Originally was scheduled to join Chad Thomas and Michael Graupe on a 4 day backpacking trip to Big Arroyo with the intention of climbing Squaretop and Kaweah Queen. Then Chad and Michael (and Chris) got struck by lightning on Ericson Crags, with Chad sustaining a direct hit. Thankfully they all survived, but the trip was put in jeopardy.

Maxim and I decided to still go, even with thunderstorms forecasted for every day. Our plan was simply to start and finish early, and that is what we did. I picked up Chad's permit in Mineral King and started up the trail at 8am. I didn't know about the shortcut so we took the standard trail. We took the trail over Glacier Pass and scrambled over Hands-and-Knees Pass just as thunder started to echo in the distance. We made it down to Big Arroyo and set up camp before the rain hit. The same SAR helicopter that rescued Chad the weekend before landed next to our spot and picked up a lady who twisted her ankle. The dichotomy between the two search and rescue operations was somewhat humorous.

Maxim ate wild mushrooms along the way claiming they were Portobello mushrooms. The approach was not that bad. While there were two passes to go over, the gain was less than 5k ft. This is much better than Shepherds for example, which has over 6k ft gain and is less scenic. I don't know why people complain so much about this approach.

Left camp next morning at 5:30am. Followed the trail for a couple miles then headed cross country towards the saddle between Big and Gray Kaweah. What a boring slog! I was feeling a little altitude effects so was slow. Made it to the top in 5 hours at a pathetic pace of 1 mph. Then we traversed to Gray Kaweah which was class 2. The storm clouds began to grow, but we stayed ahead of it. In my light headed state, I remembered reading that there was a class 3 route to Bilko Pinnacle. I followed Clemente and Robert's track. Wrong! Next thing we knew, we were free solo downclimbing class 4-5 on questionable rock with the storm approaching and nowhere to bail. I was pretty scared, but we made it. As we reached Bilko Pinnacle it started to hail on us. Remembering Chad's incident, we signed the register and dropped off immediately. Luckily we didn't have to set up a rappel and could bail quickly. Weather cleared after that and we made it back to camp with no incident. If the weather would have held we probably would have continued to Squaretop, but we'll save that part of the traverse for another time. Sean O is a bad man for soloing that ridge.