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Darnell
Big Wall climber
Chicago
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Oct 14, 2005 - 12:38am PT
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I will tell all tomorrow, i have to be at work in 6hrs.
you do know who this is don't you Pete?
Your 9/11 brother!!
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Paul
Trad climber
Muir Beach, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 14, 2005 - 01:59am PT
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I look forward to the Zenith TR. And, I'll take clippin' tat to expando! I moved from an expando flake to bust out a couple free moves (pitch 13) and the flake did a reverso and pinched me wee fingers - woof! But, I agree, the huge Pika hooks were the great call on Tis!
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Rhodo-Router
Trad climber
Otto, NC
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Oct 14, 2005 - 02:13pm PT
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13 was the hardish one? wide to 'unmortared stone wall (Robbins)' to rooflet,camhook traverse, etc.? It was fun, except for a) spending over an hour bashing Nate's walker #5 Camalot out with a hammer and b)being too weenie to climb the wide bit at the end and instead aiding up the 1" flake to the left and swinging over to the bee-lay.
Yeah, the big ol' hook was my constant companion. Left it for pro getting to the belay after you exit the Zebra.
I went right at the top, to the good anchors. Unfortunately, I topped out at dusk, my free shoes were buried, and I couldn't punch out the slabs in the dusk in my wall shoes. had to spend the last night in a fully hanging bivy on the very lip---aaarrrggghhh!!! I cried, I won't lie. So pissed.
Rich-- where exactly did you go for the 60-footer? yowza
and did you get any pictures of that rainbow?
Ricardo- Nice job on the SS!
the hike is what it is, man. It's what gives you 'your own private wall' kinda feeling; not a green dragon in sight. Take it or leave it. (death slabs for me, every time)
"a day of pain" about sums up the descent. I had to be vewwwy careful not to wobble off the death slabs in the state I was in after 9 days. thank god I found water on top. Woulda done the trail, no contest, except my bike was stashed at Mirror Lake, my ledge fly was at the base (oops)and that was that.
And thank you Nanook! He went up to help Rich down, who was nowhere in sight, found my (very heavy) bag, and humped it down instead! You rule Erik!
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Rhodo-Router
Trad climber
Otto, NC
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Oct 14, 2005 - 02:27pm PT
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I, too, had to make a wedding(in San Diego). At the time I started up I thought this was in the unimaginably distant future, no way I'd miss it, I'd visit my bro in palo Alto en route, etc.etc.
Made the wedding by an hour.
Awesome hors d'ouevres. Rack of lamb, seared ahi, chicken satay...made those caterer dudes WORK for their money!
After that I spent 3 days finishing everybody's plate and taking naps.
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Paul
Trad climber
Muir Beach, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 14, 2005 - 05:42pm PT
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Nice! I forgot to ask - did you guys get hit with the rain that rolled through the valley? For Tis-sa-ack, I thought the hard pitches were the ramp and the last one. And, that 5.5 slab was sketchy in my blown-out wall shoes. It took me forever to haul my crap to the top.
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Darnell
Big Wall climber
Chicago
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Oct 15, 2005 - 01:32am PT
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I am going to write up a trip report this weekend.
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Rhodo-Router
Trad climber
Otto, NC
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Oct 15, 2005 - 10:58am PT
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The rain was possibly the most sublime hour of my life. Sunshine and intermittent clouds rolled over Tuolumne and the high country; Hoffman and Conness shone between the puffies. A sheet of rain crept around the corner from Cloud's Rest, stalling out around the edge of that piney buttress sticking out into the canyon. The evening sun lit it up with a huge rainbow as I was pulling into the Cave, atop the ramp pitch. Meanwhile, downvalley, Mordor! Evil blackness punctuated with flashes from within had subsumed El Cap and points west. It,too, appeared stationary, at least for the moment. Later I heard they had hail, rain, lightning strikes, the whole bit. I wanted no part of this.
Heaven to the east; hell to the west, and me in the middle counting out lightning strikes from beneath the fangs of the Cave like the Count of Tenaya Canyon: "One! Bwah ha ha, Two!bwah-ha-ha, Three!...Boom!" Eventually Mordor closed in and I rapped back over to the Ramp bivy from the base of the bolt ladder as dusk settled in. Just as I put myself on rappel and began sliding into the dimness, a huge wave of fog washed up the cliff, enveloping me in the grey nothing...purgatory. No exposure, just quiet oceanic stillness, with occasional flickers of lightning to show me the bags over to which I was jugging. Hopped in the ledge and cracked a cold one.
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Rhodo-Router
Gym climber
Otto, NC
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Might as well add this on on here too:
I spend all day, day nine, wandering back and forth on the last pitch. The first bit goes smoothly, backcleaning to make the jug easier, straightening out the line, and generally feeling smug about this bit of cleverness.
I get to where I can see a bit of yellow tat near the lip, the right-hand topout. Looks hard. Left a bit are the thin heads, etc. Hell no. I'm not going back to the bag to dig all that sh#t out, and besides, that way looks even harder.
