Regular Northwest Face, Half Dome

After getting of the salathe wall, we got a ton of rest (a day and a half) and decided to go climb half dome. After drinking some beer with Mark Hudon we racked our gear and hiked up the death slabs to the base of the climb. It was a 3-4 hour approach that is notoriously difficult. It took us only two and a half hours, it wasn't too bad. 

When we got to the base, we came to find that these two german kids that we knew (we passed them when they were climbing the nose). They kindly let us know that we could start before them. Sweet. 

This climb is 24 pitches and it is grade VI. Here is the breakdown of the seriousness and commitment level of climbs.

Grade I: 1-3 hours

Grade II: 3-5 hours

Grade III: 5-8 hours

Grade IV: a full day

Grade V: one very long day to two days

Grade VI: at least two days to a week

For example, any el cap route is grade VI. Since we had climbed the nose in a day, we were pretty confident that we would be able to climb it pretty quickly. Normally for any big wall we have done, one person would lead up, and the other person would jug or ascend up the rope instead of actually climbing. For this route, we both climbed each individual pitch. This takes longer, but it was cooler that we both climbed the whole thing. It ended up taking us 11 hours and 45 minutes. We didn't link many pitches, and weren't trying to move super fast. 

The sweeeeeet face.

There is a spring at the base of the climb. The water was soo good.

There is a snowfield at the base, it's been melting very slowly. It comes up about twenty feet from the true base of the rock. Colin used my nut tool as an ice axe. The german kids on the right had fixed a pitch the previous day. The only thing is... they were on the wrong route. That allowed us some time to get ahead of them so we wouldn't be in there way. 

Colin leading up some pitch.. I don't remember. 

This pitch is the first one that got us out of the corner system, and got us out on the exposed face. That definitely affected me mentally. 

Colin starting up the chimneys. 

The climbing went really well. Most of the pitches are 5.9 up until big sandy ledge on pitch 17. The grade gets much harder to 5.11d. I free climbed as much as I could and then went into aid mode. 

The 'thank god ledge'. 1 foot wide, very high up, super exposed. You can either walk it, or crawl. We crawled it haha. It was still scary! 

The cables to get off half dome. I can't believe that tourists actually go up and down this thing.. I just climbed the face of half dome, and I was scared going down! It's really slippery and surprisingly steep. 

I didn't climb as well as I had hoped. I didn't sleep very well the night before, and I'm not sure I had enough rest after climbing salathe. Mentally I wasn't in the best shape either. The second I stepped off the snow to follow up the pitch that Colin had just led, I felt heavy and scared. I wasn't even leading and I was scared a lot of the time. This was our third big wall climb in two weeks, which is a ton for most people. Some of my friends can climb 6 el cap routes in 10 days, and I feel like I should be able to do the same. I tend to jump into things, especially with climbing. It's been getting me ahead for a while, but now it's starting to slow me down. 

The only way I can explain it is I feel like my brain is fried.. melted from the exposure and constantly pushing myself hard.. being scared... a lot..

My trip might end a little bit early. I don't know how much more I can mentally take. Wall climbing is incredible, but for me, it's really hard.

I'm taking a few days off now to recover. It's been good, hanging out with awesome people that I've met, and getting back some of the calories that have I've lost. 

Colin left for home yesterday, so I'm going to climb with a few other people. A few loose plans so far:

Astroman with Ameet (I don't know how to spell his name)

Zodiac, el cap with Ameet??

The shield, el cap with Erik?? Damn that will be scary

P.S. I changed the settings on my page, so now it should allow anyone to comment on my posts. So... go ahead, Say anything! Tell me I need to be trying harder, or I'm being a baby for being so afraid of heights!

Goals: Some big, some bigger

Some of these I might do next week, some might not happen until next year. 

Free the regular northwest face of half dome

Solo west face of leaning tower in a push

Solo zodiac, el capitan

Find a girl that likes to climb.. and that likes me haha

El cap, half dome link up, yikes

Free astroman

Steck Salathe

Do a hard aid route on the captain.. not sure which one

Life in Yosemite.

I thought I'd write a post about what it's like here. I mostly write about the climbing here, but not too much about everything else that goes on. So here it goes..

This is camp 4. There are 35 sites, which is a 25x25 square with four bear boxes to keep food in. It's not like normal camping where you get your own secluded site all to yourself. If you are in a group of two, you will get put with four other random people, so 6 people per site. Camp 4 is the only walk in campground, and you are only allowed to stay for seven days. I have been here since may 10th... so... I haven't been staying 'legally' for about a month. I keep my food, sleeping pad, and sleeping bag in less than half a bear box, and stay hidden from the rangers. I'm just super friendly to the other people staying in my site. If there are tourists staying in my site, they think it's the coolest thing ever that I climb, and if other climbers stay in my site, they could care less that I'm not actually paying for the site. 

