Tuolumne Area Climbing

[lizolas]

Tuolumne Area Climbing

August 3-5, 2019

Routes Climbed:

• The Backbone (Ellery Ridges) solo 5.7, 1500’
• Zee Tree (led crux slab pitch) 5.7, 6p
• Matthes Crest 5.7, 2500’
• Laurel Mountain (bailed) Easy 5th

Ben and I left the Bay Area at our usual departure time of 4 am on Saturday morning, arriving in Tuolumne around 10 am. We stopped at Tenaya Lake and determined that there was a slab of snow on the normal route on Tenaya Peak that would make it difficult and/or dangerous to climb. Continuing out of the park, we stopped at Ellery Lake where we again had to do some scouting from down the road to decide which ridge we thought we were trying to climb. My very refined routefinding was based on picking the closest ridge after the double triangular piles of talus that looked the easiest to get onto. The first time we’d done the Backbone route, I’d gotten scared of a move after just a few minutes of scrambling. From there, we’d roped up and Ben had mock-guided the rest of the route. Just under a year later, we took turns leading the way (Ben probably led the way more than I did, but there was some group routefinding) and never used the rope or gear at all. Then, to keep my ego in check, the crux for me turned out to be the descent, which involved more snow than I would have liked in approach shoes. We finished at 3:30 for a time around 5 hours, ate lunch, then went back to Tenaya Lake to jump in before deciding on an evening climb.

Discarding any ideas for routes likely to have a line, we decided on Zee Tree, since we could see from the road that there was nobody on it. Ben kindly took the runout 4th class P1 (no gear, you just walk up slab to an anchor) to “let me” lead the 5.7 slab crux pitch. It did turn out to be good for me. I was scared for most of the 5.6-5.7 part of the pitch, but I was scared of messing up the beta and finding myself in a position I couldn’t correct - no actual move felt that tenuous. The next pitch was a 2-bolt 5.0 slab that Ben just about ran up, followed by a 5.4 slab pitch where we had a dilemma. The beta we’d read in the car indicated you could rap the route with a single 70 from “the middle of the 4th pitch”. We hadn’t done all the math at the time (live and learn?), but looking at the topo and recalling the first pitch, it was clear that 35m was not enough rope to get from the P2 anchor to the P1 anchor at the top of the slab, nor was there any redundant anchor (natural or hardware) in the middle of P4. Maybe whoever wrote that beta was comfortable rapping off one bolt twice rather than bringing two ropes.

Since we’d brought a small rack and the final gear pitch to top out the route was 5.7, we decided we’d just top out and Ben would lead the runout-with-our-rack last pitch. I took my 4th pitch up to where the 5th pitch is supposed to end, using one of the 5 cams we had for protection, running it out the entire 5th pitch length, and building a 2-piece anchor. We shuffled the belay a little, and Ben led the 6th pitch (our 5th pitch). I could have led it, but I was glad I didn’t with our 5-piece rack. From the summit we located the rappel station as the sun was setting, and Ben got to practice some guidey things lowering me, then we managed to get back to the car before it was completely dark. That was nice, because while both of us had brought headlamps for The Backbone, neither of us had brought them for Zee Tree.

Ben at the top of Zee Tree putting the rope away with Tenaya Lake in view in the distance

We decided that Sunday was “go big” day and we were going to go for Matthes Crest. The nice thing about these Sat-Mon 3-day weekends is you can do the big popular objective on Sunday and miss most of the crowds. As it turned out, we missed Josiah and Emily, who had coincidentally picked the exact same weekend two years after our first attempt to do it again. Judit was also up there that Saturday. The approach had less cross-country travel than I remembered. I’m not sure if that’s because I misremembered the first attempt (I was pretty much mindlessly following Joshua and Josiah the entire time) or if the first attempt might have left the trail sooner and never followed the small use trail to Budd(?) Lake. After the lake, the approach crosses some relatively flat slabs, then descends a bit down a gully. Having done the approach before, I knew we were aiming to ascend the line of trees that goes to the start of the route.