Fine. I'll go way left, along the undercut rail. A-1 camming with my feet dangling in space leads me 40 or 50 feet left along this rail-thing, which I could probably free-climb under different circumstances, and what a wild pitch that would be. Eventually, though, this ends under more steep-and-nasty-looking climbing, which mournful assessment sees me reversing the rail, tail between leg. F*ck. I just want off of this thing.
At least this time I get to have fun. Handrailing back across the thing free, plucking the cams to plop into my lap and occasionally resting on a piece to suck in rope, is the most fun I've had all day. Or for a few days, come to think of it.
The traverse reversed, I now resign myself to heading for the yellow slings. A few steep moves and some shameless stick-clipping secures me a 'fixed' blue alien, and a 'fixed' green camalot besides. The yellow slings tease from the lip, now somewhat off to my right, and up a bit. Some grungy traversing, perhaps ten feet below the lip of the whole damn face I've lashed myself to for a week and a half now, will put me below the promised tat. I could stick-clip it from here. I need to get off this thing. I have moaned, sketched, talked extensively to people who were not there, pulled gear, nearly sheared myself from the wall parking cams behind huge, loose flakes in the dark, pulled an inadvertent all-nighter, drunk my piss, drunk piss that was not mine, slept in my shoes because I was too tired to undress, and taken the name of the Lord in vain more than once. I'm ready to be done with it.
I will not, however, stick-clip the last anchor on the route. This, simply put, would be too degrading. A flaring, dirty, horizontal seam between the massive onionskin flakes of Half Dome's summit visor is all that stands between me and the faded yellow mank of those anchors. I try to get a loweball to stick. It won't. The anchors are one move away. I think of the vain pride that sees me stranded here, one move from the top, and I recall a conversation I had with an old Valley vet two years before.
It took me two weeks to find a partner the first time. There was a time when I could ride the old Captain America truck into the lot and be greeted by any number of familiar faces willing to go up on a wall with me, even one as distant, committing and obscure as this one, but clearly my nostalgia alone for this time would not bring it back, and neither would it summon a partner. Eventually, an aspirant Swiss guide signed on, humped his bag up the slabs, drug himself to the Dormitory, and hopped on his first lead, into the Zebra. Fresh off the Zodiac, he was all aflame with the beauty of riding clean gear, tiny brass and camhooks that seated tidily into El Capitan granodiorite.
But Half Dome's rock is not so neat. Its grainier, salt-and-pepper granite spat out his silly camhook, sending him for a short, ankle-breaking ride onto the slab below.
I related this story to a grizzled, hard-of-hearing SAR team sage of many years, who had this to say:
"Fuhk that cleen sh#t, mahn. I don't wanna get huht. That's the bottom line."
And so, without further ado, I drove my last pin into the seam between me and the summit and snagged the yellow tat at the lip of Half Dome.
So? where, you may well ask, is the hissy fit in this story?
Patience, Grasshopper. The fit will come.
I rapped, I hauled, I jugged. I hung from two bolts at the lip. Nothing but a 5.5 slab, according to the topo, lay between me and a night (which was fast approaching) on the ground. Piece of cake. All I had to do was feed myself out a big loop of slack and fire for the summit. 5.5 friction is not something a boy weaned on North Cackalacky slabbage should have a second thought about.
The slab, however, was not to be so easily dismissed. I crept upwards in my duct-taped wall shoes. Gravelly bits, stuck to the rolled-up tape, crunched and rolled unnervingly beneath my feet. I didn't like it. The way off, clearly, lay across to the left and over a series of the damnable overlaps receding from the 2,000-foot void behind me. In no way did I intend to skate down the forty feet of 'easy' slab and sail over the lip onto those two bolts.
Darkness no longer hinted, but had begun to flood the valley below me. I didn't have a lot of time. My free shoes were buried halfway down in the haulbag, which I was not eager to unpack. Obviously my morning planning lacked foresight. I retreated back to the bag. Overtaxed by days of abysmal self-care on the wall, my battered brain dithered, back and forth, over my dwindling options. To dig through the bag, pissing away precious daylight to find the clean, sticky shoes, or to resolutely sack up and fire the slab despite the inappropriate gear? What would Royal Robbins have done? I feinted up the slab again, reached the overlap, plugged some shaky gear, and considered. Those cams couldn't catch a forty-foot slab skidder, I decided, much less the awful plunge over the edge behind it.
It was dark. I was exhausted, frustrated, and frightened beyond any tolerance remaining in my desperately frazzled synapses. Back at the bags, I cried.
FUUUUCCKK!!!!!!!! They could have heard me at the Mobile. The last straw had snapped. I screamed, cried, screamed some more, finally sobbing softly with my head against the lip, my feet still dangling over the northwest face. One more night on the wall.
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Rhodo-Router
Gym climber
overchalking on Grant's Crack
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Bump for summit angst.
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