You're only allowed to have a tent if you have a registered tag.. which you get when you stay for your seven days. I sleep on the ground under the stars every night. The tourons that stay in my site usually ask me if I'm afraid of bears because I don't sleep in a tent.. I honestly am a little scared, but not too bad. 

My german friend Betty taught me how to make banana pancakes when I first got here. They're totally my favorite thing to make for breakfast. So good.. 

Yosemite falls. This is about two minuets away from camp 4. I drive or ride my bike by it several times a day. So awesome. Especially the millions of tourons that crowd around and take pictures of it. I can't totally blame them.. it is really beautiful. 

This is on the bridge by el capitan meadow. Tom Evans (the guy who takes the sick pictures of us climbing) is here every day, and a lot of climbers usually gather around. It's one of my favorite places to hang out on my rest days. You can look through Tom's telescope at all the other climbers on the captain and check their progress. Tom is hilarious, especially when he is talking about girls, or when he's checking them out through his binoculars haha. 

So I woke up one morning, and these shoes were next to me. They're a pair of 5.10 guide tennies with a note that said 'you can take it'. SWEET! I was actually thinking about buying a pair, except they are $100. They could use a resole, but they still work great! I have gotten tons of stuff here for free.. I get a good amount of free food from people that are leaving the park, and get a lot of climbing gear. I walk around the base of el cap and look for stuff that people have dropped. The other day I got 4 nuts, 3 carabiners, and a rivet hanger. I have yet to come back empty handed. People also leave a ton of carabiners and slings on routes.. especially the nose.  

We call these green dragons. The ultimate tourist vehicle. It's a tour around the valley floor, and the ranger sitting in front talks about everything.. I know a guy that just slept in one of these for a night. He said that whisky helped him make that decision. 

This is where I get my overpriced groceries. Some stuff is double the price in normal grocery stores. It's in the middle of yosemite.. so what do you expect?

Mosquitos! They are pretty terrible here. Even when I put on bug spray, they still find every single spot that I didn't spray well enough. I think they like to suck my blood more than most people..

My friend Scott's car just got broken into by a bear. They stick their claws in the top of your door frame, pull the frame out and break your window in the process. There were 5 break ins all in el cap meadow one night. Sometimes they break in even if you don't have any food in your car. 

Huge bear at the base of el cap! This thing was about 30 feet away from me when I first saw it. People usually hike there haul bags up to the base they day before they climb, and bears walk around and rip into your bags to find food. The rule is that you have to put your bags a pitch up.. out of reach. 

The merced river winds throughout the valley. The water rose a few feet since I've been here. It got huge! They had to evacuate half of the house keeping camp because it was getting flooded. The water level is finally going back down. 

This is el cap meadow half flooded. Middle cathedral rock is what you are looking at, it is directly across from the captain.

So all the girls here are either with their boyfriends, or with their parents, bummer. It's probably good though.. I don't need to be distracted by that haha. I'll have enough of that when I go back home and when school starts back up in the fall. That's still a big goal though.. find a girl that climbs! I don't think this trip would be possible if I still had a girlfriend. I would sacrifice anything for this.

I'm still loving it here. I'm really starting to miss my family and being home though. I've got a few other goals to finish up here.. and might leave late june.. I have no idea though.. No plans yet.

If any of you reading this have any questions about anything.. or questions about any of my other posts, feel free to ask with that little comment button at the bottom. I wish more people would comment! Even if you think it's a stupid question.. go ahead.

The Salathe Wall, El Capitan

One of my goals for the summer was to climb the salathe wall. Our strategy: pre haul our haul bag up the fixed lines up to heart ledges 11 pitches up, then spend 3 days on the wall. I think it's kind of lame pre hauling using fixed lines... but after climbing free blast, that would have been a nightmare to haul our 100 pound bag through terrain that would ensure that our bag would keep getting terribly stuck the entire way up.


I was nervous about the first 11 pitches rated at 5.11b or c, my limit. I cruised my 10d tricky pro pitch, but pulled on some of the bolts to get through the crux slab pitch. Not trying to make excuses, because I know that I could have just tried harder.. If I was wearing different shoes I probably could have sent the crux. I was wearing my comfy all day shoes that I wear socks in.

Colin pulling through the roof traverse

We got to heart ledges quickly, we weren't trying to climb fast, and got there around 3pm. We had nothing else to do.. we could only fix one pitch ahead of that ledge, so we couldn't climb much further. We sat and baked in the sun and waited for the sun to go down.

