Go Big or Bail- Yosemite: WV style

The theme of an excursion with a group of friends never reveals itself at first. It is something that becomes apparent with time. Two fine gentleman from West Virginia flew into SFO on June 6th and I greeted them at the terminal to begin the most epic climbing adventure I have ever embarked on. David and Ryan both have extensive climbing experience and I would be the driver as well as tag along for their projects.


I took them to the city first, to check out REI and stop by my climbing gym. I think they were a bit overwhelmed by my gym, perhaps because it is one of the best gyms in the nation! The bouldering area is absolutely top notch:

The view from upstairs out into the San Francisco Bay, Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz is way nice too:

Next we headed back towards my old place in El Granada of Half Moon Bay. I was super spoiled living so close to the ocean with spectacular sunsets, we went out to Pilar Point Harbor, watched the sunset there across the jetty and looking south.


After a good nights rest on the California coast, we made quick time to Yosemite that morning (after getting the gear and food sorted out!):


in order to try and climb Fairview Dome in the Tuolumne part of the park. It certainly did not take long for me to fall in love with this part of the park, it was remarkably alpine-like and high in elevation. I always love climbing at altitude, the aura of the clean air and rapidly changing weather, raw landscape and wilderness will always have a place in my heart.

Anyway, most mountaineers if asked would wax poetic about mountainscapes, so I won't dive into it. The photo above shows Half Dome from the north and an awesome view of the intimidating northwest face. We arrived at Fairview in the early afternoon and were astonished to find snow at the base! David appears to be enjoying it though.


As is the case with climbing most domes, the first pitch is the toughest and then they gradually get easier. I think the first pitch went at 5.9 and David did a stellar job leading it despite the relative wetness of many cracks!


I reckon we had climbed 3 or 4 pitches before David started to feel lousy. It was starting to get dark so we need had to rappel off and that turned out to be a mini epic. We rapped off some slings first and then a super shady set of bolts that moved and spinned in every which way, check them out:


Needless to say, we didn't conquer Fairview Dome that day, but at a later date... That night we planned on sleeping outsidfe up in Tuolumne, but were rained out once in the middle of the night, forcing us to drive down towards Yosemite Valley where it wasn't sprinkling. The next days in the Valley turned out to be a spectacular one as we were climbing both Serenity Crack and Royal Arches (got rained off of Serenity Crack, take note- bail number 2!). At the first belay stance, is David.


The next photos are assorted throughout the day we climbed Royal Arches.





The last photo above is looking back at Royal Arches from Curry Village with the Washington Column to the right and North Dome above it. We tried to climb the Washington Column and sleep at the dinner ledge, but got turned around due to weather, it was pretty lame. Either way on the way down Ryan and David had a good view of the enticing Northwest face of Half Dome.


We relaxed in the Valley for a brief time and then met up with a good friend from WV, Stephen who came out with us to climb Fairview Dome fo realzies this time. A classic pose of David in belay stance with tantalizing Tuolumne in the background.


After some 6-8 pitches and going slightly off route we made it to the top and the rest of the photos are pretty silly, but the 360 panorama views were spectacular.


I took a quick video at the top, listen for bacon cheeseburger...





Next we decided to climb Cathedral Peak, an easy, classic climb far away from the road and often never seen by any tourists. Along the way we saw the Matthis Crest, which looked like an awesome alpine traverse, with a fair amount of snow travel involved!

The approach to Cathedral was a bit longer than we expected, but before long we caught view of the Cathedral! David was thinking about coming with us, but instead decided to take a hike, all the way to Yosemite Valley- some 24 miles away! RESPECT to him for that effort, including some hairy routefinding along the John Muir Trail and less than ideal conditions.

It was an awesome climb with classic liebacks, jams and a lot of slab climbing. Here we are the beginning of the first pitch, the weather was looking pretty good at this point.

Ryan and Stephen both did the climb in street shoes and I tried to do it in my alpine boots. Big mistake that was, I could only edge and not smear on the rock- which is crucial!

Despite the relative good weather in the photo above with Ryan, it did not last long! Soon we were climbing with snow falling, it was an amazing alpine experience!



Coming back down from the summit was a little bit of a yard sale. The conditions were slick and we came down a less than typical way, but of course this coincided with the general theme at Yosemite. Ryan and Stephen chillin out on the way down the slabs:



After Cathedral Peak we all cruised back to the Valley to sunshine and warmer temperatures. This was where an ambitious plan was developed for Ryan and David to attempt the Northwest face of Half Dome. I decided I would try to help them by hauling some gear to the base, to see to it that they have the best chances of success. Let me set up the scenario for the photo below. We tried to get to Half Dome by taking the slabs below the base and got shut down because we couldn't find the route!

