In 1931, Sierra Club leader Francis P. Farquhar invited Harvard philosophy professor and Appalachian Mountain Club member Robert L. M. Underhill to come to the Sierra Nevada to teach the latest techniques of roped climbing. Underhill had learned these techniques in the Alps, and had used them earlier that summer in the Tetons and the Canadian Rockies. Jules Eichorn was among the first group of Californians who practiced these techniques on Mount Ritter and Banner Peak in the Ritter Range. After the basic course was completed, the more advanced students, including Eichorn, his climbing partner Glen Dawson, Norman Clyde, Lewis Clark, and Bestor Robinson traveled south to the Palisades, the most rugged and alpine part of the Sierra Nevada. There, on August 13, 1931, the party completed the first ascent of the last unclimbed 14,000+ foot peak in California, which remained unnamed due to its remote location above the Palisade Glaciers. After a challenging ascent to the summit, the climbers were caught in an intense lightning storm, and Eichorn barely escaped electrocution when a thunderbolt whizzed right by my ear. The mountain was named Thunderbolt Peak to commemorate that close call. Underhill called Dawson and Eichorn young natural-born rock climbers of the first water.