I’ve never really been one to write about my climbing adventures. I typically assume that most people really don’t care about pointless pursuits on large rock faces. But over the past year, a number of folks have come up to me asking about wall climbing experiences, techniques, and logistics. So, therefore, I have decided to begin sharing some of my own experiences on the big stone.
After a trip to Glacier National Park this past July with Kirsten, I made a slight detour back to Seattle for a week to work before heading south to Yosemite Valley. I typically book a direct flight from SEA to Fresno on Alaska Air but for some reason, I decided to make the long 15hr drive down Interstate 5. Wes and Eric had been on El Capitan’s Shield route all week and would be walking down the East Ledges by the time I arrived in the Valley.
I loaded up my car on Saturday morning and took off from Seattle at 4am. It was late afternoon by the time I made it to Redding where I stopped for lunch. Temperatures were hovering around 102° and I felt as if the tires on my car would melt off. I continued listening to Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” as I drove East towards the National Park. I stopped in Oakhurst for gas, dinner, and groceries and spent the night in our typical free camp spot about an hour outside the valley.
In the morning I was greeted with fresh air and a tremendous amount of excitement knowing that I was going to be back in Yosemite before I was done with my coffee. I drove the hour to the valley and I parked at the Manure Pile Buttress Parking lot and hiked up the descent trail for a bit and waited on Wes and Eric for a couple of hours before heading back down to the Merced River to cool off. Valley floor temperatures were in the 90s and I could only imagine how miserable it was on the top of El Cap right now in the blazing sun. All the hard and miserable aspects of wall climbing I had forgotten about over the past 11 months were now beginning to come back to me.
Sitting under a tree in El Cap meadow with a bottle of Aligote I waited for Wes and Eric to show up. Eight hours later I saw Wes stumbling towards El Cap bridge and greeted him with a hug and then drove back to the Manure Pile Buttress Parking Lot to cook dinner, drink beers and meet back up with Eric.
Rest days are hard and I was selfishly chomping at the bit to start making progress. The day after Wes came down from the Captain, we were sorting gear and packing our haul bags to start climbing New Dawn. We decided to just walk multiple light loads to the base of our route and I agreed to lead the first pitch hoping to give Wes a little bit of “rest”.
We knew a wall this size would require about a week’s worth of food and water. We began walking in our water and dropping it at the base. Then we would walk back to the car and grab all of our climbing gear and do the same thing. Then we would do another round of water and maybe our sleeping gear. Then we would repeat the process with food and maybe some more water. After 3 shuttle loads, we sorted out some gear and racked up.
The first pitch began on Mescalito (which we had climbed last year). It started up a reachy bolt ladder, requiring me to step out of my aiders, stand on the tip of my toes on top of the hanger to clip the next bolt. Instead of continuing up Mescalito’s first pitch a pendulum out left was required to gain a shallow corner which would end New Dawn’s first pitch. As I ran across the slab I was forced to lock off on a small crimp and then place a small hook and transfer my body weight into my aiders. As I worked my way up to the top step of my aider while balancing on the hook I noticed the rope directly perpendicular from me. Any misstep would send me screaming back across the wall. A broken wire exposed a fixed dead-head with no opportunity to hook and cam hooks were too shallow for the corner. As I continued to fiddle with the possibility of having to place a head, a thin edge way above my head appeared, forcing me to top-step my hook giving me the opportunity to hook again which brought me within reach of the fixed head above.
I finally reached the 1st pitch anchors and felt, once again, humbled and a little tired. Wes jugged and cleaned the pitch while I rappeled the haul line back down to the ground. We took in the beauty of the Valley, packed our climbing gear and then headed back down to the car for dinner and some sleep.
After a much-needed rest day, we drove back to El Cap Bridge, parked the car and began walking in our final load of food and water to the base of our route. This part of the wall receives the first sunlight of the day, hence the name “Wall of Early Morning Light“, and doesn’t start easing until 2pm every day. Wes and I just sat there in the shade dreading what was to come. Familiar feelings of fear and dread began to reemerge. It’s the same thing I feel every year at this moment. The idea of spending an entire week on the side of a wall is rather daunting. With the idea that the longer we sit there the less time we have to spend in the scorching sun, we needed to get moving and make some progress. So, I got up, put my harness back one and began jugging the fixed line to our high point.
