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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Original Post - May 11, 2006 - 12:33am PT
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In the Valley from 5/4-5/7 originally ablegable and I were there to complete a project, but it was under water, "out of condition" and probably not touchable until the fall (too hot!). So we went on an obscurities binge.
Name this route from the summit shot. Hint: in the midground you see Upper and Lower Cathedral Spires, and in the background the Northeast Buttress of Higher Cathedral Rock. Maybe this makes it too easy, but maybe not... after a bit I'll post the trip report here...
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WBraun
climber
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May 11, 2006 - 12:37am PT
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Nice ......
Glad you guys had a good time up there.
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NinjaChimp
climber
Davis, CA
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May 11, 2006 - 12:38am PT
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Phantom Pinnacle?
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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May 11, 2006 - 12:52am PT
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oh, oh, oh!
I don't know.
never been up on top of that.
climbed the outside face, first pitch of phantom, replete with dyno and munge, but Dimitri wanted to go down!
so i can't say it's phantom.
It was crusty ahead, but I like lichen.
Rats.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - May 11, 2006 - 12:53am PT
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not Phantom Pinnacle...
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WBraun
climber
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May 11, 2006 - 12:53am PT
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Roy the second pitch was scary.
Ed, looks like you're on the buttress just to the left of the spires. Way down lower from phantom Pinnacle.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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May 11, 2006 - 12:54am PT
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my first real guess is lost brother.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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May 11, 2006 - 12:56am PT
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werner, you mean the lunge pitch on outside face of phantom was scary?
or the pitch to follow.
cuz i fired that dumb-scary dyno, being a boulderer and all...
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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May 11, 2006 - 12:58am PT
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yes werner, it's obscure and very close to the cat spires.
lost brother is darn tootin' over by sentinal...
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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May 11, 2006 - 01:02am PT
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I staticed the dyno on the outside face of Phantom Pinnacle. We climbed for a ways above that, but it started getting way runout, so we bailed....
The Phantom Pinnacle part of my trip report from Memorial Day Weekend, 1991:
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Saturday: we tried the Outside Face of Phantom Pinnacle to check our speed. After a 2 hour approach, I slowly rambled up the first pitch and we froze in our shorts and t-shirts. The sequence on the inital 5.10d move is tricky (not a lunge for me at least); one hold is sloping and the other is very thin.
After some wide, the upper 5.10a thin crack was interesting though awkward. Joel aided the move; it might be harder than 5.10d. Joel got the death pitch, with a runout 5.8 mantle and improbable traverse that neither of us wanted to risk, so we rapped. 2 other guys were trying the regular (5.9) route but bailed after 2 pitches and large block trundling. It looked somewhat broken; I don't know why some people had recommended it to me!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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May 11, 2006 - 01:13am PT
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well clint, that must be werner's point then.
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WBraun
climber
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May 11, 2006 - 01:18am PT
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Roy the second pitch of Outside face of Phantom Pinnacle is the scary ass lead. You can die if you blow it on that pitch.
I was looking down at my pro which was to far down for comfort. You are up and left slightly and if you fall you swing down and slam hard in to god knows what. I didn't think I would survive the fall if I did.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - May 11, 2006 - 01:18am PT
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OK, thanks for playing... here's the answer:
Trip Report: May 5, 2006
Ed Hartouni & ablegable
Cathedral Area
route description from Roper's Climber's Guide to Yosemite Valley 1971 ("green guide")
The Ski Jump
III, 5.7. Chuck Pratt and Bob Kamps, July 1959
Rope up at a point several hundred feet left of the actual toe of the buttress and climb up several pitches of moderate class 5 to a ledge system which runs out right of a huge tree near the right edge of the Jump. From here work up easy class 5 rock for several pitches to impressive cracks in the center of the Jump. Several class 5 pitches, the last of which goes up an incredibly loose chimney, lead to the top of the route. To descend, walk left, following the path of least resistance, to Harris's Hangover. Follow a ledge which runs back into the depths of the Hangover, then make a 140-foot rappel from a block. Several long rappels over chockstones end at the talus, near the rope-up spot. Despite the loose rock, this is a rather nice climb and makes an adventurous day.
