Yosemite week 2

Welcome back to week 2 of our Yosemite adventure! I’m blown away by the amount of positive feedback I received (through texts, emails,and FB messages) the day after about the first post. I never would have guessed it would be enjoyed by so many especially since I personally find myself to not be the best writer but apparently I am doing fine. It going to be hard to top that first week makes because we have had several slow days and I myself have rolled both ankles on different occasions, which means not much climbing has taken place on my part. Sadly more than 3/4 of the photos i took this week were on my phone and i cannot get them to upload  heres a funny pic fromsouth face top make up for  it(Jared's selfie and Dan's photobomb)

 Even with that said I am still striving to make this week even more enjoyable, so bear with me on this slow week and hopefully I will have something to cap this trip off with. Also we will not be quite 3 weeks; we will be taking off on Monday the 3^rd because Steven works in San Francisco on the 6^th but wants a couple days to recover beforehand, which we completely understand. 

Wednesday night the 22^nd:

                Well Wednesday night is when I first posted, we were staying at Gregs house in El Portal sitting on his couch, drinking beers and surfing the web. Jared and I stayed up pretty late because we knew we had a low key day on our hands the next day.  Steven and Dan on the other hands were off to bed quite early because they were attempting another big wall the next day: The Prow 5.7 C2F(clean grade2(fall potential 5-30 ft) with fixed gear) also located on Washington Column , but about 50 ft to the right of The South Face. Jared and I finally make it to bed about 1:30am…

Thursday 23^rd  

…4:30am I am awoken by Dan kicking my sleeping pad saying we need to go, awesome, only 3 hours of sleep. So far on this trip we have been sleeping between random campsites and Greg’s house , it was time we tried to get a 7 day site at camp 4. The plan was that we drop Jared off to wait in the line at 6 and then walk in reservations start at 8, in the mean time I was going to drive Steven and Dan to the trail head so they could start their day, then I would drive back to join Jared and wait in line with him. Well this plan didn’t go quite as planned: We dropped Jared off,  I was my way to drop Steven and Dan off but on the way they both decided that they slept terrible and needed a couple more hours of sleep so we turned around so I could wait in line with Jared while they slept. Jared and I caught an extra hour of sleep while waiting in line at camp 4, we were successful in getting a spot for the 2 of us(but the 4 of us would really be staying there).  We got lucky and our spot happened to be shared by a gentleman named Andrew Rice who we had spent the previous day in El Cap meadow with watching climbers on the nose. After we got our site, Dan and Steven returned to pick us up to we could take them to the trail head so they could continue on their way up the Prow.  We said good bye and didn’t expect to see or hear from them until Saturday evening. Jared and I continued on with our day trying to figure out where we were gonna go climb, we talked with Greg and there was supposed to be a group heading to Arch rock to go climb some wide stuff otherwise known as off width.  If you haven’t caught on to the trend of the day, that nothing was going as planned, then you can almost figure we didn’t make our way to Arch rock. Instead we went bouldering(at this point I am really excited because I am the only boulder in the group and I lugged a pad pout here) still with greg but we were also with his friend Gavin. Gavin is such a cool character, he works on the Yosemite bear team but is also the climbing liaison in Little Yosemite valley.  We head out bouldering under the leaning tower and I’m getting really psyched and close on finishing this V6, Crossroads Mo, but the fall keeps getting in my head and I am unable to finish it. We start making our way back to camp 4 to finish of the night with some more bouldering and jump on midnight lightning V8( the world’s most famous boulder problem). Once we arrive I am blown away by who is climbing on it as well, Will Stanhopehttp://www.willstanhope.com/! Will is an inspiration of mine in the trad climbing world and I am psyched to lend him my pad and a spot.http://cheynelempe.com/, George Lowe and Dave who is Alex Honnold’s new speed climbing partner.  This to me was one of the best nights on the trip so far.

