Yosemite Climbing - Dec 22 & 23, 2017

[lizolas]

Yosemite Climbing

December 22 & 23, 2017

A week after deciding that maybe I was a much more capable climber than I gave myself credit for, I learned that if that’s true, it only applies to straightforward sport climbs outside Yosemite. Despite being called “The hardest 5.7 in the world,” I decided that we should be able to do After Six in Yosemite. That was at least half true.

Friday morning I left my house at 5, picked Brad up from San Ramon at 6, and headed to Yosemite via 140 instead of the usual 120 due to icy/snowy road conditions. We arrived around 10 and located the parking lot for Manure Pile Buttress. After some hesitant preparation while we convinced ourselves that it wasn’t too cold for climbing, we headed up the trail to the base of the climb, which turns out to be only a couple minutes of walking. I can see why the route descriptions indicate that these climbs are all likely to have huge lines in the on season. We saw only one other couple who stopped to ask if we knew where Nutcracker was.

Bottom of P1

With the reasoning of “I’m lighter and easier to catch,” I started leading the first pitch. I’m learning that whenever an entire pitch is described as a single style, it’s probably not actually as uniform as it sounds. There was no consistent, steady technique to work myself up the dihedral. Or maybe there was, and I just didn’t trust my feet enough to do it. I felt like there were no good handholds anywhere, and it was making more and more sense why Mountain Project comments said the climber with larger hands should lead P1. The crack was just slightly too wide to get a hand jam in most places.

My method of progressing when I feel uncertain tends to be “It’s only [grade], there have to be great holds if you just calm down and feel around for them.” This has worked well for me thus far. This time, either the holds really weren’t that great, or I wasn’t looking hard enough for them. With my last piece at least 10 feet below me - a nut in a mostly horizontal crack that I had no confidence in the multi-directionality of - I tried to pull myself up on what seemed to be a decent hand hold, but while I was feeling around with my right hand for another hold above, either my left hand slipped or one of my feet slipped. Because of the angle the rope came up at relative to the dihedral, it caught my leg and flipped me upside down. The whole way down, I was thinking that the nut had probably come out and I was about to deck straight on my head. What happened instead was a hard catch, as Brad had backed up a little while taking out slack, but he caught me about 15 feet above the ground. The nut had held. I was very glad I’d been wearing a proper helmet.

The nut placement that caught my fall

I was lowered to make sure I was ok, then we decided I was fine, just scraped and bruised from hitting everything on the way down. I wasn’t particularly excited to try leading it again, but we’d left 2 cams and a nut up there, so rather than try the first pitch of After Seven, Brad gave it a try. He later described it as “The most terrifying thing I’ve ever led, by a large margin,” but he did it clean. From the P1 belay it’s a short scramble to the P2 belay ledge, but both of us wanted some sort of belay between belay stations. The climbing was fairly easy, but I don’t like situations where one misplaced foot means certain death.

We are competent climbers who build bomber anchors (at both these belays, we were actually on an enormous ledge where there was likely no need to anchor at all).

Brad also led P2 as I was still not quite over having actually fallen on what was supposed to be an easy climb. P1 is definitely the crux, though, and P2 was much easier. I then decided I wanted to lead P3, which turned out to be kind of short, but really fun (it’s only 5.3 or so). On P4 we may have been a bit off route. I found a feature that looked like the flake identified in the guidebook, but we went slightly right from there. Brad led P4 up a mostly unprotectable but easy slab to what we decided was the P5 belay ledge. MP photos show a couple groups climbing P5 just to the right of where we were. That’s definitely easier terrain, but as I started up, the crack to the right looked completely unprotectable. I decided to take the harder but much more protectable book to the left, which seemed to be what was described in the guide, as it does go up to a small roof that you can traverse around. I think the moves on this pitch were actually noticeably easier than those on P1, but still being slightly unsettled from falling so far, it felt just as nerve-wracking. Brad reported it being very fun to follow, and while I was leading it I remember thinking this would be really fun on toprope.

