracks, and slings were useless. I got up about 60 ft. and I decided that I was not going to make it to the top with my one rope; and that I did not have enough tools to set up a belay station up there. Furthermore, my partner had little experience outside of the climbing gym. I decided to come down.
What then is the route of least resistance 1) Bring crampons and ice axe. Scramble up the glacier and look for that shelf system? 2) Forget the glacier and the shelf and just bring more appropriate climbing gear to get to the top of the moraine? or 3) I got it all wrong, it really is easier, and someone out there can provide some advice?
Fernando
