We spent a few more days in Zion and climbed one of our favorite routes there, Shunne's Buttress. It is a phenomenal route with a taste of every style of climbing.
Sue on the overhanging finger crack pitch on Shunne's Buttress
We also made an attempt on Spaceshot. We climbed the first 4 pitches, but were scared off by some threatening weather. We decided to crag at the Cerebrus Gendarme area instead, where we could escape much quicker should the sky decide to pour down on us. Bad weather was on its way, so we headed off for Yosemite Valley.
Upon arriving in Yosemite Valley, we did a little cragging at Chapel Wall. Sue decided to revisit an old arche enemy called Hedonistic Pursuit. Unfortunately she didn't fair any better, but she did manage to struggle her way to the top. Next time....
It rained the next couple of days. When the rock dried up, we did some cragging at the base of El Capitan. Staring up at this beautiful monolith, we realized that the time had finally come to tackle one of our dreams, to climb a route up the 3,300 foot face. We chose to climb Salathe Wall. The route took us 6 long days of climbing and we spent 4 nights sleeping on the cliff.
Salathe Wall on El Capitan
(asteriks indicate each nights bivy)
Day 1: The first day we climbed the first 10 pitches (about 1000 feet). This portion of the climb is often called Free Blast. At the top of the tenth pitch, we did a short rappel to Hearts Ledge, where we fixed 1000 feet of rope from this ledge to the ground.
looking up from the base of Salathe Wall
Day 2: The next morning we carried 65 pounds of water, 30 pounds of food, and lots and lots of heavy climbing gear and camping gear to the base. Then we ascended up the ropes we had fixed the day before and hauled up the "pig". The pig is a term used to describe the fat, heavy haul bag used on big wall routes. It is appropriately named, because our "pig" was even fatter and heavier than Graham (if you can believe that one). Anyway, we had to lug all of our water, food and equipment up the climb with us. Once arriving back at Hearts Ledge with our equipment, we proceeded to climb the next 3 pitches. The third and last pitch of the day is called the Hollow Flake pitch, a 5.8 chimney. Due to Sue's intense love of chimneys, she made Graham lead this lovely and terrifying pitch. Graham climbed up to a fixed piton, where he lowered down and then pendulumed (aka swung) across the face and into an offwidth/ squeeze chimney. He then climbed the squeeze chimney without protection for the next 100 feet. Placing protection would have created heinous rope drag, not to mention that the chimney was too wide to protect. We spent the night on Hollow Flake ledge, a small one and a half foot wide ledge, where we squeezed in like sardines (with our feet next to the other person's face). We slept like rocks.
getting ready to spend the night on Hollow Flake ledge
filling up on fig bars
Day 3: We awoke at first light, ate breakfast, packed up the pig and continued climbing. Lucky Graham got to start the day off with another chimney. This chimney, however, was nowhere near as terrifying as the chimney that he would encounter later that day. Later in the day he led a pitch known as 'the Ear' which according to Royal Robbins is the 'most terrifying 5.7 in the world.' Negotiating this traversing downward flaring squeeze chimney brought enough terror for one day. Fortunately, the remaining pitches for the day were fairly relaxing and low key. We ended the day at the most incredible bivy on the flat 10'x10' top of El Cap Spire which stands about 100' tall and is detached from the main cliff by about 3 feet.
looking up from Hollow Flake ledge on the day's climbing
Graham, stemming his way up to El Cap Spire
looking down on El Cap Spire
our comfy bivy on El Cap Spire
Day 4: The next day we climbed several more nice pitches. However, one of the pitches known as 'the Sewer' was not quite so enjoyable. To climb this pitch one must negotiate a disgustingly wet, flaring and steep chimney/ corner coated with slippery and slimy moss. Graham got thoroughly soaked leading this pitch and even Sue following got partially wet. After one more short pitch, we came to the top of a sloping ledge, where we decided to bivy for the night. Having some remaining daylight, we decided to climb the next pitch and fix a rope that we could quickly ascend in the morning. This pitch involved a pendulum, but otherwise was fairly straight-forward. After returning to our sloping bivy ledge to settle down for the night, we discovered that somehow we had managed to drop our topo map of the remainder of the route. Knowing that a retreat this high up on the cliff would be extremely difficult, this was fairly disconcerting. I doubt we will ever climb another multiday route without bringing an extra copy of the route topo.
the first beautiful pitch above El Cap SpireDay 5: Luckily after pitch 26 which we had fixed, the remainder of the route is fairly straight forward. This in combination with people climbing on the upper pitches (the first people we had seen since day 2) allowed us to mostly relax with confidence we would find our way to the top. There were a couple dihedral pitches which were then followed by a giant roof pitch. This lead to the Salathe headwall pitches which brought us to Long Ledge for the night. With the slight unknown and some daylight remaining we again fixed the next pitch. We went for the free climbing variation which is a 12a bolted face off the left side. Long Ledge is about 30' long and 1.5' to 2' wide and slightly concave as it cradled us to sleep about 3000' off the ground.
a view of the route from the sloping bivy
Graham aiding out the giant roof pitch below the headwall
Waking up on Long Ledge
Day 6: In the morning we jugged up our fixed lines. The next pitch was a thin 5.10d crack that wouldn't have been anywhere near so hard if we hadn't been so tired! The following pitch had a short 5.9 squeeze chimney, which was the last challenging section on the route. The last and final pitch was a short 5.6 to the top. We topped out around 11am, happy to be on 'terra firma.'
On the summit of El Capitan
But then again, we still had 3500' to descend. We loaded up with about 70 pounds of gear on our backs and headed for the East Ledges descent trail. Unfortunately we took a 2 mile round trip detour trying to find it. This was just a little more exhaustion like icing on the cake. Once we got on track, we made it down without any problems. We made it down to our car with just enough time to swing by the grocery store for some good eats before collapsing in our tent.
We took four days of rest after which stir craziness set in.
Graham's rest day art
It was time to climb again.
We decided that we needed more time with El Cap, so we decided to climb the West Face Route. This route begins with a long approach followed by about 2000' of climbing. We planned to climb it in one day. We awoke at 4am, ate and began the approach. At 6:45am, we were at the base and climbing. The first couple pitches were 2 of the 4 most difficult pitches on the entire route. This 19 pitch grade V, 5.11c was a push for us. We got off track a couple times which brought upon the threat of getting benighted on the route. We pushed on as fast as we safely could, combining pitches whenever possible and were at the top in the dark around 10:00 pm. We headed for the decent route and after getting lost in the thicket a couple times decided to bivy for the night. This was a known possibility so we brought the emergency equipment, a.k.a. a lighter . We curled up around a fire at about midnight and stayed as warm as possible with ever a couple short periods of dozing. First light came and we were headed down very hungry and slightly dehydrated. A quart of chocolate milk each and a large batch of home made chili was breakfast followed by a nap in the tent. Tis the simple things that make life so good!
We did some cragging in Yosemite and headed back to Alabama where we reside for the moment. On the way back we did some climbing to make the drive tolerable.
May 2007
