On the first day of our trip I met Andy and Tim, and we worked on rock skills and did a few great rock routes in preparation for the next day's venture into the Palisades.

The next day, Sunday, we hiked into the Palisades in great weather and established a camp at 12,000 feet. That night around 11:30pm we experienced the largest electrical storm I've ever seen. It was a real eye-opening experience, and it definitely has us scared. We were camped in what I thought was - and what proved to be - a safe spot, but the lightening was absolutely crazy. It struck every second for 30 minutes straight, and struck several times within a quarter mile. Because it was constantly flashing and striking, we couldn't count the number of seconds between lightening and thunder to get a sense of the scope of the storm and how far away the strikes were.

The skies then proceeded to rain for 24 hours and also produced four inches of snow at our camp. Andy later said, "Everything that could come at us, did! It was wild to witness rain, sleet, hail, gropple, and snow all at the same time."

The entire third day was spent in our tents sheltered from the storm. We just kept hoping it would clear up so we could get out there and do some climbing.

Miraculously, on the fourth day the skies cleared and we had great weather. We headed out from camp for an ascent of the U-Notch Couloir. I soon learned that both Andy and Tim were very fit, which made everything easier. Conditions were great - perfect neve over gully ice. The snow from the storm was wet enough when it fell that it adhered beautifully to the ice in the couloir, so we had we sweet climbing conditions. We summitted at 7:20am and were down to our camp by 9:30am.

It was a beautiful morning, and we savored the views from the summit. I wanted to get down off the route early, however, because in the heat of the day, the new snow would have been a sloppy mess to descend. We left the summit soon after arriving, and returned to camp early, which gave us the chance to hike out the same day. We decided to go for it and hiked out of the Palisades region that evening. By hiking out that night instead of in the morning, we would be able to do another rock climb the next day.

On Wednesday, our last day, we decided to climb Cardinal Pinnacle via a six-pitch route of 5.6 climbing. It was a great bonus to be able to do a climb on our last day instead of using the day to hike out of the Palisades. I was glad we got to do this because Andy and Tim missed one of their days due to the storm.

Andy and Tim both very much enjoyed the route. Besides being a great route, it's also very accessible - only thirty minutes from the road to the base of the climb. Despite this, it still feels like (and is) a significant alpine climb because the route is multi-pitch, has significant elevation gain, and tops out at almost 10,000 feet. It was a great day on classic rock.

In all, despite the weather this was a very successful trip. Both Andy and Tim can be very proud of what they accomplished in five days.

Mark is now heading back to the Cascades to continue his summer season of guiding, which he started with an Alaska Range Mountaineering course and a Denali expedition in May.