2020-11-12, 08:31 AM
Sentinel was my birthday peak in '96, with my 10 year old daughter. Never underestimate what desert rat kids are capable of! We spent two nights at the main fork of Happy Cyn, at the old Weston place. They were there and welcomed us. We slept in beds with clean sheets 
They enjoyed the novelty of having a kid visit. We climbed up to the Portet/Sentinel ridge - I'd been there before on a Porter loop and knew it went well. The last steep bit up Sentinel is a bit of work. The plan was to traverse the Sentinel ridge and come down more directly into Happy. Problem was late season thigh deep snow up there, slowed us considerably. And it also turned out that the slope down back into Happy was much looser than I'd expected, requiring some care. We got through the cliff bands we encountered just as light failed. Not too bad but would have been hard to call a good route down in the dark.
We rested then in the dark, and continued down. Eventually we started seeing little cholla. My daughter said "I never thought I'd be happy to see a cholla". Jim and Norma kept up waiting for our safe return. Memorable day, memorable peak!
As we'd left in the morning I'd grabbed an extra liter of water, "just in case". I had a decent amount of warm clothing in my day pack as well When we plopped down below the cliffs in the dark, I really appreciated that I generally carry much more gear than I need on a day that goes as expected. We would have been fine but chilled if we'd gotten to those cliffs 15 minutes later and maybe had to bivvy in order to descend safely.
They enjoyed the novelty of having a kid visit. We climbed up to the Portet/Sentinel ridge - I'd been there before on a Porter loop and knew it went well. The last steep bit up Sentinel is a bit of work. The plan was to traverse the Sentinel ridge and come down more directly into Happy. Problem was late season thigh deep snow up there, slowed us considerably. And it also turned out that the slope down back into Happy was much looser than I'd expected, requiring some care. We got through the cliff bands we encountered just as light failed. Not too bad but would have been hard to call a good route down in the dark.We rested then in the dark, and continued down. Eventually we started seeing little cholla. My daughter said "I never thought I'd be happy to see a cholla". Jim and Norma kept up waiting for our safe return. Memorable day, memorable peak!
As we'd left in the morning I'd grabbed an extra liter of water, "just in case". I had a decent amount of warm clothing in my day pack as well When we plopped down below the cliffs in the dark, I really appreciated that I generally carry much more gear than I need on a day that goes as expected. We would have been fine but chilled if we'd gotten to those cliffs 15 minutes later and maybe had to bivvy in order to descend safely.