View across the Valley from one of the belays

I got to the roof, traversed out right, and found…an easy but unprotectable slab. There wasn’t even a good placement that I could find right below it, and I couldn’t make myself pull up and over onto the slab knowing that a fall would mean swinging 15 feet down, back into the wall. I downclimbed with a hand-of-God belay down the crack I’d decided not to lead. From there, I made it over to a ledge with a small shrub that looked like a somewhat unconvincing belay anchor. It turned out that there was actually a very nice crack on the other side of the shrub. I built an anchor with the shrub and 2 cams, then Brad came up to figure out what we were going to do. He had just gotten to the “downclimb or go up the slab” part when the guy who had been climbing next to us called down from the top to ask if we wanted him to throw us the rope. The sun was setting and I guess he decided we’d had enough adventure for the day. Brad climbed up on the other rope, then belayed me up. The final portion was indeed easy, and had I think it would have been fine to lead despite how run out it was.

Sunset at the top of the climb

At the top, we shared my summit Oreos and Brad’s summit beer with the pair, and found out that the guy was a recently-certified climbing guide from Europe. I took pictures of the sunset while Brad put the rope away, and we started to look for the downclimb. Since the descent started with “continue over the ledges,” I said I was keeping my climbing shoes on until we got to dirt. We agreed this was a good idea, as a lot of the initial climb over the back was 3rd-4th class, and the woman from the other group was having some trouble in her approach shoes.

After some awkward downclimbing on the other side, we made it back to the trail, and then to the parking lot, without having to get our headlamps out! Then we got our headlamps out to look for things in the car because it was completely dark by that point. For the first time ever, I’d managed to book a campsite in Yosemite Valley. The Friday before Christmas/New Year’s week was surprisingly available, although from Saturday night through the rest of the week was fully booked. We left to find the campsite and make dinner.

We had curry for dinner, then went to bed around 7. Brad worked on solving the mysteries of the universe or something, but that didn’t take very long and we both mentioned wishing we’d brought a book. Lacking books, we went to sleep around 8:30 with no real plan for the morning. We woke up later than I think either of us expected to with no alarm. It was after 7 when we got up and made hot chocolate instead of breakfast, then went to go find Jamcrack. After the better part of an hour looking for the start of the climb, we gave up and decided to hike up to the top of Yosemite Falls instead.

The top of the Falls might have looked appealing had it been summer (and had we wanted to ignore all the posted warnings about not falling to your death from waterfalls).

As disappointing as it was to not be able to climb anything else, I was excited about Yosemite Falls. That hike - short but allegedly very strenuous - had been on my to-do list since the summer. The hike is even more strenuous when you’re trying to keep up with the only person you know who can completely out-hike you. The trail wasn’t as steep as the online descriptions had made it seem, and the “stairs” were more like an uneven ramp than the Mist Trail stairs by Vernal Falls. Eventually we reached the top, proceeded slightly down to the viewing platform, and had a lunch/snack in solitude. Just as we were leaving, another group came down the stairs to the viewing platform.

”What are you guys wearing? It’s December!” - Several people we met on the trail

The trip down was amusing as group after group stopped Brad to ask how much farther it is and he had to try to figure out how much longer it would take the average person to walk the rest of the way to the top. The best one was a middle-aged woman who asked, and as he stopped to think about it, her teenage son (presumably) said “Mom he’s got a Camelbak! We’re not on his level!”

Brad stood well back while I went to go explore the edge

We got back to the car and left just before 2, which was our “absolutely must leave by” time. The drive home was fairly uneventful - a minor traffic slowdown on 99 but no huge delays - and we got back to San Ramon around 5:30. From there I continued home and arrived just before 7. We managed to get all the gear correctly sorted this time except for the hat that got left in my car and was apparently not valuable enough to bother returning.

Next Time:

• Figure out how to find climbs better.
• Place more gear, especially on the earlier parts of a climb.
• Try to stay calm and push yourself to do easy but mentally uncomfortable things.
• Don’t go to bed without a plan