Palisade Traverse

According to the Internet:

Palisade Traverse is one of the best alpine climbs in the Sierra Nevada and one of the very best ridge traverses on the planet. This route takes in five 14,000 foot peaks and features amazing views and exhilarating climbing.

It includes following peaks:

• Thunderbolt (14,009 ft)
• Starlight (14,226 ft)
• North Palisade (14,248 ft)
• Polemonium (14,080 ft)
• Sill (14,153 ft)

Haytham joined me on this adventure and was already familiar with first 2 peaks and route between them, which helped a lot. We decided to go from the west side and camped near Bishop pass on the first night. We started from Bishop pass around 3:00 AM, reached Thunderbolt pass by 5:30 AM, and went up the Southwest Chute #1.

Thunderbolt Southwest Chute #1

We get to Thunderbolt around 8:30 AM and was lucky to find another group there who allowed us to use their rope. Summit block is unprotected 5.9 boulder problem and I was not very excited to leaded it unless I have to.

Starlight from Thunderbolt

Route to Starlight involved some not very obvious detour to the right, which saved us a lot of time. Another group went in the middle of the ridge and have to rappel for awhile. They did not even get to the saddle by the time we were on Starlight already. After the saddle you have to go even more right and around to avoid class 5 climbing.

Looking west

Down climb to Thunderbolt-Starlight saddle

We got to Starlight around 11:00 AM and Haytham lead the 5.4 summit block. I was doing ok, but start feeling altitude somewhere around this point.

View from Starlight

Looking west from the ridge

By 2:00 PM we reached North Palisade, and my altitude sickness progress to the point I can't move very fast, so we decided to call it a day and descent from U-notch (to the west of course). From the North Pal. we missed the correct path, which supposed to go right (west) and end up on pretty bad rappel path with sketchy anchors, falling rocks, etc., so I would not recommend going that way.

Looking SW from North Pal.

Looking west from U-notch

Sunset at 8:00 PM

We was hoping to hike out the same day, but that was unrealistic. We reached our campsite around 9:30 PM, packed out and hiked lower to the Bishop lake and spend another night.

Here is what can be done better next time:

• Better acclimatization. For 1 peak it does not really matter, but for traverse where you spend a lot of time above 14K it's crucial.
• Start should be as close to the route as possible. We wasted probably 4 hours hiking in and out. Camping at Thunderbolt pass (or on the east side) would be much better.
• 3 days minimum. Trying to squeeze it into 2 days was a mistake.