Me cleaning the pitch off of heart ledge. 

So the deal when we decided to climb salathe was that we were going to split up the 'wide' pitches. Wide refers to any offwidth or chimney. I'm terrible at this type of climbing. For me it has a whole different rating system. I feel like it is at least two number grades harder. So any 5.9 offwidth feels like 5.11 to me.

I agreed to climb the hollow flake pitch. It is a 5.9 offwidth that you can't protect unless you bring HUGE cams. We only had one, which I had to borrow from my friend Scott. 

This was my entire rack for a 140 foot pitch. One number 6 camalot. You pendulum into the crack and then as you climb, you slowly inch your sorry ass up the wide crack, and bump the cam up. The cam fits in the crack really well about half way up, and then you have a few options. You either leave the cam and put a 10 foot sling on it, put it back on your harness, or bump the cam the whole way up. I decided to go with the last choice. For the second half of the crack, the cam would barely stay in because it was so tipped out. Mentally it made me feel better, knowing that if I fell, there would be a very small chance that the cam wold actually hold, instead of leaving the cam lower and taking a bigger fall. 

This was by far the hardest thing I have ever climbed. Yes, it is 5.9, I dare any of you to go climb it. The pitch completely exhausted me mentally and physically. I definitely thought about my funeral.

Colin leading the next chimney pitch. He's a sick person for liking climbing that kind of stuff.

Photo by Tom Evans. Colin climbing just below the ear.

Photo by Tom Evans. Me leading up pitch 18. Hard. 

A new 6 camalot (worth $130) stuck!!! We couldn't get it. Colin bent my brand new nut tool. Bastard. 

Colin standing on el cap spire, pitch 20. Sweetest bivy ever!! It was a detached 8x8 tower that doesn't touch the wall on any side. We really wanted to top out the next day, so we fixed the next three pitches. It was still my block to lead, but once we got to the spire, I totally bonked. Colin led the pitch off the spire just as it was getting dark, and then I led the next two when it was completely dark out. 

So to get out of having to climb any more wide pitches, I agreed to lead 'the sewer'. It's really called that... WORST PITCH OF CLIMB (see below)

I made Colin get out the camera to take a picture of me so I could remember this haha. It's pretty crazy.. the entire route is dry, and then you get to this one pitch, and it's draining water. There's grass, plants and black shit that you get all over you. I got soaking wet. I can not believe that people actually free climb this pitch... I aided the whole thing. 

Getting higher!

Me leading the roof on pitch 28. SO SWEET.

Photo by Tom Evans

Colin just got done with a hard aid pitch, and was pretty fried. I was ready to lead. So earlier in the day I had the idea that if I led the sewer and the next pitch, that Colin would end up with all of the hard aid. My sneakiness didn't end up working. I'm glad it didn't though. Leading the roof and up through the salathe headwall was incredible. I'm never too psyched on aid climbing, but it was such an incredible place to be. 

Long ledge on pitch 31. I was so happy to be done leading. It was probably the hardest and scariest aid I have ever done. Only 4 more pitches to go. Thank God! 

Score, found these awesome shades. 

Slowly, we inched our way to the top, and finally made it to the last pitch. Colin shouted down "OFF BE-FUCKING-LAY". When the leader gets to the anchor, and secures himself, you yell down to your belayer "off belay", so this was Colin's version.. being exhausted and glad we had no more hard climbing. It was easy 5.6 to the summit. Colin let me lead it. We got to the top around 11pm, and was starving, exhausted, and SO PSYCHED! My third time up el capitan. 

We threw everything off immediately when we got to the top, this is what it ended up looking like haha. There was a really nice two person bivy spot right when you top out. 

We decided to sleep in late (..cough..7:30am) and then slowly packed up our gear to get back on the ground. 

My hands didn't get too beat up this time, my fingers still got swollen though. I was persistent about wearing my fingerless gloves as much as possible. It's called 'wall hands'. From gripping your ascenders, hauling, and continuously pulling yourself up, your hands swell up, and every morning you wake up you can barely make a fist. 

My body is getting used to the abuse that I put it through. I'm not nearly as beat up as the first time I went up the captain. 

The topo of the route. There is one of these for every big route we do. It gives information about how long each pitch is, where you can sleep, and a little information about what gear you need.

Another route on the captain.

Colin and I packed up to climb the salathe wall on el capitan yesterday. It should have taken an hour, but because of the lack of motivation by the heat, it took about 3. Our plan was to pack, and then pre-haul our pig (haul bag) up to heart ledge on pitch 10. Salathe is 35 pitches long, and the pitches that climb up to there are called free blast. There are fixed ropes from the ledge to the ground, so it makes it easier to haul and rappel down. We then planned on climbing free blast this morning, and then staying on the fall for the next few days to finish the route… that didn’t quite end up happening.

