Trip Report
Alpine Scramble - The Palisades and Brown Peak
Perfect, clear, cool autumn day for this fantastic trip with fellow adventurers!
Nancy Lloyd
- Sun, Oct 5, 2025
- Alpine Scramble - The Palisades
- The Palisades & Marcus Peak
- Scrambling
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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Last day of the season to access the Sunrise area. Signs were posted indicating road closure at 7:00 p.m. that day. There was only a handful of other vehicles at Sunrise Point when I arrived at 8:00 a.m.
I had changed the date of this scramble from Saturday, 10/4 to Sunday the 5th because of the wet forecast and probable poor visibility. It turned out to be a good decision. In addition to clear blue skies, the trails were in great condition - not muddy from the previous day's rain. I decided on Brown Peak first so we could enjoy the view of Palisades from the side we would not climb. The boot path to Brown Peak is quite steep and splits in a couple of places. Remember which path to take on the way down.
We passed several lovely lakes on the way to Brown, although they were all much lower than in summer. A light coating of frost here and there really made it feel like fall!
East side views of the Palisades on the way to Brown Peak were awesome; photos cannot capture their full impact:
Heading up to Brown Peak:
After fueling up on Brown's summit, we backtracked to Hidden Lake and followed the very steep brush-bashy path up to the Green Park Saddle (as named on gaiagps). From there we strolled through gentle terrain that was obviously a favorite hangout for resident elk. We did not see any actual elk, only what they've left behind.
Our final ascent up to Palisades Peak took us through some dense trees and brush. Upon reaching the exposed rocky summit, we were treated to eye-popping 360 views - especially of the amazing columnar basalt columns that make up the Palisades.
After enjoying a leisurely, much needed break, we said "so long" to the mountains and retraced our steps back to Sunrise Point. It was hard to leave such a beautiful and wild place! Our round trip mileage was about 10.5 with 3,100' gain. Our total moving time was 7 hours plus about 2 hours stop time for rests and photo ops. The long day was well worth the rewards!
