The Incredible Hulk is perfect granite monolith in the high Sierras, located about a 5 hour drive east of San Francisco over Sonora Pass. With a summit elevation of 11,300’, it is likely one of (if not THE) tallest faces in the Sierras, with the impressive and sheer West Face rising close to 1,300’ above the valley floor. The peak is fairly legendary and storied thanks to the work of Peter Croft and Dave Nettle (and many others) who established the absolutely mind boggling “Solar Flare” (5.12+) and “Venturi Effect” (5.12+), featuring some of the highest quality granite you will ever find in the alpine.
↓ Jump to Positive Vibrations Topo & Route Description ↓
Despite the huge number of high end 5.11+ to 5.13 routes on the face, there are several more moderate routes that make this incredible peak more realistic for mere mortals, including “Red Dihedral” (5.10), Beeline (5.10-) and perhaps one of the finest alpine routes in the world “Positive Vibrations”, 5.11-.
Keep in mind however, despite the moderate grades, this is a relatively serious high altitude alpine objective, with consistently steep and sustained climbing, often severe weather, and potentially challenging escape options if things go sideways. A rescue would also be very challenging given the remoteness of the area, and there is no cell service.
When it rains, go to California
“Let’s fly into East Creek and climb in the Bugs next week!”
I’d known Mika off and on for a few years, and certainly knew she would be pretty much the ideal partner for anything ambitious, alpine, involving any kind of crack climbing. Myself, a little more dubious lately. Despite ticking my hardest sport route last year (5.13d) and another 5.13b this spring already, I’ve been about as far from consistent with crack climbing as you can get. Turns out heading to Squamish every couple years and one big Creek trip every once in a while just doesn’t cut it.
My secret to climbing the moderate 5.11 trad/mixed routes on Yam lately has been to just get strong enough that I could treat them as easy runout sport routes and avoid having to bother placing gear. Unfortunately, this strategy falls apart pretty quick on anything big, alpine and granite.
A quick look at spotwx for the coming week showed an entire week of rain in the forecast. It was feeling a little hard to justify $4k for a helicopter into the Bugaboos to sit in a tent in the rain for a whole week. An idea crept into my head though. Alternatively (and probably for even a bit cheaper), we could fly from Calgary to SFO, rent a car, and hit the Incredible Hulk in the Sierras for a few days.
Three days later I found myself in Mika’s gear room, checking in for our flights at 7:30am to SFO the next morning. This was turning into one of those nights where you are looking at mountain project and trying to figure out what routes actually exist on this thing and what we would need.
Fast forward to 6pm the following afternoon, it had already been a long day. It was hot, but the sun was on the edge of the mountains. Between picking up the rental car at SFO around 10am, driving over Sonora pass, and a few stops for food and gear, we were a little behind schedule. The hike is only about 5 miles or so, but the 3000’ of elevation gain and the incoming darkness had us questioning how well this was all going to work out with our 70lb packs.
The logistics to go and climb here are pretty simple. You need a backcountry permit from https://www.recreation.gov, which can only be purchased a few days before (there’s an app). Only 8 permits are issued per day, so you have to be on top of getting these at the right time. Parking is at the far west end of Twin lakes, California. You pay a flat $15 USD entry fee regardless of how many days you are there. The campground does take debit/visa as of 2025 for parking. There is no cell service here, but there are two decent general stores for basics.
The hike in is somewhat straightforward, but it’s easy to get lost in the dark – we definitely did by going too far right into the talus field, rather than staying left and close to the water and following a left gully up to where the camping is. Our faffing on the approach landed us not too far from midnight, setting up camp by headlamp, not really sure what to expect (and getting yelled at for being loud by the other dudes on the area, sorry 😐)
A day of warm up cragging on the Polish route (5.10+), one halfway up exploratory day mission on PV itself, a full ‘rest day’ slogging around the valley failing to read topographic maps. Finally, Day 4, at the base of Positive Vibrations, on the Incredible Hulk at 5:30am absolutely fired up to give this thing a proper go. Everything we had read lead us to believe this was THE route to do on the Hulk. Even Jon Walsh, legendary route developer in the Bugaboos touting it as his favourite route of all time.
