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Lightbox Slideshow by Justin Barkhuff

Sunday:

-Wally. Are you sleeping?
-A little. What about you?
-Not really. It's 3:00. Should we just go now?
-Sure

We had met up with my cousins, Jim & Gary, the day before after we drove into the Upper Pines campground in Yosemite National Park. They bought us dinner at the buffet. I didn't eat much. I felt a little queasy from the Subway sandwich we picked up in Modesto.

We packed the pigs (haulbags) and waited for Cheryl and Brandee to arrive. We turned in early hoping to get a good night's rest. The next morning we would hike to the base of the largest single chunk of granite on earth with two massive haulbags filled with enough provisions to keep us alive for 4 or 5 days of continuous climbing. 80 lbs of water, lots of food, rain gear, sleeping bags, a PVC 'poop tube' for storing our solid waste: it added up to over 160 lbs. Our plan was to climb Salathé Wall, a 35-pitch 3,500 foot crack system on the West face of El Capitan. This was my first visit to Yosemite.

The hike to the base took just 28 minutes even with the staggering load of those pigs. Someone had stashed 4 jugs of water at the base of the fixed lines. I started ascending at 04:00 to set up the first haul. I had brought a somewhat complicated 2:1 mechanical advantage pulley system to help with the bags. We had practiced using it once before. It wasn't working for me. The first 200' haul took over an hour. At the second haul Wally had trouble setting up the pulley system and opted for the 1:1 brute force method. I pushed from below while he pulled down directly on the pulley line. It was faster than the first haul, but grueling and still too slow. We were exhausting ourselves. We used the same method for the 3rd and 4th hauls to arrive ~800 feet up at Heart Ledges. We rappelled back to the ground a little after 10:00. It had taken 6 hours - an hour or two longer than we expected. A bear had chewed up all 4 stashed water containers. We picked up the trash.

We walked over to FreeBlast to see a conga line: 3 parties. One was on the 5th or 6th, one was on the second, and a couple was on the 1st with the intention of aid-practicing 1-3. The woman doing the leading was aiding the 5.6 moves off the deck in full etriers. They were going to take hours to get out of our way.

We decided to head to camp for water and a little rest before starting. We stopped at the bridge to say 'hi' to the El Cap resident photographer, Tom 'Ansel' Evans. He suggested that we hold off until the next day to start climbing. It was good advice.
Back to camp - bummed around, threw Frisbee, showered, went out for a nice dinner at the Mountain Room.

Monday: Up at 3:15. Hiked to the base by 04:00. 40% chance of rain proved true. Wally was sick from the previous night's meal and puked a couple of times. We waited for the misting rain to stop for a couple of hours at the base. It was cold. We finally gave up and went back to camp and slept in the tent until after 08:00.

Wally felt better after resting, so we blasted off again at 09:00. We were on the route by 10:00, and luckily the rain had kept everyone else off the route in our absence.
We didn't bring our aiders for FreeBlast - we planned to French-free the hard parts and free the rest. We hauled some rain gear and water behind us in a backpack.

P1/P2: Leaning 5.10c finger crack followed by leaning 5.8 (sandbag) fist crack | Wally's gotten it clean twice before and almost pulled it again. Given his gastrointestinal distress, you certainly can't blame his one 'take' on lack of ability. I had to simul-climb the first 20 feet to accomplish the linked pitches. Followed clean, made myself proud.

P3: One short 5.11b (C1), traverse followed by an awkward 5.7 low-angle chimney | I had to heel hook the exit from the traverse after pulling on fixed slings and almost blew it.

P4: 5.10c crack | Gorgeous view, same as the 3' poster of Royal Robbins on the first ascent that Wally had loaned me. Wished I had the camera.
I saw a large bird high up in the Heart Alcove riding the thermal breeze. I thought it might be a hawk or a falcon, but something about the big brown tail feathers didn't look right. Suddenly, the bird started twirling like a top 5 or 6 times as it was rising on the wind, just like on of those helicopter paper toys you made in grade school. It was a crow with a paper bag in his talons. The bag was catching the wind like a sail and throwing him completely out of control. Never seen anything like it. I don't know if the bag was stuck or if he was playing. They're smart: He was probably just having fun. He dropped the bag a little later and flew away.