One of the worst parts of big wall climbing is the hauling. 7 days of food and water for two people in addition to sleeping gear, the portaledge, the shit bag, and all the climbing gear makes 4 haul bags rather heavy when dragging up slabby terrain. Even when body hauling on a 3:1 system is miserable and painful work.
After about an hour and a half of hauling, I was happy to restack the ropes into their bags and put Wes on belay for pitch two. A C1 crack lead into a section of C2 heads bringing us to the anchors. After a nice long break, I was ready to take the rack and head up on pitch 3. Navigating my way over some shitty fixed gear and a series of C3 hook moves I arrived at what would be our bivy spot for the first night.
When you’re wall climbing you are always doing something. If you’re at the belay you are constantly sorting the rope, eating food, drinking water, peeing, or dozing off to sleep. Even when you’re done climbing for the day you still have to plan out how you’re going to hang your portaledge so it doesn’t interfere with the angles and bulges in the rock, or your gear or your haul bags. You then have to rappel below your haul bags, grab the portaledge, jug back up, and then set it up (which can be a real pain in the ass).
The cool air in the morning is quickly greeted by the heat of the July sun. There’s usually a certain level of procrastination that occurs when laying in my sleeping bags. I reach for my sleeping bag zipper and I realize that my hands are swollen, and the skin on my fingers are polished from constantly pulling on heavy ropes, aiders, and gear. The rest of my body at this point is pretty stiff and I typically feel and look like shit.
Breakfast usually consists of a blueberry bagel, a smushed Sveinhard’s breakfast danish, that was probably made in a factory in Minnesota 5 years ago and a can of Starbucks Double Shot Espresso. This is quickly followed by a much-welcomed urge to have to shit. People always ask how this process happens up there. It’s simply just shitting into a bag, with a bit of kitty litter. You then shake the shit around in the kitty litter in order to absorb any residual liquid. This is then put into another zip bag which is then put into our roll top SeaLine bag that hangs out below our haul bag which houses 2 people’s worth of shit for 7 days. And yes, it stinks. I can not stress enough the need to get one’s body in a regular shit schedule before heading up on a big wall. There is truly nothing worse than holding off on pooping in the morning only to have bad stomach cramps and then having onset diarrhea in the middle of the hardest and scariest pitch of climbing you’ve ever done in your life.
After a little bit of additional procrastination, it becomes time to start re-stuffing the haul bags, packing the portaledge, re-racking, and sorting ropes for another long day on the wall.
Stepping out of the mild belay chaos typically brings me a great sense of relief. This is the part of the climbing that is actually climbing and enjoyable. On July 11 I took off from our first bivy and began making my way across a section of rusty bolts that were probably placed during the first ascent back in ’72. A lot of these bolts don’t actually contain a hanger, which is what you’d typically find at a popular crag. Instead, you are left with a bent and rusted hangerless bolt and a bunch of cinch hangers that are mostly only good for bodyweight only. After a series of these bolts, I hammered in a beak for a little extra assurance that I wouldn’t take a fall on the belay. Now, began a fun series of C3 hook moves.
We progressed throughout the day climbing an average of 3-4 pitches day. Some truly awful hauling brought us and all of our gear to the lovely Lay Lady Ledge. It was awfully hot and humid that night but the threat of a thunderstorm forced me to try and sleep in my bivy sack.
After spending the night on Lay Lady Ledge we decided to continue up New Dawn instead of heading up the slightly more adventurous and harder Tribal Rite.
We got to El Cap tower that evening and set up our portaledge next to the Texas Flake.
The ledge allowed for an easy portaledge set up and plenty of room to move around.
We woke up the next morning having now to deal with the huge traverse that would lead into The Wall of Early Morning Light. Wes took off on the first pitch and I would then do a very short pitch to another anchor and then a long traverse over a series of hook moves and god-awful rivets. I was truly scared that any number of these would break under my own body weight.
I was rather relieved to not have to clean this pitch because I knew it was going to be a bit more challenging for Wes to clean.
Long traversing days like these sometimes make you feel as if you are just treading water. You end up doing a lot more work lowering out the bags and cleaning than you do actually gaining any elevation.
There is always a moment where air below your feet, the steepness of the wall, the difficulty of the climbing, and the commitment of our position all comes together and makes me think, “yeah, now it really feels like we’re on El Cap”. This seemed to happen on pitch 15. Wes began making his way up through a fixed rivet ladder and was maybe 20′ above me when all of a sudden I felt the slack of the rope fall into my lap, and I saw the gear on his harness float in the air and Wes came barreling towards me yanking me from my comfortable position to above the anchor as he came flying past me. He broke a rivet wire which was his second fall on this route.