So we retreated back to the Valley and ate waay too much pizza. There were 4 of us and so we ordered 3 pizzas, pretty reasonable right? They messed up on one pizza so we got 1 for free- that makes 4 large pizzas for 4 dudes, we literally filled up a table with our pizzas! It seemed like every person that walked by inquired about them! Keep in mind that a typical tourist will pay about $20 a pizza for what we were eating and we got all 4 for about 30 bucks (due to discounts)! So anyway, we re-calibrated our plan to climb Half Dome, to include bringing 2 extra pizzas for the hike in!

The approach hike did not go as smooth as planned. We stuck to our original plan of me acting as Sherpa to ferry gear to the base for Ryan and David to climb. First, David got separated from us by accident because of a mis-understanding. His knee was bothering him from his epic, marathon hike from Tuolumne and due to the pain, could not continue. So, Ryan and I decided that perhaps it was possible for him to lead all the pitches and me to jug up as second. I ran from way up the trail to Half Dome down to David to get his gear we would need for the hike. After turbo hiking back up to Ryan we slogged all the way to the base of the Northwest face of Half Dome. I don't think I mentioned that we took the typical tourist route- 7 or 8 miles and all of it miserable. By the time we got there I was exhausted, having carried both ropes and the rack- like 80lbs!

We also made the mistake of not bringing pads to sleep on, which made for a terrible nights sleep. The skeets were dive bombing us all night too, needless to say we woke up without the energy we needed to crush 24 pitches of tough climbing! The night we arrived I had to learn how to jug up the rope too, which was both tough and embaressing. So, with all the factors working against us, we had no choice but to bail. It made me sad to do so, but we were not in shape to do the climb. I absolutely hate turning around when it is because of my abilities, but just the other day the opposite situation happened while climbing in Wyoming. What goes around comes around I suppose.

Since we couldn't do the route we wanted, Ryan and I decided to just climb Half Dome via the regular route since neither of us had been up it yet. The views from the top were nice and we even posed for some silly shots, don't do this at home kids!

Looking down into Yosemite Valley was super cool too.


During lunch we got paid a visit by a curious marmot, keen on having some of our pasta primavera...

The cables going up and down were actually steeper than I thought they'd be. The week before someone slipped off and acutally died, very sad.

Getting off the mountain we took the slab route since we couldn't find it before and I looked back to see the massive face, the route starts off towards the left and traverses to where you see a piece of the mountain sticking out at the top. In fact, we awoke in the morning of our attempted climb to 3 base jumpers who leaper off the top of the mountain and glidded into the valley. They flew quite literally right over us in squirrel suits, it was absolutely spectacular, they sounded like jet planes!

After a day or so of rest, Ryan and David decided to do a serious climb. Called Separate Reailty, it is rated at 5.12a and is an overhanging roof crack. The climb was located near Inspiration point on the way into Yosemite Valley and the view was absolutely spectacular:

Ryan and David worked it in a sort of sequence, so I tried to lay out the photos as they solved the problem. The photos were taken by Mr. Cunningham (the dude in the badass hat) who hung from our fixed line. The only way into Separate Reality was to rappel straight in, a real cool way to approach a climb! The next photos follow the progress of the climb as David and Ryan worked it:





Check that big smile on David's face!

It was sad to end our climbing excursion in Yosemite. In such a short time I learned more about climbing than I have in my whole climbing career and I hope I get the extraordinary opportunity to climb with crushers such as Stephen, Ryan and David again one day!

An Epic Adventure

The American West is a vast and wild place, covering an amazing array of different landscapes. Yosemite National Park truly embodies that essence of wilderness. Few other places are as recognizable and typify the ruggedness of the American west. I do wonder why I had waited so long to see the place where the gods of granite roam free...

Last weekend when I was driving to Shasta up north I got a phone call in the car. It was my friend Leslie and she said a campsite was available at Yosemite and inquired if I wanted to go. Well, it took less than a New York second to say yes! Bing, a nice young gal from Planet Granite had secured a campsite for an anchoring course she was to take with another fella, Michael. Immediately we began to plan the trip out.