I  was happy to share the same name because he said “oh that will be easy to remember”, this whole time I’m trying not to act like a little girl at a Justin Beiber concert, I kept telling myself he’s just another human like yourself. Little did I know he was the first of many amazing climbers that I would meet! A few others for the night were Chayne Lempe

Friday 24th

Today was the first day I woke up feeling exhausted and this was because of the bouldering, my body was more out of shape than I thought.  Jared had a friend, Thobi, who was also visiting Yosemite but was not here to climb; he was here with his wife and son just taking in the sights.  Since it was their last day and we didn’t really feel like climbing we decided to go go on a hike with them, we explored the Muir trail and messed around on the river.

We made a game of crossing the river on logs trying to continually push ourselves to do harder crossings. We ended up rating the crossings from L0-L4(basically like aid climbing) I fell in the water trying something next to impossible, worth it.

After hanging out with them we continued on to a place called Pat and Jacks, a climbing area. We climbed only a few climbs on this radically different rock from what we had been climbing on; it was featured with knobs protruding from the rock, also known as chicken heads.  On our way back to camp we stopped to get some groceries for the next couple days and food for a climb the next day. We get back to camp and are shocked to see Steven and Dan sitting at the table drinking our beer! They were not supposed to be back for another 24 hours, what had gone wrong?  We immediately ask what happened and they say “oh we just finished early”, Jared and I look at each other, shake our head, look back at them and say “you had to bail, huh?”. They try to play it off but this only lasts a minute before they reveal to us that they had a rough night on the portaledge and were moving to slow and would have ran out of food and water if they decided to push on. They were able to make it more than half way and I am happy that they used good judgment rather than trying to epic and have a story for us. We finished off our night sitting around the fire at the Yosar(Yosemite search and rescue) camp.

Saturday the 25^th

                Our main objective for the day was to go out and do some multipitching for the first time of the trip. We set our goals high and decided on Central Pillar of Frenzy 5.9 5 pitches and Superslide 5.9 5 pitches as well, in total more than 1000 vertical feet.  Central pillar is a very popular climb so we wanted to get on it early so that we wouldn't have to wait for any parties, 11am rolls around and we are just on our way, didn't seem like we had good chances of being on it before anyone else. Surprisingly there was only 1 couple ahead of us and they moved quick so we didn't have to sit around waiting. I lead pitch 1, 3 and 5. Pitch 3 was the most memorable because it was an offwidth and I have never climbed offwidth, you learn real quick when you are a couple hundred feet off the ground. Our view along the whole way was the best view I have ever experienced on a climb, El cap. We were able to watch climbers the whole time and we finally got to see 2 parties do the king swing! By the time we rapped the route and were back on the ground it was 430, there wasn't gonna be time to do superslide. We cut our losses , went and took showers and had a nice cooked meal at Curry village. Back to camp and back to the Yosar fire. (pictures to come)

Sunday 26^th

                Today was un-eventful and I’m going to keep it short. Jared and Steven are planning on climbing Half Dome in a Day so they are racking up for this and talking with everyone they can about it. I decided to do some laundry and take another shower, the first back to back showers and it feels great! I get back to camp and head out to boulder with my friend Andrew, he’s working on midnight lightning and so close! He is leaving the next day and this was his only goal of the whole trip so it has to go down. He falls from the mantle 3 times but on the 4^th time is able to press it out and pull the lip! Although the hard part of the climb is done you still have a scary slab walk to the top which if you fell from you would be broken, thankfully he doesn't and rejoices at the top! By this time i am hungry so I start to walk to the village to get dinner but on the way I roll my ankle! Thankfully it doesn't feel too bad and its one of those things where the sooner I walk on it, the better it feels and the less time it has to stiffen up. I make it back t camp with food and go yosar camp to make food and enjoy the fire. I get to meet George Lowe who is one of the creators of Lowe alpine gear and a phenomenal climber as well but I also get to meet a guy Nehls. Nehls isn't well known but should be, he is currently working on the FA of what very well may be the hardest gear climbs in the us, 14d/15a.

