"Long day started at my tent in big pine creek campground. 13 hour day. I missed easier trails and found harder scree and loose rocks to try and navigate. I can say going up I was solo never saw any other person all day. I was pretty gripped at the stuff I was climbing up mainly the thought of down climbing it. However from above I saw a quite simple descent path all class 3. I climbed up to far to the left close to the ridge." — ryancoburn • Aug 31, 2022

"Via standard "Red Rock" route. Hiked up to Finger Lake the afternoon before the climb to setup camp and spend some time acclimatizing. Met two women climbers from LA at the lake who were willing to have me join their party. Looked steeper than I expected from below, but not so bad once inside. Awesome sustained cl. 3 climb. While the chute is littered with loose rock, the face itself is very solid and is good for climbing with ample holds. Route finding was straightforward. Only paused once to find a cl 3 exit to the summit proper. Fun and exciting climb without ever feeling particularly dangerous." — klotito • Jul 3, 2021

"Successful summit of Middle Palisade, using the red rocks chute. Late August, so there was no snow crossing required. Doing this as a day hike is pretty brutal, as there's a lot of boulder hopping, which takes a lot out of you, and the final vertical 1300′ is a sustained class 3 scramble at a rate of about 6000′ vertical per horizontal mile. I would argue, as have others, that there are a couple class 4 moves required just below the summit—though nobody agrees on how to define these things. You can go either to the left or the right when you hit Finger Lake. My advice would be to go to the right on the way up, which is slightly less direct but requires less technical work. If you want to save time on the way back, you can do some scree skiing below the moraine to quickly descend if you want a faster (but trickier) descent. Any approach will require some route finding skill, as conditions are variable, GPS is imperfect in some of the valleys, and the top is fairly technical scrambling. The consensus seems to be that, for the final climb, the red rocks route is easier than Secor's ramp, which is hard to spot out to the left on the glacier, especially given the dodgy state of th..." — sareine • Aug 29, 2020

"Hiked up to Finger Lake with my VERY heavy pack (I just can't get this 'pack light' thing down). I really only got a couple hours of sleep, since I don't sleep well while camping. We started up from there at first light. There was another group that started about an hour ahead of us, but we caught them at the glacier. They headed up the glacier towards the class 3 chute. After following them towards it and watching them struggle in identifying the correct spot to ascend, we decided to go another way. We hiked a bit further northwest & ascended a very loose class 3 'pink' chute. From there, we climbed the class 4 route up the east face. I couldn't believe the amount of sustained class 3-4 scrambling on this route! We made the summit & descended the same way, passing the other group who bailed on their attempt." — Kevin • Aug 10, 2013

"Hiked up to the unnamed lake above Finger Lake at 11,300ft and camped the night. Started out from camp at 5AM and made it to the central moraine by 7AM. Tried three different routes up to get to the main chute, but thought everything was too sketchy without a spot. Just as I was turning away to give up, two climbers appeared and showed me the ledge I had missed. Normally, you can step off the glacier on to the ledge system, but since it's so late in the season, the randkluft was huge and climbing into and out of it required some class IV-V stuff to get up the main route. I was able to get over just as the other two climbers bailed, and soloed it the rest of the day. Summited at roughly 11AM after trying to figure things out on the moraine for about 2 hours. I have to say this will probably go down as one of my most challenging Cali 14ers, at least unroped. I expected the chute to be class II with a mix of class III, but it was sustained class III with a lot of class IV, much more then I would have liked. I think next time I'll bring a rope! On the way down I lowered my pack off a ledge to lower myself, then watched it tumble at least 500 feet down the chute out of sight, along with..." — Christopher • Sep 23, 2012

"Hiked up to base camp at Finger Lake on 7/5. Left for the summit at 7:20 on 7/6 with 5 others. Hiked off snow most of the way, but up 100' of snow covered glacier to access Secor's chute. Snow was soft and crampons not much help. After an hour of so one climber turned back. Our last climber was at the summit at 1:30, and back at Finger Lake at 8:30 pm. Recommend helmets due to lots of loose rock. " — TCH • Jul 6, 2012

"We went over Labor Day weekend. Left a parking lot, hiked to Brained Lake and camped there. I was feeling the elevation on the way up and felt pretty miserable towards the end of the day. The second day we climbed to an unnamed lake above Finger Lake. Third day we went for the summit. We got off trail a couple of times. The route took us up a glacier and then a 1000 feet of loose 3rd class exposed rock. On the way down I busted my knee, which is a pretty scary thing to happen at that environment. As result it took us well into the night to get back to our camp. There was much excitement around the mountain for other parties as well, people bivying on rock fields etc. Managed to hobble out the next day after having the guys carrying some of my gear. Pretty hairy 14er." — paperpanther • Sep 4, 2011