It certainly looked like a palisade. Above the rolling, wild Sierra high country stood the final line of defense barring passage into western California – a wall of impenetrable granite the color of bleached bones. The sheer face of the Palisades was rippled, with ridges that looked like the upright logs of a wooden stockade. Breaching those battlements would take more than just a grappling hook, I warranted. A prolonged streak of fearlessness would be required as well.

I had hoped a summer of conditioning myself to 14,000-foot elevations in Colorado would serve me well against the Sierra Nevada’s finest. But compared to the highest peaks of Colorado, California’s Fourteeners had a greater proportion of vicious edges, and several were impossible to summit without ropes and technical gear. The 14,012-foot Middle Palisade had one or two points of weakness where a climber could scramble past its formidable cliffs, which was why I’d chosen the mountain for my final solo adventure.