A couple of weeks ago, my partner Derek and I were in the Palisades attempting
a S-N traverse from the U-notch to somewhere. We were slowed by
route-finding difficulties, but were on the summit of N. Pal at 8:30 on 9/20.
It was a perfect, calm, clear night with bright moonlight - we could even see
the lights of Fresno. After about an hour on the summit, we got going again
and had discussions about where to go - I opted for going home go Glacier Camp
given that route-finding wasn't going too well. I mistakenly thought I knew
how to do that; Derek however REALLY wanted to try to follow the ridge line
and get his summits. Anyway, after a while, we found ourselves in the notch
between N. Pal and Starlight with very few options, climbing the wall to the
North seemed too hairy. There was a rap sling on the West side - we decided
to go there and try to find our way home. Derek felt good when he heard the
ropes hit something - he had this fear of ending-up dangling in space in the
dark at the end of the rope. He went first - when I was coming down, he said
he had a surprise -- he sure did. About 80 feet down, the ropes landed in the
mouth of a cave where I found Derek. It would make a great bivey shelter.
Anyway, he had noticed light, moonlight, at the back of the cave. Turns out
it narrows down and there is a body-sized tunnel which goes left a few feet,
then right and opens out into another cave on the East side. I later
concluded that this was above, or in the top or, the Clyde Couloir. At the
mouth, there was a boulder ~18 in diameter with a sewn Chouinard sling around
the bottom. We wondered how it was put there and what was holding it;
fortunately, we didn't think about it too much. It was pale yellow and seemed
to be in good shape. We decided to go down the West side and see what we
could do. I still wanted to go home and Derek wanted Starlight. For the first
time, Derek had a strong preference for me to rap first. It was near vertical
and with a rounded bead of green ice about 3 feet across. Toward the end of
the ropes (we had a single 60M) I could see no other rap possibilities, but
did get out onto the East face of Starlight.
My questions:
Has anyone else experienced, or heard of, this tunnel? My brief search turned
up nothing.
How young could the Chouinard sling have been? 30 years? It was 1" webbing
with "Chouinard" clearly printed on it. (Incidentally, it held)
Doug Robinson was at Glacier camp that w/e with friends Jim and Terry to to
the Swiss Arete. Doug, who I believe did the FA of the Clyde Couloir did not
know of such a tunnel. I'm sure the tunnel and sling have been in
cold-storage, probably in ice, for years and years.
ps: We wandered around the E. face of Starlight for a long time, exploring
almost all the dead ends, but finally headed back towards the couloir, up and
to the right and found our way to the summit. Derek was on the summit as the
moon was setting and the sun was rising on the equinox. We eventually came
down the south chute of the underhill and lived to tell about it; it was the
most dangerous chute I've ever been in. Doug had suggested we take the ridge
down but that looked too intimidating. We should have. It was a long day's
night.