1931 was a seminal year in the history of mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, and Norman Clyde was in the midst of it. 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 practiced them himself earlier that summer in the Tetons and the Canadian Rockies. After some young climbers were instructed in the techniques, a group including Clyde, Jules Eichorn, Lewis Clark, Bestor Robinson and Glen Dawson 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.