But I don't suspect you know any better now after reading the description. Actually you've looked at it before, from El Cap meadows, but probably not seeing it.
Look beyond the Lower Cathedral Spire on the upper picture, the Ski Jump is shown in the blow up on the lower picture. The "impressive cracks in the center of the jump" are visible on the upper part of the jump.
The approach is similar to going to Phantom Pinnacle, walking the trail initial to the Spires. You exit the trail to proceed onto PP and meet up with the Ski Jump Buttress first. Here is ablegable and the Jump up above:
It is more or less easy climbing, we had a pretty light rack and two ropes with us. The raps into the canyon sounded like it might need to be long. However, route finding is a skill at a premium for this route: on the approach, on the climb and on the descent. Here is ablegable on a false start up pitch 2:
This is a "feral" route. Feral meaning having escaped from domestication and become wild. This route was done once upon a time, but probably not much anymore. The rock is loose, there is abundant vegetation, and a very faint track of where people had once tread. ablegable starting out on pitch 4 just before finding a piece of an angle piton, the rest of which he clipped when he found it in a crack in the middle of a sea of polished granite.
"Hey Ed, be careful, this stuff is slicker then it looks!"
Roper's description was weighing down on us as we approached the impressive cracks. The phrase "incredibly loose" kept repeating over and over again. But once we got there it wasn't nearly as bad as our imaginations had conjured. Loose, yes, and being careful was of extremely important and difficult in some places. The climbing was not particularly difficult, but patience was required of the leader not to pull some huge set of stacked flakes off and onto the belayer. At the base of the last pitch (which was the sixth), I belayed ablegable from inside a very cool alcove.
Up he went, a relatively long time as he picked his way through the looseness. Then he was calling from up and off my left shoulder "off belay Ed". I finished off the climb and joined him on our sunny summit. Great views...
No summit register that we could find... but we had an enjoyable lunch of PBJ sandwiches and then for the descent.
Traversing off to the south in to the "Harris's Hangover" we find a rather large block sitting on a ledge with a bunch of tattered bleached-white slings and goldline. ablegable accidently pulls off a knot with his bare hands, this stuff is way gone. Our own sling now surrounds the block. I am instructed to grab the block if it moves during the first rappel... ugh.
The rappel was probably about 210' down into this canyon, then about 3 more but shorter and with some down climbing until we get to the talus slope just above the start of the climb. What is truely impressive is the newly shattered rock and trees and bushes in this canyon, it is active and probably not a great place to be for very long.
Drink a celebratory beer at the packs and then off and down the trail.
In the end a great day, a good summit and another obscure climb ticked off the list.
I don't know how to assign the obscurity rating of this one. It is in Roper, but so is "Wil-o-the-Wisp" which gets an O7... but definitely not a climb recognized by many climbers. Perhaps someone has done this?
I'd probably weigh in with an O4.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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May 11, 2006 - 01:40am PT
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man that's good livin'
i think having a collection of old guides really benefits the desire to seek history and enjoy natural lines.
way to go.
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Levy
Big Wall climber
So Calif
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May 11, 2006 - 03:04am PT
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I've had my eye on that thing for 10 or 12 years & I had surmised that it was the Ski Jump but it is O-5 on the obscurity scale so I was never sure. That's a nice piece of stone, how about the Arete to the right? I've been thinking a moderate route(5.9 ish) may exist over there with some routefinding expertise and perhaps a bolt or two. Looks like great views from the route too! I'll have to put it on the list.
Levy
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Levy
Big Wall climber
So Calif
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May 11, 2006 - 03:04am PT
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I've had my eye on that thing for 10 or 12 years & I had surmised that it was the Ski Jump but it is O-5 on the obscurity scale so I was never sure. That's a nice piece of stone, how about the Arete to the right? I've been thinking a moderate route(5.9 ish) may exist over there with some routefinding expertise and perhaps a bolt or two. Looks like great views from the route too! I'll have to put it on the list.
