Yosemite

[Editorial Note: I wrote this on June 16th, so it's a bit delayed.]

I thought I knew something about climbing. Going up is good, and going up fast is better. Going sideways is OK if it means going up later. Going down fast is bad, but slowly is OK. I thought I pretty much had it covered. Then I spent a week in Yosemite.

This place is ridiculously busy. Campsite, let alone lodgings, are booked months in advance. A gaggle of tour buses, tourists with oversized cameras around their necks, and climbing monkeys mill about the valley floor gawking up at enormous waterfalls and cliffs like El Cap. It's virtually impossible to walk around without running into a famous climber. I said hello to some random European guy in the cafeteria and it turned out to be Uli Steck. Later, I sat awkwardly at a table with Jimmy Chin and Alex Honnold, feeling more than a little inadequate. I mean, what do you say to people who have skiied Everest or solo 5.12d? Alex told me he soloed some new overhanging 5.12 tips crack several thousand feet above the deck.
The climbing grades are severely sandbagged, at least to a sport climbing gumby like me. Or perhaps I should say the grades everywhere else are soft, given that this is where they were invented. We've been doing a mixture of free climbing and aid climbing. The first day we went the first four pitches of The Nose. I led a bit and jugged a lot. I got *whupped*. I got the rope stuck while jugging. I got confused by strange pin scars. I whined while hauling the bag. I got the rope stuck again. It was like I had never climbed before.

To rap down, we used someone else's fixed lines, which means three 60 m ropes tied together, and passing knots on a single-strand rappel over huge exposure, which was technically demanding and a bit scary. After that, I limed back to the car and decided wall climbing was the dumbest thing ever. So we went to do some free climbing. We did a pretty cool three pitch 5.8 route at the base of El Cap called Little John. There was a 5.8 wide fist crack as a little companion top-rope to the climb, which I totally fell on. It needs crazy techniques like stacked hand jams that I had never done before. Then we went and did a stellar but oddly named five pitch 5.9 called "Central Pillar of Frenzy" which features every kind of Valley crack, including a wild hand crack which goes out a horizontal roof. 5.9. Yeah. Finally, we did a nine pitch 5.10d linkup of Serenity/Sons of Tomorrow, which was once again every kind of crack, with the finger crux being a lot like Airation Buttress. It was awesome. I've never climbed that high before.

Between climbs we've been bivying in the talus slopes (it costs >$200 a night to stay in the lodge, and it's booked solid for months and months). Bears roam through camp randomly, sniffing at bear boxes and campers. At night, I keep my headlamp off so we can stay as invisible as possible. I've been wearing the same set of dirty pants the whole time. We're totally dirtbags. This was confirmed recently because a rich looking wealthy couple came over to us in the cafeteria and gave us the dregs of their wine before sauntering off to their no doubt feathery light bed. Bastards.
After a few days I forgot that big walls were stupid and decided to go back up. I skipped steps 1-29 on Chris Mac's 30 steps to the Nose or whatever, so we chose to do the South Face of Washington Column, which is an easier C1 grade V wall with a bit of mandatory 5.8 free climbing. We fixed the first pitch and ferried up our load on the first day, and then yesterday we climbed up to the third pitch, where Dinner Ledge is, and fixed pitches four and five. My brand new Patagonia approach shoes got trashed. The sole's ripping off. WTF?

The winds were ferocious. They're not even real winds; they're themral updrafts from the valley. Nonetheless, I felt like I was in a wind tunnel. As I pulled the Kor Roof, I swung comically, spreadeagled from my aiders like a crazed man. Today we punched it to the top. I took a whip on lead. I placed a blue Metolius in a pin scar (and I'm not super used to the Master Cams), thought it was a bit weird, and gave it a few good bounces. It held, so I eased on to it. Then I popped off and flew off onto a gray camalot before I new what had happened. Fuck. I blew a C1 crack. Fuck. That was a 10 foot whip. Why am I up here again? Fuck. Oh yeah. Climbing is rad.

So after a lot of rappelling and a lot more cursing, we're down. I just ate some ice cream from the caf, which is probably the square version of smoking weed. Gil & Rikka & Assorted are coming tomorrow so I'll try to meet up with them. It's been a good trip, but I think I'll be relieved to be back on solid ground for a while.