It was getting late in the afternoon so we decided to set the portaledge up on pitch 15. I decided to take advantage of the cooler evening temperatures and fix a rope on pitch 16. I barely placed any of my own gear on this pitch just clipping fixed heads and the occasional bolt which kept it at a “tame” C3. I would try and clip rivet hangers to the rope but any upward rope drag would pull the hanger off and send my screamer spinning down the rope to the next piece.
With a couple thousand feet off air below me, I noticed that any minor mistake would send me sailing through the air for 30-40 feet ripping out a few “body-weight only” pieces of gear on the way down. At this point, fear tends to creep its way throughout every part of my body. All I can do is just zero in on the piece ahead and move forward and every once in a while, just saying “fuck it”, reassuring myself that at least if I were to fall, I wouldn’t hit any ledges or odd angles in the rock on my way down. On this pitch there was a good mix of cam hooking, hooking beaks on to dead heads and one (thank god) bomber black alien. I felt a huge sense of relief after having reached the anchors. I then rappeled back down to the bivy which is where we spent our 4th night on the wall.
Wildfire smoke had been rolling in in the evenings from the Ferguson Fires but it would usually dissipate by the mornings. We began noticing less vehicle traffic in the valley and that smoke getting thicker and thicker. We would wake up in the mornings finding bits of fine ash on our ledge and sleeping bags. The air became stagnant and stuffy, and the temperatures only increased as the valley floor became less and less visible from our position.
Wes led us up another difficult C3 section to a comfortable position on Wino Tower and I continued up easy terrain on pitch 18.
Some physical challenging pitches brought us to a little perch on pitch 19 which is where we bivied for our 5th night.
Another long traverse was in store for us the next day. We had to break it up into two pitches because we were scared that our lower-out line wouldn’t be long enough and would send our bags swinging across the rock and damaging our goods.
Wes then led up the splitter cracks through the headwall.
The immaculate headwall pitches brought us to the infamous Harding Roof. It was getting dark at this point and, to this day, I am not really sure what made it so hard but as Wes described it, it sounded like a true horror fest.
We set up the portledge in the dark for our 6th and final night on the wall. Just three more pitches to go!
I took the rack and started off slowly. The grimy, dirty rock and my own fear and exhaustion kept me at a snail’s pace. Placing a black alien and small brass wires I came to a point where I felt it was necessary to grab the pitons. I fifi’ed into the brass wire I was standing on and began hammering in a Lost Arrow when all of a sudden the piece I was standing on broke and sent me flying towards the belay. Shook up I moved back to my high point and continued on. 2.5-3hrs (or longer) later I arrived at a nice ledge. Completely parched I began hauling. The heat of the sun, stuffiness of the air, and the sound of chainsaws in the valley made me feel as if I was in hell.
Wes cleaned and took off hammering away at the following A2 pitch.
We were now just one pitch from the top! I proudly grabbed the rack and started up the bolt ladder into hooking some scary thin flakes followed by a series of fixed dowels (which I missed somehow and got me off route). I managed to find my way back and climbed a couple scary moves with some ledge-fall potential, and then over some roofs bringing us to the top anchors.
After having arrived at the belay Wes put me back on belay and we dragged the rest of our haul kit over the lip onto flat ground.
We slept that night on the top and slept in as much as we could in the morning.
We sorted gear evenly amongst our four haul bags. Unlike last year, carrying two haul bags each at a time (weighing over 100lbs), we decided to shuttle our loads. The heat and sun exposure was truly exhausting. After 4 hours of shuttling gear and rappeling down the East Ledges I noticed that my knee was in excruciating pain (symptoms of being 29 years old I guess) and that I was running out of water. While stumbling towards the parking lot with the first load I walked up to a family in an RV and asked for water. They very kindly offered us a gallon and Wes and I were happy. I ran back up to the base of the East Ledges rappel to grab my final bag and stumbled down to the parking lot.
At this point, the valley was filled with smoke and one couldn’t even see El Cap from the MPB parking lot. We had our post big wall pizza and Coronas in Curry Village and spent a moment or two in El Cap meadow to take it all in. With the usual “is this all there is?” depressed feeling one gets after climbing something big, we went our separate ways to get out of the smoke with another successful Yosemite trip in the bag.