Levy
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Roger Breedlove
Trad climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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May 11, 2006 - 08:35am PT
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Wow, Ed, that is a real obscurity. I remember the name of the route from the old Roper guide but never knew where it was. "Feral" is a good name for something, maybe all those old routes that no one in living memory has done.
But I have a question for those of you who were talking about the outer face of the Phantom Pinnacle. There are three pitches. The first has the lunge that Clint said that he climbed without a lunge (way to go Clint!) followed by a 5.10a crack, which Clint seems to say may be 5.10d and his partner used aid on. Is this right Clint, or are you taking about the 3rd pitch, which is (was) rated 5.10d?
The second is 5.8 on lower angle rock, with a traverse to the left as Werner says, on spooky looking and sounding flakes. Meyers' guide said they were loose--I didn't think so at the time--and Werner says he couldn't get any protection, which I don't remember as a problem protecting with nuts on slings. Did something fall off? Part of the shock, Werner, is that I don't recall anything ever spooking you.
The last pitch is a really steep and very fine hand crack in the back of a shallow right facing corner. Mike led it in really fine style. I remember making a long reach from a good hand jam to a much higher hand jam on a very steep part to pass a thin section of the crack.
I also think that Clint's comment: "...large block trundling. It looked somewhat broken; I don't know why some people had recommended it to me!" is in reference to the regular route not the one he was on. Is this correct, Clint?
So is everyone talking about the same climb? I am surprised at Werner's 'scary lead' comment and Clint's take on the location of the difficulty. If my memory is all whacked or something fell off, then I need to stop recommending to my friends (I suppose I can still find someone to recommend the route to.)
Oh, by the way, the top of Phantom Pinnacle is still against the wall. If I remember right, you cannot see the direction of Ed's camera shot. You are looking at the West Face of Sentinel.
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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May 11, 2006 - 11:32am PT
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"don't know how to assign the obscurity rating of this one. It is in Roper, but so is "Wil-o-the-Wisp" which gets an O7... but definitely not a climb recognized by many climbers. Perhaps someone has done this?"
The first rule of the O-club... ;-)
And my recollection from the top of Phantom Pinnalce is that it's airey, but you can't see to the west b/c the pinnacle is behind a big buttress.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - May 11, 2006 - 11:58am PT
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ah, Melissa, you are the first to raise the "obscurity contradiction", which is: you can climb it, but it isn't obscure (at least to the same degree) once you start to talk about it!
However, I think the defenses which time has thrown up around these climbs probably assure that they remain obscure. And at which time some tortured soul decides to climb a feature, it would be good for them to know that they aren't the first... there are other routes on the Ski Jump buttress which apparently do not appear in the guides (even Roper's).
My role in all this is to serve as a Boswell to ablegable's Johnson, it is ablegable's intimate knowledge of the Valley which enables these adventures. Just looking in Roper wouldn't be enough, though now that I have the bug I would go out and try to do climbs on the first order obscurities list (those climbs mentioned in Roper and no subsequent guide). Most likely I will be doing this with ablegable becuase he is an outstanding character and a solid partner when out in the feral regions of the Valley.
As far as being a part of the club, since its membership is self choosen, and there are few selves (you and Jay, Bernie and Joe, Coiler, to name the few that I know) who actually enjoy the feeling of decayed vegetation in your shoes on a climb through loose blocks and mossy, licheny, crumbly rock after a long walk in the woods to some place that may or may not be the right place, well I think the obscure climbs will remain so, even with the advertisement.
However I am completely prepared to take down the trip report on a moments notice.
Consider the noteriety ephemiral.
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Rhodo-Router
Gym climber
Otto, NC
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May 11, 2006 - 01:18pm PT
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Sounds like fun. if only y'all had rhodies sprouting from the cracks ...
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