Our plane leaves Syracuse around 15:00 destined for a stop in Philadelphia before our flight to San Francisco, destined for a 22:00 (Pacific Time) arrival. We got into to SFO and realized that we were effectively wrecked and needed sleep. We got the cheapest hotel room we could find and decided to get up early the following morning and pick up the rental car, take care of logistics, and drive to Yosemite.
We picked up the rental car and after a bit of a complicated affair with filling out paper work to record all the scratches and such on the car, we departed the airport. I forgot that Matt had never been to San Francisco so he suggested that we drive out of San Francisco on the Golden Gate Bridge, which was a great idea! It’d been at least 10 years since I’ve been to San Francisco, so it was great to see a lot of things I recognized from my last visit as a kid.
So we drove out to Berkeley to hit an REI so we could stock up on “sport-specific” food. Basically we needed to buy energy gel. We both find that we really enjoy eating it while climbing. It’s easy, convenient, and light. After stocking up on gel, we programmed my phone with the directions to Yosemite and set off.
We arrived at Yosemite to find out that there were about 20 or so spots available at Camp 4 still, so we rushed into the Valley to try and get spots for ourselves. Luckily, we were able to walk right in to Camp 4 at like 4:30 in the afternoon. It’s as if the climbing gods were on our side!
The sheer size of most of the cliffs in Yosemite is at the least humbling for an east coast climber. We really don’t have large cliffs in the east. Wallface and Cannon are really the two biggest cliffs, with the latter being the most imposing. El Capitan, the Cathedrals, Half Dome, Sentinel, and the countless other cliffs stand menacingly above us dwarfing us in size and in spirit. The thought of climbing any route on these monsters, in a day, is intimidating.
We decided that it would be best to “test” ourselves on some “short” moderate routes first. We decided on a couple climbs on the Manure Pile Buttress, an area whose name does not accurately describe the quality of the routes held on the formation. Two really good climbs are on this cliff, After Six (5.7) and Nutcracker (5.8). Nutcracker is a 5-star classic, with a lot of historical significance. It was one of the climbs Royal Robbins put up using “chocks” he brought back from the United Kingdom to prove they were viable.
After Six is an easy climb, with only one serious pitch (the first pitch). The upper climbing is broken up by a lot of easy terrain. We managed the route fine enough and decided to give Nutcracker a shot. Nutcracker was a step harder in difficulty, and also in terms of how sustained the pitches were (i.e. the climbing would be harder for longer distances). We found this climb to be more what we were expecting in terms of grading. The first pitch was a genuine Adirondack 5.8 that was fairly sustained. The crux pitch has a bad fall potential on a “scary” mantel, so I was super nervous about leading it, but the moves were not worth the hype. In my mind the first pitch is the crux of the route.
This was a good day to show us we could do a lot of pitches on moderate terrain and still feel like we had a lot left in the tank, so we called it quits for the day and headed back to walk around and eat a casual dinner in Curry Village; some of the most expensive, least appealing pizza we’ve ever had. Thankfully we were starving from 11 pitches of climbing.
After our moderate success from the previous day we decided to step it up and get on Royal Arches (5.7 A0) which is 15 pitches. A longer single route than the previous days activity. From what we knew of it though, it was broken up by a lot of easier terrain, so we were hoping to move “quick” on it. In short, this day was a death by a thousand paper cuts. It took us 12 hours ground to ground to get through the route. We came up quick on a party on the lower easy section before you get caught up in more “difficult” climbing and have fewer options to pass a party. So we rushed like mad to pass this party because we figured we would stay ahead of them. The party had a quick leader but a slow follower. However, the leader didn’t mind being right up our ass all day. It was stressful dealing with this situation, as we would pull away from them on one pitch only to have the leader right up on us again when we got slowed down a touch.
Admittedly I was moving slowly this day. I just didn’t enjoy the type of climbing on the route. I also made a mess of the pendulum pitch as I’ve never done a pendulum before and I wasn’t sure how to use the fixed rope exactly. It took me a few tries to get it down to swing over enough to grab the ledge I needed to get over to. So I was just super frustrated at this point, I think I told Matt at that point that he was leading everything from then on, but I bounced back shortly after. I saw this awesome looking crack system, labeled “5.7 steep hands” on the topo and figured I would give it a go. It had to be because we were just tired at this point (we weren’t eating a lot because of the pressure of the leader in the other party) but I got shut down hard on this pitch. Off the belay I felt like the climbing was harder than indicated and ended up aiding through the 5.7 steep hands section. It just seemed awkward and hard for 5.7…and at that point I was only concerned with moving quickly, french freeing was my best option at that point.
We got off the route feeling roughed up; being in the sun for a long time, not having eaten much, & we kicked our water around the 14th pitch. We’re glad we did the route; for me it was Type II fun. I didn’t enjoy the style of climbing as much as I liked the idea of the whole process when all was said and done.
We realized a rest day was in order when we both took a long time to get up to our 06:00 alarms in the morning. We also found out later in the day that we were only allowed to stay a week in the park, something we hadn’t been clear on. So we decided to take a good rest day to refuel, rehydrate, and plan out three days of climbing before we had to leave Camp 4 on Sunday and move to a camp site outside of the park. After we got our plan down, we decided to head out to Mariposa Grove to check out the Giant Sequoias there.
We decided to do a medium volume day on the Five Open Books area to get ourselves acquainted with longer harder multi-pitch routes. We did Munginella (5.6) as a warm-up and Commitment (5.9) to see what 5.9 was like in Yosemite. We linked pitches on Munginella and did it in two pitches and then did Commitment. I found the moves off the ground (awkward 5.8) to be the crux on Commitment. The 5.9 section on the third pitch was hard but I had a bomber #1 cam in the roof right by the crux. Off the ground I had no pieces and was looking at a fall down the 3rd class scramble to the base of the route. I managed to find red biting ants on both Munginella and Commitment, securing my reputation for being the Pied Piper of ants. After doing Commitment we discussed doing another route but decided against it to rest up for the big day we had planned for Thursday, climbing Snake Dike (5.7 (5.4R/X)) on Half Dome.
04:00 wake up. 05:20 marks setting foot on the trail after some digestive issues with team members is sorted out. We’re in for a big day here, about 16-17 miles of hiking with some bushwhacking and lots of 3rd class scrambling. We did the first 2.5 miles of trail which gains 2,500′ of elevation in about 80 minutes, so we were moving at a healthy clip. Getting soaked from the mist coming off Vernal falls helped that ability, as I was getting exceptionally cold at points until I dried out and the sun came out. We got lost trying to find the climber’s trail that breaks off from the main trail, not knowing it was only 50 yards up the trail so we lost a good 10-15 minutes debating what to do about that, and another 10 minutes or so due to further digestive issues a few minutes down the climber’s approach trail.
Our last night in the Valley. After the previous long day we definitely slept in. As well we generally just kind of lounged around in the morning with plans to climb Super Slide (5.9) later in the day. The route is only 5 pitches and we planned to do it in 4, so we figured we could bang it out pretty quickly based on our progress so far. We ended up getting a later start than we wanted to due to lots of traffic on the shuttle buses. I think we started the route around 15:00 and ended up topping out the route around 17:45 or so. We’d been having really good luck so far, so it was time for our own little Yosemite cluster-fuck. We got the ropes stuck on the second rappel but after a bit of a cluster fuck another party coming up by us freed our rope for us. We remembered to get their tent site number so we could bring over some beer later that night to thank them.