After spending too many weekends cragging at Joshua Tree, Patrick and I decided to take our trad skills to the high peaks. A winter ascent of Swiss Arete on Mt. Sill seemed a natural choice - cold, relatively remote and a beautiful way to summit an amazing peak. This had been a low snow year, and I had done the route 2 years ago with Hamik (it was my first multi-pitch alpine route then, or maybe second if I include the club's trip to Chimney Variation on U-Notch/North Palisade in winter earlier that year). From 2, we quickly became 5: Patrick, me, Jon, Josh and Tucker.
This was a fun weekend, pretty much alone in the Palisades, except Vitaliy M.'s 2-person team climbing the L-couloir on Sill. However we failed to achieve our objective by far. This was mostly due to a general lack of seriousness on the team's part given how hard the objective was. A successful winter attempt on Swiss Arete warranted an expeditionary mindset, which we clearly lacked. That said, it was still relieving to actually get out there and spend time with good friends in a very beautiful area.
We did not leave Pasadena until 8PM or later on Thursday 2nd Feb, reaching TH at 1:30 AM or some ridiculous hour like that (the plan was to leave Pasadena at 6.30PM.) After very poor quality sleep, we took >2 hours to get ready, and we did not leave the TH (7800 feet) until 9.15 AM. We set camp at Sam Mack Meadow (11,100 feet) at 5.30PM. The last 200 vertical feet took more than an hour. Our original plan involved taking the gully above Third Lake to directly reach Gayley Camp, but that gully looked quite rocky in parts. So we did not take it. Turned out the alternative of going to Sam Mack and then taking the use trail to Gayley Camp is much longer.
We did not carry snowshoes, and post-holed extensively in the slopes leading up to Sam Mack Meadow. This was a major mistake as the only other team in the area which did have snowshoes seems to have post-holed 0 to minimal and made it up to Gayley Camp first day itself. Vitaliy, who left that morning before us, knew from his friends that the current conditions warranted snowshoes. Note to self: ALWAYS carry snowshoes to trailhead if there is any chance of snow.
Next morning we woke up at 3 AM (after a semi-awake few hours). We left camp at 4:10AM. We followed Vitaliy M and Bryan's snowshoe tracks from the previous day that took us to Gayley Camp. This was not as easy as we had thought it would be, and almost all of us felt either the altitude (leading to slowness) or the cold. Patrick was way stronger than the rest of us on this entire trip, and somehow managed to make no big deal of any of the post-holing. Tucker had fell sick so he stayed at Sam Mack camp.
The combination of lack of sleep for 2 nights, and extensive post-holing with a heavy pack on the approach, had left me very demoralized. I just could not bring my spirits up - even with the sights of my favorite peaks Gayley, the Palisades and Winchell, all glowing bright in the Sierra alpenglow. Vitaliy's headlamps, that we could earlier see in the L-couloir, had now disappeared. At around 7 AM, at around 12500 feet, in full view of the Palisade glacier and the Swiss Arete now coming into sun, I simply gave up.
I told my partners Josh and Patrick that I would be a liability if I continued further with them. Patrick at this time was feeling cold in his toes and fingers, and my giving up was the proverbial last nail in the coffin for our Swiss Arete attempt. Patrick felt he was not comfortable leading 5 pitches at 13000 feet all on his own.
Jon soon joined us, after taking what he called "the biggest dump known to man-kind" (speaking of which, I have always wondered, why is it called take and not give. But I digress.) My low morale had diffused into Patrick, and both of us simply decided to walk back to camp.
Jon and Josh still seemed charged. They switched the objective to Mt. Gayley, and possibly some ice-climbing on the glacier. The latter was promptly dropped since we did not have stuff for an ice anchor. However as we realised later, they could not make it up to even Glacier Notch because of the snow quality and tiredness.
All of us then hiked out. At 5 PM, the TH was still around 20F cold, as per the car thermometer. The donut shop in Lone Pine was a natural destination now. A voluminous 2-scooped hot fudge sundae and some strange groovy MTV videos made me feel a bit better. Patrick drove all the way to Pasadena, the champion of late night post-climb driving that he is. Somehow, this time on the drive back he did not play Mountain Goats' "Ezekiel 7 and The Permanent Efficacy of Grace".
I read this once (perhaps in Andrew Lindblade's book "Expeditions", not sure), that there are 3 requirements from any expedition - come back alive, still friends with your partners, and successful, in that order. I guess we did succeed in 2 out of 3. What makes me particularly sad is that we could have had the 3rd too, if we did a 3-day trip instead of 2, carried snowshoes and in general been a little more careful about the planning.
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