Just before we left the trail along Budd Lake

When we arrived I was surprised that we’d managed to do the approach in exactly 2.5 hours, since the topo lists it as 3-4 hours, and I’m not usually the fastest of uphill athletes. Ben asked if he could lead the first part and I agreed. He ended up leading the whole thing but I don’t regret that, since now I have a benchmark for what I’d like to eventually be able to do pace-wise. The first 3 pitches were just about as I remembered them - all pretty easy climbing but more thinking than I thought I’d have to do for 5.2 - 5.4. There’s still one downclimb along the ridge that I’m not sure I’d want to do without a belay or protection right above me. Some parts that I remembered being terrifying were just fun this time, though, and I was wearing approach shoes and still not the least bit scared. The final headwall to the north summit is the only thing I’d have some hesitation about leading. Of course, I’d do it. At this point I feel like I have to do it eventually to prove something to myself. It’s only 5.7 but has a bit of a weird/strenuous sequence that sure didn’t feel 5.7 in approach shoes even though I was following it. We skipped the south summit because “it’s not the real summit” and rappelled from the north summit down the notch. From there it’s still somewhat steep sand and it took us about an hour and a half total to get from the summit to where it flattened out and became normal walking again. We took a pretty leisurely pace from the summit, knowing there was no chance - barring meteors - that we’d be hiking out in the dark.

Matthes North Summit

From the base of the notch, we reversed our approach, going back around Echo Peaks and aiming for Budd Lake. From the lake, we found the trail again and arrived back at the trailhead just under 10 hours from when we left. It’s nice when things go smoothly sometimes. We decided to spend the night at a hot spring in Mammoth after a quick dinner. I had pessimistically suggested the night before that we should cook our more time-consuming dinner since Matthes might take even longer into the evening. We were finished at 5:30, though, so I’d been worried about nothing.

Tuolumne Meadows

It turns out that not everything can go smoothly. Although we successfully figured out which mountain was Laurel Mountain (the other one was Mt Morrison, a very not-chill peak), the Mendenhall Couloir - graded as an easy 5th gully - was filled with snow. The snow was just a bit too steep and hard to walk up securely, and as we started scrambling up the sides, we discovered that there was nowhere for Ben to practice his short-roping. All of the rock was terrible and there were no really solid stances. About a minute after watching a member of another party pull an 18” square block out and just miss hitting their legs with it, we decided we would be happy being done. One of the things I like about Ben is he has no reservations about bailing when things seem to warrant it. The bailing was just as tedious as the climbing had been. I’m sure it didn’t help that I have no faith in my downclimbing abilities, but the rock was not confidence inspiring. After a bit of traversing around toward a gully, we downclimbed with a belay from a spot on our traverse to a tree, then from the tree into the gully. After climbing out the other side of the gully, we just had to walk through some bushes to reach the spot where the approach broke off from the trail, and it was a nice pleasant walk out on a trail by a lake.

Looking up the route on Laurel

Lessons Learned:

• Bring a headlamp if you’re starting a 6-pitch climb at 5 pm, even if you think you’re only doing 3.5 pitches and rappelling. (The reason for my absent headlamp was that I didn’t think of it when we decided to leave my pack in the car and only take Ben’s, not that I made a conscious decision not to pack it.)
• Do the math for rappels before leaving the 2nd rope behind. With Ben’s climbing ability, there’s no way we would have gotten stranded on the route, but if I’d been the stronger member of a party there, I'm not sure I would have wanted to do that final pitch with minimal gear. On the other hand, if I were the stronger member of a party, I might have brought a less minimal rack.

Sunset on top of Zee Tree

Matthes Time Comparison	1st Attempt	2nd Attempt
Start	9:00 am	7:30 am
Base of Route	1:00 pm	10:00 am
Bail Point	6:00 pm	12:15 pm
North Summit	N/A	1:45 pm
Finished Rappel	8-9 pm?	3:00 pm
Back at Car	1:45 am	5:20 pm
Total	17 Hours	10 Hours

On the way, I recognized the exact place we’d bailed on the previous attempt. That horn-type rock has slings around it and that was our 2nd rappel station.