We drove slowly through the small mountain town of Idyllwild, my twin brother and I, on a road slick with black ice. Northward loomed Tahquitz Peak, its 9,000-foot white-capped peak gently contrasted against a bed of predawn stars. Infamous to rock climbers, Tahquitz’s “Lily” rock lay in solitude just below the summit; its magnificent frozen dome protruding from the hillside like the hub of a 1968 Volkswagen Bug. Between this rock and the peak descended a series of steep and hazardous chutes, powdery ribbons that remained hidden from most eyes. This north-facing slope was where Bruce and I were headed. We’d been waiting two years to attempt a first descent down the peak’s exposed face, and we knew that our day of reckoning was at hand. Late-season storms had dumped nearly three feet of snow in the upper elevations, a rare occurrence in the San Jacinto Mountains of Southern California.
—from Six Up Six Down by Brian Kaufmann