P5: 5.10d (C1), then 5.11b closely bolted face climbing | I pulled on slings for the zigzagging upper section, but the 5.10d was a super thin crack in a bulge. I placed some of my tiniest gear (micro nuts and a #2 Zero cam) to aid through it.

P6: 5.11a face climbing (or 5.8 (A0) if you pull on slings) | Wally made good time getting up to Triangle Ledge. Unmemorable to me but for a good belay ledge at the end.

P7: 5.8 cruiser pitch.

P8: 5.10b (C1+) followed by 5.8 chimney | The Half Dollar pitch. The feature is a large semicircular roof that resembles half a coin. Climbing around the bottom edge is the crux. Bizarre moves. Felt super hard following it.

P9: 5.7 cruiser.

P10: 5.7 cruiser | Ended at Mammoth Terraces 1000' off the deck. It was 5:30pm.

(P11:)We traversed the Terrace and rappelled down to where we had left the bags at Heart Ledges the day before. A lone climber was sitting on the ledge above us writing in a journal.

-When did you get here?
-A few minutes ago. I'm just here to replace one of the bad fixed lines.
-Cool.
-Would you like a beer? It's still cold. King Cobra.
-Yougottabekiddingme. Yes!

We still had some daylight, though, and we had a schedule to keep. We unpacked some gear from the pigs and I racked up to lead the next one before nightfall.

P12: 5.11c (C1) | This was a tricky one. The ledge we had chosen to belay from was about 40' below the first pro for this pitch. I had to ascend the fixed lines far to the right, traverse the ledge back left, then do some 5.7 sloper face climbing to get to my first Alien placement. I was well out of my comfort zone making those moves. The gear was difficult to find. I used a hook move getting through the 5.11c section, and I fixed the line to the anchor and rappelled back to Heart ledge as the sun went down.

The stars came out, the food and beer tasted good, and the ledge was mercifully flat and comfortable. A mouse scampered around us and bats squeaked and hunted overhead while we dozed and counted shooting stars. What a great day.

Tuesday: Up again at 04:30. Breakfast of fruit cups and bars. Started climbing by 06:15. (Should have started earlier...)

P13: 4th class to a piton pendulum point.

P14: 5.9 OffWidth | The (infamous) Hollow Flake. I wished Wally luck as he lowered off the point to swing over to the gaping flake. It starts off with 6" gear and works up to a chimney that would require 12" gear if you want something to catch your fall. I had manufactured a 9" cam for this trip that would have to suffice. I couldn't see Wally around the corner for the duration of the pitch. After a bit of rope was out, I heard Wally shout-

-Greg! This cam is great, man!

I'm smiling big just writing about that. Completely gratifying experience to build a piece of gear like that. It worked.
Hauling the pigs was difficult. We had given up on the more complicated 2:1 system and were working as a team with the following climber pushing up on the packs with a shoulder or pulling up on the rope directly. It was strenuous and inefficient. I fell asleep wracking my brain about how to get the hauler to work the night before, and I decided to give it another go on the next pitch.

P15: 5.7 Chimney | I took the #7 and a #6 with me up this dart-shaped chimney. It got harder as it got thinner. I'm not a good offwidth climber. I wore a hole through the palm of my new leather glove, then a hole in my palm. I'm not ashamed to say that I hung on the gear trying to figure out the exit. I was thankful for the #7 yet again. That 5.7 pitch beat me like a redheaded stepchild. At the top I set up the 2:1 pulley system a little differently and was happy to put in half as much force to raise the pigs. It was finally working.

