Ten years after my lengthy journey down the Muir Trail, I returned to the Palisades in the east-central Sierra, accompanied by my wife, Terrie, her friend Marianne, and Greg Thompson. We were about to experience some of the Sierra's ancient legacy of glaciers and ice. We hiked up Big Pine Creek past elegant Temple Crag with its steep, slender buttresses arcing like samurai blades to the summit, up Sam Mack Creek, and across glacial rubble and snowfields to the Palisade Glacier. The cirque was as wild as I recalled it. A crescent of peaks embraced us. We could see four 14,000-foot summits from the tent door. Mount Sill dominated the left of the crescent with Thunderbolt Peak to its left. In the middle rose North Palisade, the highest of all. To its left, the top of Polemonium Peak, a nubbin of rock flanked on either side by the U-notch and V-notch ice gullies, barely nicked the 14,000-foot elevation. Even in high summer little sun warmed the gullies so their ice remained year-round, losing snow cover for a few weeks at the end of each summer. The Palisade Glacier looked like an unremarkable snowfield, but we could discern thin, deep crevasses, as well as bergschrunds, where the glacier had pulled away from the base of the peaks. We camped at the toe of the glacier, a center-row seat in an amphitheater of cliffs.

Greg and I crossed the glacier to Mount Sill, which the Bear and I had climbed. But this time I had my eye on Mount Sill's Swiss Arête, a moderate rock climb on an exposed ridge that would have been unthinkably steep and technical for me with my limited skills of a decade earlier. The snow cover thinned and we walked on sun-pitted ice so rough we didn't need crampons. Once on the route we enjoyed a sunny but windy day on steep, easy rock. The view from the top felt completely different from ten years earlier given the clear conditions and my years of experience climbing-grand but not intimidating. North Palisade dominated the crest with its sheer black walls and crenellated summit.

The next day took us to the top of Thunderbolt, the northernmost 14,000-foot peak in the range, via another agreeable rock route. Once again North Palisade riveted our attention. After enjoying the view, we descended a nasty gully back to the glacier.

We saved the V-notch ice gully for last. At the time it had a reputation as one of the toughest ice climbs in the Sierra. From our camp it looked nearly vertical, but we knew foreshortening exaggerated the angle so we wouldn't encounter anything steeper than fifty degrees if a snow bridge crossed the bergschrund where the ice met the rock. At worst we would clamber into this gap (the bergschrund) between the glacier and the gully and then climb a short steep step to the gentler slope. We carried a rope and some protective devices to guard against long falls: metal wedges to slot in cracks in the rock on the side of the gully and tubular screws to place in the ice itself. We would then clip our rope to these devices.

Unfortunately no bridge gave us access to the gully, so we used the rope to rappel deep into the gap. Greg led the steep climb out, laboriously placing an ice screw thirty feet up. Greg pulled out of sight and the rope ran quickly, which indicated easier going. I joined him and took over the lead. I climbed with a single bamboo-shaft ice axe, flat-footing with my crampons as much as possible. This so-called French style of cramponing takes the load off the calves but demands more precise balance than facing into the slope and kicking the crampons' front points into the ice. I alternated between balancing with the tip of the ice axe shaft on the ice and sinking the pick securely when I changed direction.

I was enjoying myself until the moment I swung the axe hard overhead and the ice shattered. I examined the axe and saw that the tip had broken. My sense of security evaporated.

I was fifty feet above Greg and had placed no protection. The closest rock where I could place a wedge was twenty-five feet away. If I fell before I got there, the bergschrund might swallow me, but I didn't want to waste time placing an ice screw. I calmed myself, front-pointed methodically to the rock, and placed two wedges. Greg climbed to the anchor I created and after one look at my damaged axe, he suggested retreat. But I thought he should lead on with his good axe.

So we moved quickly upward. Greg led to the top of the gully in one push. We traversed over the summit of Polemonium Peak, a 14,000 bump between Mount Sill and North Palisade. A few of its eponymous flowers shuddered in the breeze.

After a snack, we rappelled into the U-notch, a gentler gully running up to the summit ridge of North Palisade. I assumed we would then rappel down the gully, secure on a rope, but Greg just started walking down. The surface alternated between hard snow and bare ice. I wasn't mentally prepared to walk down one of the harder gullies in the Sierra, but Greg assured me this was standard procedure in his home mountains, the Cascades of Washington state.

"Just keep your weight over your feet," he advised as he disappeared over the brink. I tested my crampon points. They held. I looked at my broken axe; there would be no self-arrest if I popped off, and a bergschrund gaped hungrily at the bottom. Trusting to physics, I started down the steepening slope. The points bit with a reassuring crunch, and I became comfortable. Astonished climbers laden with full packs, placing ice screws and front-pointing with their crampons, watched us stroll down their climb. We crossed the bergschrund less than half an hour later. Our route to camp crossed dozens of small crevasses just inches across, proof this was living ice, but the lines of moraines below indicated a glacier in retreat. Someday the glacier could fill the basin again. The walls would echo with falling ice and crackling crevasses for thousands of years until the glacier receded again to reveal a newly carved landscape

— Reprinted with permission. From Sierra: Notes and Images from the Range of Light, © 2002 James Martin and Sasquatch Press