Colin and I were sort of on edge with each other all day, and when we were pre hauling, it didn’t get any better. When we got back on the ground around 11pm, we decided to take one more rest day before we headed up. I was super psyched to get on it, but Colin wasn’t ready I guess. Because big wall climbing is such a team effort, it is vital that both of us to be ready so we have the best shot at success. There were also three other groups starting up tomorrow on the same route… this could have made things much more difficult.

I’m getting very anxious. Today is my fourth day without doing anything… Hopefully we head up tomorrow. 

15 hour SEND

I didn't sleep well because I was so anxious. I also kept waking up because of the bear problems or other loud people in camp 4. My alarm went off at 3:30am, and I said to myself "today is going to hurt..." I had never climbed for 24 hours, or nothing even close. After a ton of sleep (four hours) I pumped the fuel bottle on my whisper lite and boiled water for oatmeal.

For speed climbing, we used a method called short fixing. When I get to the anchor, I call off belay, pull up all the extra slack in the line and then fix the rope so Colin can start jugging up the rope. Normally, I would just wait for Colin to get up to me, but instead we are both climbing at the same time. At this point I have two options. I can either put myself on belay with a gri gri, and feed myself out slack, or use the pakistani death loop. If you use the PDL if you fall, you fall until all of the slack is taken in, and you could possibly take a factor two fall on your anchor. The fall could range anywhere between 10 and 50 feet. When I felt really confident, or if the aid was really easy I would use the PDL. If the aid was tricky I would put myself on belay.

We got to the base of el cap and I was climbing by 4:30. For me, the first two pitches are the hardest until pitch 21, the great roof. I'm not good enough to free all of the moves on the first two pitches, so I have to aid through most of it. These two guys passed us on pitch 4. They were trying to climb it in 9 hours. There are a few different pendulums that you have to do on the route. what that means is you have to clip a piece of gear above you, lower, and then swing to get to the next crack system or the next piece of gear. On pitch 4 I clipped a fixed copper head just before the clipping the piece of gear to do the first pendulum. As soon as I put my body weight on it, PING! It popped out and I took a 5 foot fall on my daisy chain that was clipped below me on a bolt. It hurt, but I was fine. We passed a kind soloist on sickle ledge, and kept running up the route. Everything was going perfectly. I led up to dolt tower in only 4 hours. I cut off two hours from our previous time.
When Colin got to the top of Dolt Tower, he yelled "Dude! We're climbing at 16 hour pace!" I was like..... psh yea right...

Colin took over and led the next ten pitches. For the king swing, we decided that it might be slightly slower, but we were both going to do the swing. To have enough slack for Colin to lower far enough down to swing I had to start simul climbing up the bolt ladder off of texas flake as Colin finished leading the boot flake. I lowered Colin, he cleaned all of his gear, and then it was swing time. 1,500 feet off the ground, as Colin started swinging, crowds that were in el cap meadow cheered him on, and he stuck it first try. My turn. I hadn't done the swing before, so I was a little nervous. Colin put me on belay, and then I started swinging. Again the crowds cheered, and adrenaline ran through my body. I made the grab first try and then got to the same ledge as Colin. That was pretty awesome, knowing that our friends were watching rooting for us.

Colin leading up to el cap tower

Colin leading up the boot

Colin sticking the grab. Hell yes. Note the size of my pack in the above picture. That's right, only 16 liters. We brought up 4 liters of water and some food. I brought two big protein bars and two snickers, along with a nutella and peanut butter bagel for both each of us. 

Me sticking the grab. Hell yes.

Colin cleaning the great roof. Look closely, you can see the rope isn't clipped anywhere along the traverse. Huge runout so Colin can do one big lower out. I'm short fixing the next pitch with a PDL

Leading up pancake flake.

We started running out of water. We got lucky, there was cloud cover for a lot of the climb, and we probably would have taken longer if we were getting hit by sun all day. When It was my turn to lead again, I started moving slower because of dehydration. I led up the intimidating great roof, and back cleaned the whole traverse. That was pretty terrifying. Especially because I had to bust out the cam hook which I had barely ever used before. The aid gets hard starting at the great roof, and our pace slowed. I muscled through the pitches and got to the end of my leading block on pitch 26, the base of changing corners, the last hard aid pitch. When I got to camp 6, I can't describe how happy I was because of what I had found. There were about 6 gallons of stashed water that people had left. It turns out that the german kids that we passed 3 days before ended up leaving it, and I graciously thanked them. We passed one more party, and then went onto leading the bolt ladder. You can't make it all the way to the top with one rope length, so we had to simul climb it. I only had one aider, and it made it very difficult. I had lost almost all of the strength in my arms, and struggled with pulling myself up to clip every next bolt. We got to the finish line, the famous tree on top of the captain. 