P16: 5.10a (C1) | Wally led to a set of bolts that weren't on the topo and almost stopped 40' short of the end of the pitch. We checked the topo map and he continued on. The hauling was going faster now.

P17: 5.10c (C1) | I don't remember much about this one. It was long, though.

P18: 5.10d (C1) | The Ear pitch. This was another feature like the Half Dollar, only much larger. The roof swallowed up the hapless Wally and he thrutched around in what seemed like a tapered and curved elevator shaft. It looked like an agonizing climb from my vantage point. Two of the big cams were racked sideways as I cleaned the pitch, and they both scared me when they popped free to send me spinning out into space outside the crack as I struggled to remove them.
It was getting late, and we had three pitches to go to get to El Cap Spire where we had planned to sleep.

P19: 5.13b (C1+) | This was a hard one. The crack was big enough for a #4 Camalot inside, but it closed down to less than half an inch at the lip in many places. There was lots of lost gear that had walked into the crack, never to be touched by man again. I had a lot of trouble finding placements, and I was bonking from calorie deficit. The sun went down. Climbing by headlamp is even slower, because you have to turn your head to see anything, and the shadows obscure both your sight and judgment. I climbed for over 2 hours. It was very late. When I finally found the bolts at a small ledge, I also found 6 quarts of water someone had left behind. I thought it was a mirage it looked so good. I slugged about a quart of it as I gasped for air. I was almost too weak to haul at all, and Wally had to take out all the tricky nut placements I had made with a hammer.

P20 (part 1): 5.10a OffWidth | We were 30' from the Alcove, a poor alternative to El Cap Spire for sleeping. Wally wasted no time in jumping into the wide crack that had a fresh-looking over-cammed #6 Camalot as a permanent ornament sitting a few feet up.

When we finally scrambled up onto the Alcove ledge, it was nearly midnight. I was too tired to cook. I wanted to go to sleep without even eating, but I forced down some tuna and mayonnaise. I was completely trashed. This was the low point of the climb for me. Wally called our worried wives and friends on the cell phone to let them know we were alive. 01:00am. There were more mice on this ledge, and it sloped downward at a 10° angle. I hardly slept at all as my legs went numb from the pressure of the harness every time I slid down the ramp.

Wednesday: I woke up looking up at climbers on the overhanging Shield route 1000' above me. I thought about rock fall. Then I looked around more closely at the rocks that littered my sleeping ledge and realized that I was in the drop zone for a whole lot of what was above me. It gave me the chills so I got up and moved. It was 06:00.

We were both still tired, and thought we might do better to take a rest day: Climb one pitch to El Cap Spire, set up camp, then climb two more pitches and rappel back down to the Spire to relax and sleep. We ate breakfast and mulled over the thought of spending the extra day on the wall. Then we looked down over the ledge to see multiple parties below us on the route headed our way. We didn't have the luxury of a rest day. It was already 08:30, and we needed to get moving if we would make the next acceptable bivy spot 5 pitches away.

P20 (continued): 5.10a crack, 5.7 chimney | Wally led up a ramp to the space behind the detached Spire in short order. The haul went quickly.

P21: 5.11c (C1), 5.9 squeeze chimney | Wally, King of the Wide, led this one as well to set me up for some less-wide pitches ahead.

P22: 5.10d (C1) | This felt harder than expected. I went a little slow. The anchor was set far back on a sloping ledge which made the hauling a little difficult.

P23: 5.12a (C1) | Another one that seemed C1+ by the look of the small gear Wally had to place.

P24/25: 5.10c (C2)/5.10a (C1) | The Sewer pitch. In the spring this is the worst pitch of the climb. A water streak from above keeps this dihedral wet and covered in slimy, smelly algae. It got difficult, and I had to pull up some bigger gear using the tag line. I climbed through crusty dried foliage on dry rock to make it to the Block before the sun went down.

We had hoped to get one more pitch fixed before dark. The next one involved tricky route finding and a pendulum swing to get to the Sous le Toit ('Under the Roof') ledge. A trip report we had read described an 8-hour fiasco to complete pitch 26. That would have to wait until daylight.

