West side routes on Middle Palisade

[andrewhamilton]

I'm looking to head to California this July to climb some 14ers, and am interested if anyone here knows about the West side routes on the Middle Palisade?

I am looking for the easiest route up. The one that I have found descriptions of is route 6 in the Porcella Burns book("Climbing California's Fourteeners"), the class 4 Southwest Chute. It is also known as the "Farquhar" route or "Farquhar Death Chute" and in trip reports it seems pretty universal that it is just awful, with comments such as "without a helmet your climbing partner will be killed"! Apparently it is extremely loose and exposed.

There is another class 4 route on the west side listed in the Porcella Burns book called the Northwest Bowl (route 4 in the book), that does an ascending traverse of part of the west face. I can't seem to find any trip reports or descriptions of this route online. Does anyone know how this route compares to the "Farquhar Death Chute"?

Thanks!

[jf32]

I haven't done it just yet but from my understanding the 'easiest' way to the top if from the East Side.

[Kapelmuur]

The easiest route is the standard route from the Glacier Lodge/South Fork Big Pine Creek TH. But as JF says that is from the north/east. Is there a reason you want to come in from the west? Based on my limited experience in the area, it would seem any route from that side would be pretty sheer and treacherous, thus the the word death in the title!

If you want info in the standard route, pm me or there a few reports on the site and around the web. The hardest part is finding the correct route off the glacier and into the primary chute (and back again). Not that there is a "correct" route...we never found it and we just sort of muddled our way up and over until we landed in it probably about half way up the face.

[andrewhamilton]

The reason we will be on the west side is that we will be traversing over from Sill. I guess technically according to the map we could try to drop from Sill to the East side of Middle Palisade (although the terrain in between the peaks looks more rugged than staying on the west side). However, from what I have read, most (of the very few) people that traverse from Sill seem to stay on the west side, which is why I was looking at those routes. I'll try to find more info. about traversing from Sill to the east side of Middle Palisade and see if that seems like a better plan! Thanks!

[Kapelmuur]

Although I can't personally vouch for this route, some people use the South Fork Big Pine Creek as an cross country approach to Sill. You could reverse this route by descending Sill to Glacier Notch (saddle between Sill & Gayley), drop off its east side and then descending South Fork Big Pine Creek to just above Willow Lake (watch out for the ravenous swarms of mosquitos here) where you would pick up the standard route to MP.

Seems a happy medium between going all the way around via the North Fork...and the inevitable hijinks that would result from pretty much any other approach.