We got to the summit just under 15 hours. AWESOME!!! I had no idea that we were going to be able climb that fast. I honestly thought that it was going to take about 30 hours. Our goal was to climb it in 24, and climbed it 9 hours faster than that. Our average time per pitch is less than 30 minuets for 31 pitches. We topped out when it was still light. 

I've read from other people that have climbed the nose in a day about all the conditioning and training that they had done. We didn't do any of that... we just tried really really hard. I taught myself how to short fix a few weeks earlier, and Colin taught himself the day before. Again, this is another example of  how determination exceeds physical ability. Just like the first time we climbed the nose, no we were not ready, but our determination got us to the top. 

Tom Evans is the guys that takes all these sick pictures. He is on the bridge in el cap meadow every day taking pictures, and puts up a daily report of all the action on the captain. Colin and I were featured in his report. 

http://elcapreport.com/content/elcap-report-60410 

24 hour power!

Nose in a day tomorrow! Nervous, intimidated, psyched. We are going for it. We are going to start around 4 or 5 am, an hour before light. I don't really know what climbing for that long is going to be like.... even just hanging out pulling an all-nighter sucks.. oh well. Maybe my constant flow of adrenaline will keep me moving. I'm nervous about the great roof. Not only have I not climbed that pitch, but I have to back clean every piece of gear on the traverse to make it faster for Colin to clean. So if I fell I'd take at least a 50 or 60 foot whipper. I'd be fine though.. it would just suck. Free climbing in the dark is also going to be hard.. maybe not hard, but just slower. When you're climbing in the dark, your whole world is only as big as the beam of your headlamp. It seems less scary, because you can't see all the way down haha. We are bringing one rope. That means we can't bail, it's just our insurance policy so we guarantee success. Anyways, I'm ready for it.

Wish us luck!

Run up to dolt tower

More preparation for nose in a day. We are climbing it in four leading blocks. I have pitches 

1-10 and 21-26. Colin has the rest. Today we planned on climbing up to dolt tower, which meant I was going to lead every pitch, and Colin was going to jug and clean them. Dolt tower is the second bivy ledge up the route on top of pitch 10 about 1000 feet up. This is where most people sleep on there first or second day on the route. We got to the  base of the route at 8 am, and as I placed my first cam into the crack, there were a few guys coming up behind us. Colin said we should let them pass... It was Alex Honnold and Ueli Steck. They are trying to break the speed record of 2:37:05. Keep in mind most people take 3 to 5 days to climb the route. By the time I got done leading the first pitch, they were already 5 pitches ahead of us.

The first time I climbed the nose, I didn't do much free climbing, only the mandatory parts that couldn't be aided. I got a pair of climbing off shoes off craig's list that are really comfortable, and can even wear socks in. That way I can wear them the whole time while I'm leading, and can easily switch from aid to free. They still hurt to be stepping in my aiders, but that just makes me move more quickly to get out of them. 

I was leading slower than I hoped (so I thought), and was a little bummed. The first two pitches are the most time consuming. I was still pushing hard though. When we got up to sickle ledge, 4 pitches up, there were two kiwi's bailing (who had a TON of stuff), and some german kids ahead of us, who were moving exceptionally slow. After waiting a half hour or more, I finally could start leading the pitches to get into the stove legs, the three germs were taking up the whole anchor, so when I got about ten feet below them I asked if they could clip my draw and rope in so I could do the pendulum swing and pass them. They were super cool about it and it made passing easy. 

Photo by Tom Evans, Colin and I are on the left. Party on sickle, this is where we had to wait to start climbing again. It took the kiwis about 3 hours to bail off 4 pitches up. No wonder the didn't have it in them to make it.. I should have taken a picture of how much crap they had with them. 

GLORY. Freeing the stove legs on pitch seven. 5.8 perfect hands 600 feet up el capitan.

With all the waiting around for Honnold and Euli to pass us, and the junk show on sickle, we made it to dolt in 6 hours with me leading every pitch. The first time we climbed up to this point, we had the first four pitches fixed (which means we had ropes hung so all we had to do was climb up them) and it took us around 17 hours. It was so awesome to see how much I have improved since march when I first climbed the captain. It turned out that I wasn't moving as slow as I thought, and we were ahead of schedule for climbing the route in 24 hours. SWEET!