More phone calls. Cheryl and Brandee had flown home, along with my cousins. Good meal, good weather, good spirits, ...and a bad bivy spot. Sleeping on a sloping ledge is covered in the Geneva Convention, I think. I didn't sleep a wink.

Thursday: We were up at 04:30. I focused on hydration and calories. I put 6 ShotBlocs in my pocket and ate one at each spare moment throughout the day. We heard a team of Spanish climbers below us moving faster than we were. They had thrown what sounded like a party down at Heart Ledges, and now they were on our heels.

P26: 5.10d (C2) | I free climbed the first part and got out the aiders later than I should have. The crack up to the pendulum point was very thin: two hooking moves. I swung over to the 5.10 layback crack and realized that I had used up too many of the cams in this size range already. I made slow progress to the anchor.

P27/28: 5.11b (C2)/5.12b (C2) | Wally linked up these two beautiful pitches to get to an anchor directly beneath a gigantic roof below the headwall. Our only lost pro happened here when I couldn't hammer out a small brass nut. The next climber will be grateful that it is still there to use.

P29: 5.13a (C2) | The Roof. This pitch takes an absolutely wild path that meanders right, cuts back left, pulls over a huge roof and follows a thin splitter to a bolted hanging belay 70 feet up. I felt great and excitedly set off on the pitch. Wally shot some video, and kicked himself for shutting off the camera just before I launched into my rendition of James Brown's 'I Feel Good' as I swung from piece to piece. It was fun climbing. It got harder at the lip, but then I got out on the headwall and clipped a bolt. The thin crack on the sheer face was littered with broken copperheads and piton scars. I had trouble finding anything that would stick. I made it to another bolt by way of a micronut. Above the bolt I got a sketchy LoweBall that let me reach a faded 5' cordelette tied to a fixed nut. I clipped the highest of several overhand loops and stood up. The fixed nut above that was a stopperhead: a nut that had been a poor fit, but was bashed into place using a nut tool until it would at least support the weight of a small house cat. I clipped it and stood up. The next fixed piece was just out of reach, and I couldn't find any placements to help get me there. I walked up higher in my aiders until I was top-stepping with one hand on the metal swage of the next piece. As I tried to clip it with the same hand that was keeping my balance, the bottom dropped out. The nut I was standing on popped and sent me flying backwards. I heard two more loud 'pop's as the cordelette broke and the LoweBall gave up (without even breaking a stitch on the Screamer I had attached to it).

-AAAAAAaaargh!!

I picked up speed as my scream picked up volume and the roof lip flew by. Finally, a gut-wrenching jolt arrested my fall as I stared bug-eyed at the 2,800 feet of air below my feet. I was 20 feet out from the wall and not far above the level of Wally's belay station.

-Greg! Are you all right??
-I think I just fell 50 feet!....I'm OK.....I'm all right.

I was a little shaken up. Wally pulled out his camera to try to capture my bug-eyed stare. I had a collection of three slings piled up on the rope above my belay loop. I methodically re-racked them and got out my jumars to ascend the rope back to my high point and try again. I got to the bolt and called down to Wally that I wanted to let the rope relax for 5 minutes to get some of the recoil back. I needed to relax for a minute, too. I calculated the fall factor in my head: about a 0.5 given all the slack in the roof traverse. Not as bad as it had seemed at the time, but pretty damned scary nonetheless. I placed the LoweBall again and had to reach higher to get the next loop above the break in the cordelette. The only thing I could place in the pin scar that used to be home to the nut that dropped me was a 0.25 tricam with mostly one rail and half a spike in contact with the rock. If it were to pop out when I weighted it, I would be treated to another 50-footer. I held my breath, stepped up, and clipped the fixed nut above it. Two more moves and I was at the anchor setting up for the haul.

