This is one of the most popular views in Kings Canyon and I've seen it many times for many years. I've also spent an unhealthy amount of time looking at pictures of it. See that sunlit rock left of center? That's North Sentinel and the object of obsession.

Getting closer...

And closer... (with Grand Sentinel in the background)

And closer...

Now Grand Sentinel would be the obvious choice except for one very important fact that always captivates me: Grand Sentinel has been climbed, North Sentinel had not.

A couple seasonal employees have done some short base routes along the bottom but nobody had yet taken that ramp up to the headwall. That was, until the Dream Team (plus me) got after it last weekend!


And there they are. Left to right we had-
-Brandon Thau: long time bad-A who's put up routes all over the Sierra and other parts of the planet.
-Brian Prince: strong like bull and just goes for it whenever needed.
-Vitaliy Musiyenko: some noob from the bay area who takes pictures of rocks and then claims that he climbed them with no real proof and is also a master of the wyde.
Adam Sheppard: despite coming off of a knee surgery and not climbing much for a year he was already back into sherpa Sheppard beast mode.

And then there was me behind the camera quietly hoping I didn't hold back the Dream Team and could somehow contribute more than the planning and logistics.

Saturday

Brian, Vitaliy, Brandon and I woke up at the butt crack of dawn having no idea what the approach would be like (Adam came Sunday morning). It was actually quite nice as we picked our way up the ramp coming in from the right. Getting from the ramp onto the main ledge below the headwall turned out to be a short 5.10- crack climb. I lead it and despite not being the 3rd class approach I had hoped for it was actually a fun bit of climbing and helped raise our hopes for the quality to come.


We got out first view of our destination, the split in the middle of the summit, way up there.

We tried to scramble up to a ledge and a beautiful looking splitter we had spied from below, but the rock had other plans and Brian had to lead a surprisingly difficult pitch through lichen to get to the beautiful white granite above.

Brandon lead another short but cool pitch and got Vitaliy to the splitter hands! Oh, wait, it was flaring 0.75s and progressively shrank to fingernails.


A short rap back to a ledge and Vitaliy tried another path, leading straight into the jaws of the mountain. After I caught the first whip of the day I decided to lieback a potato chip on TR because if Vitaliy fell limpingcrab would probably just cry.

And so began the theme for the day: offwidths and squeeze chimneys. NOT my specialty.

Brian took the next pitch with a variety of fun climbing and less wide stuff. Despite his best efforts he had to pendulum to a crack and all of us did the same. Through some sort of pre-planned nonsense I climbed last and was left with the heavy pack and most of the rack. That's my excuse for hang-dogging 1/4 of the 190 foot pitch. The above is a view of the last bit.

Giggles in the wind. Bunch of goobers.

And off Brandon went, into one of the gnarliest pitches I've ever been on. If walking tipped out #6s through a vertical split in a mountain is your idea of fun, this pitch is for you. If you wore slippers and have no OW skill (me), this pitch will humiliate you.

Everyone was feeling pretty worked and it was my turn to take us home. No problem, I can carry my weight on this team, let me do the quick scramble to the summit! Silly me, there was still a 25 ft little offwidth waiting to steal my last bit of dignity. No matter what I tried every move somehow involved my bare ankles and I fell over and over and over. Never mind, I don't want to talk about it.

It may have felt more like the route climbed us, be we still enjoyed the beautiful summit and made long work of the descent. Note to future climbers: just walk down the Grand Sentinel gully and don't try to be all cute and rap the notch to the west.


Sunday

I asked Adam to get there before sunrise on Sunday morning so we could do another route. He did, and he sat in the car until 7:00 when we finally began to drag our stiff bodies from our sleeping bags. Brandon had to leave by 2:00pm, Brian was going to climb with Vitaliy and Vitaliy said something I've never heard him say, "My body huts and I don't even want to climb today." In his defense he did climb Border Country in Yosemite on Friday (but still, what a sissy, right? ;)

It was just Adam and I, with a late start, heading back up to North Sentinel for round two.

The plan was to find a longer, more moderate route up the sunlit NW facing side of the wall.

The plan was going flawlessly! About 600 feet of great rock covered in cracks of every size except offwidth! No easy filler sections but no super hard endurance sections, just fun 5.8-5.10 climbing with plenty of rest stances and protection.

The 4th pitch even moved out onto the arete onto knobs and orange features with great exposure. We were having a blast!

However, once on the arete the wind was so bad we could hardly communicate, even standing side by side. I was faced with a short cruxy section that would put me out of eyesight and without any way to signal if I would need the bolt kit or anything else so I brought Adam up. After looking over scouting pictures on my phone we (mostly me) thought we were less than halfway up the wall.

It was 3:30 and our wives were waiting at home so we figured we'd just rap and finish the second half as a later day trip. No big deal, it would be worth climbing again and we didn't want to get home at 2am.

A few long double-rope raps later and we were walking down, only to realize that we weren't 25ft from the halfway ledge, but 25 FEET FROM THE 4TH CLASS SLABS AT THE TOP OF THE CLIMB!!!

We didn't know whether to laugh or cry so we did both. Twenty. Five. Stupid. Feet. Oh well, we will go back and put the cherry on top sometime. We still climbed a new route, right? Kinda? Whatever, judgy McJudgerson.

Yellow: FML, 5.11 C1, 5 pitches (plus approach pitch to ledge, not shown)
Red: Chasing the Wind, 4 pitches (plus approach pitch and a few stupid feet to the low angle stupid slabs stupid)





OW and getting lost en route aside, it was an absolutely stellar way to start off the summer season! I love this stuff, especially exploring with awesome partners!

Thanks for reading, or looking, or accidentally clicking the TR when you were aiming for another thread on your phone.