We left downtown San Francisco around 1pm on Friday, arriving in the park some hours later. The immenseness of the granite walls was so abrupt when we ran into El Capitan without choice but to stop and take some photos, here is Leslie and Chef Dan:


My friend Chef Dan had a vision of climbing Snake Dike, the most least technical route up Half Dome on the southwest face. This would be a special trip for Dan, for this was his first time climbing outdoors and it would be at Yosemite! For those who don't know it, Half Dome is one of the most photographed features in the park, as well as the most popular! We were determined to climb it and set about preparing. We all gathered the gear we would need for the climb and Dan set about planning an immaculately delicious menu for the duration of the trip. Our first meal on Friday night set the culinary tone for the rest of the weekend! Here is the man himself hard at work doing what he does best- keeping people happy:


He plated asparagus, prawns, lobster tail, fresh avocado and tomato as well as a mixed green salad with a vinaigrette! I don't care who ya are, THAT is how to eat in the woods!

From experience I knew we had to make an early start for our summit attempt of Half Dome. I elected for all of us to leave around 3am to push for an early afternoon top out. Getting to the trail from out campsite was easy, pretty soon we were hiking along the mist trail, those that have done it know why it is named that!

Leslie received rather precise directions from a friend at Planet Granite about a shortcut to the base of Snake Dike. So, following her direction we emerged into a sort of canyon, complete with snow and a babbling brook, Dan below:

We scrambled through super dense manzanita bushes, up and then across massive slabs to reach the base of the climb, which was no small task in itself. I'd even make a bold claim to say that the approach was tougher than the climb itself (at least the first pitch).


Everyone was having an awesome time though, in an absolutely rugged location.

Even Leslie couldn't contain her smile. I was joking with them about when I have magnificent ski days my teeth go numb from smiling too much, had the temperatures been colder the same would've happened to all of us!

Anyway, by the time everyone gets to the base of the climb to begin it is already after 11am and I had a strong suspicion we would be too late. I went up anyway and as soon as I was 50 feet up I seemingly ran out of holds, that and a glance to my left revealed fast approaching thunder clouds. At this point I knew our attempt was sacked and we had to get off the mountain.

What was so cool about Yosemite is the hugeness of everything, I mean from the time we saw the thunder clouds and the time it rained was perhaps 3-4 hours, the air is so clear you can see practically forever. Soon after I got off Snake Dike, I made a really critical mistake, I suggested we take another short cut. From the map I could tell we were only a mile from our campsite by the crows flight, so I decided we just take the path less traveled and bushwhack back to camp.

After getting off the ridge from Half Dome, I lead us around, through old forest fire debris from 1998 and down through thick brush. At this point, we knew getting down was going to present some difficulties, but all parties present figured this was a better option than backtracking. Well hindsight is always 20-20, so I should prepared for a possible retreat before we even got to the route. Looking back I wish we had gone around the other side of Half Dome, where the typical tourist trail runs back to the mist trail.

Already committed to descending the way we were, it started getting steeper and steeper. On our first rappel, the thunderstorm hit; dumping hail, lots of rain and very cold temperatures. Dan and Leslie had never rappelled before and so I improvised a system to lower them down the steep pitches. We rappelled probably 7-8 pitches, I'd estimate we descended several thousand feet. In areas where we could scramble, we did just that of course.

I tied a couple overhand knots into one end of the rope and they both clipped into these with their locking carabiners. Then I would run the rope around a tree and to myself. As I rappelled they used their body weight to hold me up and when I got to the bottom I would lower them down using my gri-gri. After a couple of these we got the system down, but not before dark came when we had to make our last rappel.

The last couple rappels were the most miserable of all, right down super-slick, less-than-vertical waterfalls. The thunderstorm made them run pretty good and we had to rappel right down through them. I remember distinctly throwing my rope off to begin rappelling and hearing it splash into a pool of water- great! Since I was lowering Dan and Leslie down inch by inch, they were at the mercy of the rope and I feel very bad for this. Since they did not have the rope management skills to do it themselves, I tried my hardest to make it a smooth descent, but they slipped and banged their bodies into the rock, resulting in lots of bruises.

Our progress was agonizingly slow, but I was super anal about safety and making sure everyone got down without getting hurt, it was a blessing we all had helmets on for the duration of the descent. When at last we reached an area where we could scramble down through the talus fields I knew we were close. I could actually see campfires through the trees and I knew the road leading to camp was down there. After leaving Snake Dike around noon, we all staggered into camp after 10pm, utterly beat.

I am glad we all made it off the mountain safely. Poor Dan and Leslie, I promise I do not normally do trips like this! As Dan's first time climbing outdoors and mine to Yosemite, we got our butts kicked, but it is always humbling to know how the boss is- mother nature.

The real value from this trip came from the human connections though, everyone was able to maintain their cool in the face of danger and we cheerfully made our way off the mountain, which is the only way to do things outdoors- with a big smile.