P30/31: 5.13a (C1)/5.13b (C2) | The Headwall. Wally set out climbing the magnificently flat and vertical headwall for the remaining 180 feet to Long Ledge. I looked back to see the Spaniards anchoring in on Sous le Toit Ledge. One, two, three, ...four,...five. Five climbers packed like sardines on a tiny ledge. They started setting up a portaledge so that they would have somewhere to sit. We wouldn't be out of their way before nightfall. I called down to them:

-¡Hola, señores! Por favor - perdónenos. ¡No estámos tan rápido!
-Es bueno. Dormir aqui. We sleep here tonight!

Wally placed and back-cleaned yellow Alien after yellow Alien. My legs went numb. A falcon flying over the summit tucked into a dive and went by a few hundred feet to my right like a feathered missile; astoundingly loud and fast. Two hours went by as Wally methodically ticked away the linked pitches which had gone from vertical to slightly overhanging. The final exit moves to Long Ledge started on micronuts and ended with 5.7 jug-handle holds. I lowered out the bags 40 feet to the right for the haul, and they swung out from the wall by that much or more. As I jumarred up the rope, Wally looked back down over the ledge at me.

-Holy sh&#!
-What?
-You!

I had just removed a cam and I was suspended like a spider on a thread, far out from the wall with more than half a mile of air below me. Long Ledge lived up to it's name: its 30 or 40 feet long, but it's just about shoulder width wide. I slept a little bit, but I wanted a bed.

Friday: We had just 3 pitches to go if Wally could link two of them.

P32: (C1+), 5.8 | The crack started out past the end of the ledge, but the belay bolts were 20 feet behind me at the middle. It would be a bad place to fall. The first placement was a blind reach with a 0.5 Camalot. I doubled it up with another, just in case. The rest of the crack was one of my favorite pitches. It took nearly a full set of micronuts, two LoweBalls, and an upside-down hybrid Alien in a cam scar. Beautiful from a gear point of view.

P33/34: 5.10d (C1)/ 5.9 squeeze chimney (C1) | We were close now. Dave was planning to meet us on top with a backpack, water, and cold beer. We were listening for a 'Banzai!' from him. (It doesn't sound like a climbing command or anyone's name, so it stands out pretty well.) Trees were visible at the top. Wally got through the first pitch and called down for me to attach the big cams to the tag line. Somewhere off to climber's right we heard a shout:

-Banzai!

-BANZAI!!!

We both shouted in unison. It was an uplifting moment. We really were almost at the finish line for this marathon. Wally started into the difficult squeeze chimney. I heard a hiss overhead as a softball-sized rock whizzed by.

-ROOOCK!!! ROCK! ROOOOOOCK!

The square edges of the rock made it sound like a dynamite fuse as it cut through the air. I couldn't lean out far enough to see where it hit, possibly all the way out in the trees.

P35: 5.7 | Wally called 'off belay' and fixed the line. Dave had found our exit point by then and was standing about 40 feet above Wally's belay stance. I started up the easy pitch without even sorting out the mess of gear I had pulled off the previous two pitches. Two or three moves and it was done. I built a rats nest of an anchor as quickly as I could and started hauling while Dave took up slack on the auto-locked belay device.

We dragged the pigs up the hill and slugged the last of our water. We were down to about a quart between us.

According to Wally, it's not over until you can put the pigs down for the last time. We had 8 miles to hike and 8:15pm dinner reservations at the 5 star restaurant in the Ahwahnee hotel down in the Valley. Four hours of slogging down the trail with heavy packs was capped off by a jump into the chilly Merced River at the bridge. We were 3 minutes late to our dinner reservation, but they didn't refuse us at the door. Cheryl had called in a surprise bottle of very nice Champagne. Dinner couldn't have been more perfect.

We packed up the next day for the drive to Sacramento and the flight home. Hauling the pigs around doesn't really end until the _very_ end. We snagged a luggage cart at the baggage claim in Denver and piled on the instruments of our suffering. The cart broke. |