Swiss Arete - Mt Sill CA

I've found trip reports useful for myself, so I've been working on posting some here. 

Back a few years ago, my friend Matt and I decided to make an October ascent of the Swiss Arete of Mt. Sill. We drove in that day, so got a late start. But a beautiful hike in. Gorgeous fall colors (in California!). 

The hike in is quite awesome in itself. Passing by the really imposing Temple Crag on the way up. 

We got to Sam Mack Meadow (also gorgeous) and set up a pretty simple bivy. Brought warm bags and pads, but no tent. I don't remember being overly cold.

While a big outing, the actual technical climbing on the Swiss Arete isn't very long, and there are only a couple pretty short 5.7 sections. Hearing this, my friend Matt insisted on a pretty tiny rack (my memory was several slings, a couple of cams (BD 2, 0.75, 0.3?), a couple of nuts, and a handcrack sized tricam (!). This can be seen below in a scene from when we got back after the climb.

Weirdly, this tiny rack proved sufficient. But if I were making suggestions, having 2 or even 3 hand sized cams would probably be useful (though on BD 2 and a tricam got me through the handcrack at almost 14,000ft.

We left before dawn and got a good start up Glacier Trail before the sun came up. 

Here is a good shot of the route, the obvious ridge between light and shade.

Hitting the glacier led to some pretty wild territory. 

After getting up to the notch from the north to just below the L-shaped snowfield (which wasn't there late in the fall in a bad snow year), we just continued going up into some mildish 4th class terrain that was probably what is often called the first pitch. 

Once we topped out on that, we roped up and started up the obvious ridge. Pretty easy but cool climbing at first. I led for probably a whole rope length, then Matt took over just before the "step around" move. You kind of get up to a place where it is not obvious to go. Look around right and it goes pretty easily until you get to a kind of wild and slightly awkward step across move. My memory is that it was pretty well-protected, but blind from the belayer and kind of wild in that environment. 

After that (which was a short pitch to prevent rope drag), I took back leading. Next was a really cool handcrack. Pretty steep, especially at just under 14K, but pretty perfect sized and surpisingly good rock. As I said, having two good hand sized cams here is very useful. After the hand crack, things ease up, but then there was kind of an awkward couple moves up to the belay if I remember right. 

After that, a quick easy pitch and we were at the top. 

The walk-off wasn't obvious, but here is the key landmark. 

The descent was not easy (though this photo makes it look maybe a little worse than it was). 

Got back to Sam Mack Meadow mid-afternoon. Decided it would be nice to have pizza and beers that night, so we walked out. 

Pretty much sucked after that. The walk out took way longer than our walk in. Just brutal on my knees. Stumbled back to the car well after restaurants had closed. Got some gas station food and found a spot to crash. 

Thanks for the report! Sounds like a good, quick adventure

Cool. this has been on my tick list for years.