High praise, and in our opinion, very well deserved. We raged all day on almost 1,100′ of dead splitter cracks in perfect granite. This might be the best route i’ve ever climbed, and one of the raddest features in North America.
Some rust in the alpine catching up to us (99% me being rusty) meant some sluggishness on the 2nd half. But that just meant rapping one of the most impressive walls in NA in perfect alpenglow – giving both of us one of the most memorable hours of our lives. Not every day you get to live out your dreams of being in a literal North Face ad, hallucinating @jimmychin on a static rope above after 500ml of water in 12 hours.
I’ve had a few trips of a lifetime in my lifetime, but perhaps this trip of a lifetime was the most lifetime trip to date.
All the right elements were perfectly in place. Last minute idea with a last minute partner, a last minute change of plans to a somewhat remote place. A pretty big objective where we didn’t do a lot of beta research first, and 0 experience in the area between both of us. Heck, not a lot of shared experience between us as partners even.
A huge thanks to @mikalea_md for being the ultimate partner for a perfect trip. Vibes were high.
Positive Vibrations, 5.11a, 1,100′
Note: This description is for doing the route in 11 standard pitches, splitting 6, 7 and 8. This is a great way to do this route if you are not comfortable running out all the fairly sustained 5.10 that makes up the upper pitches. Anchors are bolted for rappel until the top of pitch 4. There is bail tat halfway up pitch 6 that gets you back to Venturi raps. Pitch 6 has bolted anchors (not for rappelling) and everything after that is gear anchors as of July 2025.
All stated pitch lengths are APPROXIMATE
Rack: Double Rack #0.2 to #3. Triples in #0.4, #0.5 and #2 are nice to have. Singles in #00 to #0.1. Single set of stoppers. Black Totem’s are handy in a few spots. 15 alpine draws, a few extra longer runners. Tagline for backpacks is nice. Single 70m is perfectly sufficient. Rappels can be rope stretchers, don’t use a cut rope. Be sure to follow descent beta below.
Pitch 1 (35m) – 5.10a – Climb obvious blocks and flakes in the shallow corner feature in the left side of the main triangle feature to a small stance below a thin finger crack and build a gear belay
Note: Rappel station for 70m single rope is climbers left ~10m on the face)
Pitch 2 (35m) – 5.10+ Climb the thin finger crack for 10-15m until it pinches out. Place one final piece and traverse out right on good face climbing features with no gear up to the ledge, then left back to a bolted belay (This is a rap station – to rap from here with a 70m, rappel hard climbers left, following a faint seam down to a station off line. This last station takes you to the ground. Walk the rope out to avoid getting stuck)
Pitch 3 (35m) – 5.11a – Climb the steep but featured corner/dihedral above the belay on good holds and gear (climb the second dihedral from the left, directly above the belay) until it pinches down to a short thin fingers section. Climb a little higher than the roof to your right, then start to traverse out right on vertical flakes (There is a single blind pin and some fingers sized cams). Continue right on poor smears until you can reach the hand crack/pinch (crux, 5.11a) and up to jugs to another bolted anchor. Tall folks may find this crux a bit on the easy side.
Note: Rappel station, straight 35m rappel from here to P2.
Pitch 4 (35m) – 5.10b – stem the enormous chimney/dihedral placing good gear in the cracks to the right. One pin at 20′ or so, and a second just before the small roof. Surmount the roof and follow the finger sized crack up the ramp to the left until you can reach around to the right to a steep hand crack. Follow this to another bolted rap station
Note: Rappel station, this is where the Venturi rappels join up positive vibes.
Pitch 5 (60m) – 5.10a – climb a short box corner, starting on the left until you can cross to the right side at about 10′ (cruxy/dyno). Head straight up on easier terrain, passing the last Venturi Effect rappel station (Make a note of this, you will use it on decent if using venturi raps) trending up and left to a beautiful splitter hand crack. Follow this up to another double rappel/bolted station at a nice ledge. Watch the rope drag on this one – it’s long and wanders!
Pitch 6 (pt 1, 35m) – 5.10+ -Stem the thin, insecure dihedral, placing micro cams in the seam on the left wall (0 – 0.2, black totem works well here) until you can reach a high, good 0.4-0.5 on your left in the seam. Roof protects well with 0.4-0.5. Pull around the right on the roof into thin hands and finally a wide overhanging section with a small roof (finger sized gear). Pulling this finds you on a short section of gentler terrain below the vertical finger crack where you can build an intermediate anchor to split this pitch. Many parties split the pitch here, either building an anchor in the crack, or using a cluster of nuts (bail tat) on the left (as of 2025)
Note: this rap tat is your last chance for a relatively easy bail. Would be very tricky to bail anywhere above this, especially in high winds.
Pitch 6 (pt 2, 35m) – 5.11a – climb a beautiful finger crack to a shiny bolt and traverse left through increasingly marginal face holds where the wall starts to kick back, protecting with micro cams where you can. Cruxy moves and tips cracks let you move up until you can reach (or dyno) to the jug at another ledge and bolted anchor on the arete. This is the last bolted station. Pitch 7 and the top out require gear anchors.
Pitch 7 (pt 1, 35m) – 5.10a – follow straightforward splitter hands straight up to the bottom of an obvious (and spooky) detached flake in the right facing corner below a roof. If you wish to split this pitch, build a gear anchor here at the base of the detached flake.
Pitch 7 (pt 2, 35m) – 5.10+ – climb the detached flake until you can get thin gear in the roof (0.2 – 0.3) – traverse out the roof on thin smears and thin underclings until you can step right to a small stance below a good finger/thin hand crack. Follow this with increasing difficulty until you can reach left to jugs and escape to easier terrain to the top of pitch 7. At the end of the easy traverse, below the large right facing corner, build another gear anchor. There is an option to sling a small torn and #3 make it easy to save your #2’s that you will need for the next pitch.
Pitch 8 (pt 1, 35m) – 5.10b – climb the big right facing corner above the belay until it steepens up and left into a perfect splitter hand crack. (Good 0.75-#2 the whole way). Out of the steep section onto the final headwall, climb a widening #3 crack for another 10′ to a small foot ledge and set up a belay to split this pitch.
Pitch 8 (pt 2, 35m) – 5.10b – climb up a good hand crack for a short distance until it is obvious to traverse right on small face holds for around 10′ into the gorgeous finger to hand crack that splits the final headwall. Climb this splitter (0.4 – #2) all the way to the blocky ridge and build a belay to bring up your partner.
Rappel Descent – walk up climbers right on the ridge for 15′ to the obvious shiny rappel anchor. 11 or so rappels gets you down. Do not skip any of the very short intermediate rappels! Your rope will get stuck and you will have a bad day. 1.5-2 hours to rappel the route. It helps to use saddlebags if there are high winds – and this peak gets a LOT of high winds.
Rap 2 is very short, rap 3 is VERY hard climbers left. Most of the others are not too far off line but almost none of them are straight down. If you have double 70’s, you can do double raps on the main long Venturi face as the face is nearly perfectly sheer and vertical. Do NOT do double raps to skip small stations unles you want your rope stuck.
You will join up with the Positive Vibes raps at the top of Pitch 4. Don’t skip the small intermediate rappel just above the pitch 4 anchors.
Camp Beta: Bug spray, bear canister, sunscreen, water purification, and restop bags to pack out your poop are all mandatory when camping at the Hulk. There might be a small stream running through camp, but if not you can usually find a run off stream about 100′ below camp.
Hiking Beta: Starting from the far west end of the twin lakes campground, follow the trail for about 3.4km (2.1 miles) and take a left turn on another decent trail for little slide canyon (see photo, there is a large rock and a nice trail just before descending into a large open meadow in the valley.)
Cross the stream using logs, and continue following the trail up the obvious valley on the left. Soon, large granite spires come into view and you can see the hulk emerge at the end of the valley on the left above the main headwall.
Follow good trail, mostly on the left side of the Talus. Every so often the trail does cross sections of Talus, but you want to stay mostly on the left side, close to the creek. It is worth using AllTrails or GPX track to avoid getting sucked off trail (like we did), which very quickly adds a lot of effort and time onto the trip, especially in the dark.
After 3-4 hours (with overnight packs), you should arrive at a final shallow and wide gully leading to several treed flat areas below the hulk. Many options exist to set up a tent here, but do be mindful of the fragile alpine flora, water systems, and also noting that the wind in this area can be Extreme. Sheltered areas will help a lot with getting an actual decent sleep.