Monday 27th

                I woke up with the fattest ankle I have had in a while, the lack of movement at night did not help. Today is also a rainy day, Nothing eventful. Hung around camp and napped.  Also met Sonnie Trotter http://sonnietrotter.com/ at night, him and Will Stanhope were working something on the captain.

Tuesday 28^th

                We woke up to more rain, so we all decided to sleep in. When we finally did get up to start making breakfast, first thing we look at is the slack line area because we are right next to it. We are not shocked to see none other than Andy Lewis messing around and doing tricks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdHqmnB-NNc For those of you who don’t know Andy is the best recognized slackliner and highliner in the world, making appearances in Reel Rock 6 and last year’s Super bowl halftime show.  The clouds cleared and the sunshine came through, the rock drys very fast here so we took our chances and headed to the captain to do some climbing. Dan and I had the goal of making it to the Elcap tree which is about 400 feet up, and has a good ledge that you can sleep on. We came to the realization after getting shutdown on the South face and the Prow that there was no way we were going to be able to try the Nose on this trip(we just aren’t proficient enough yet at aid climbing)so we thought we’d at least like to spend a night on it. When we got to the base of the climb there was another party heading up Tangerine Trip. This was no ordinary party; one of the men in this group was Sean O’niell.J watch this link is coming up weird but watch!

Now you may not know who Sean is but his brother is a famous climber, Timmy O’neill. Timmy used to hold the Nose speed record with Dean Potter and also is in 180south.  Timmy seems like fascinating person but nothing compared to Sean. Sean became a paraplegic 22 years ago when jumping from a 100ft bridge into a river, he hit the back and crushed his back and pelvis leaving him handicapped from the waist down. An injury like this would shut most people down, but not Sean, he has done more things than most able bodies do, including going up the Captain 4 different times on 4 different routes. I was fortunate enough to spend more than an hour on the ground talking with him and hearing his stories, talk about an eye opener, they made me realize all the things I take for granted. What made me the happiest were not all the routes he’s done, or the fact that he’s pushed his wheel chair from the floor of Hawaii Island to the top of Mt. Molokai in 40 hours, but that he had been in a successful relationship for the last 7 years. He said “Nothing makes me happier than being able to go home and have somebody by my side there to love and help me.” Again the little things we take for granted. Dan eventually reached the top of pitch 1 and it was my time to jug the line and leave the ground, I was sad to end our conversation, but before I left I got his contact info and promised that we would take pictures of the tree and give him the report once he was off the wall. He let me know that he spent many times in the field looking at that tree wondering what it was like at the base of it but the journey to it was too tough, so I took this as my personal goal to share this with him.  It was getting late and we knew we were going to have to come back to finish the climb, so we retreated back to the base with the plans of coming back tomorrow. Once on the ground we told Sean of our plans and went our separate way. We plan on hiking back on Sunday to help carry him back down to the meadow after they finish their climb. This now has become the single best moment on this trip for me

Wednesday 29^th

       Woke up to MORE rain that was not in the plan, Jared and Steven are now starting to worry about their bid on Half Dome. We are all pulling for good weather so they can make an attempt on it. We are also at the last day of our reservation at camp 4 so we had to have Steven and Dan get us sites until we leave on Monday or Tuesday. Luckily the site is only 50ft away so we can just pick up everything and carry it over with out having to break the tent down. Our site shares the fire with Andy Lewis, Mason earl and Pepe who are both sponsored climbers for black diamond. After lunch we headed out to finish our climb to the elcap tree. On our way we were sad to sea that Sean had been carried down and they weren't going to be heading up Tangerine trip after all. Apparently their load was to heavy and they couldn't even budge it from the ground so they had to bail. I felt bad for Sean but he was in high spirits and it didn't seem to bother him, he stated that he was just along for the ride. So with that being said we were even more excited to get to the tree and take some pictures for him. The Elcap tree route is not a well traveled line, it shares the start with 3 very hard aid lines: Tangerine trip 5.7 A2, Native son 5.9 A4, and Iron hawk 5.9 A4, so unless you are a hard man you don’t make your way out here. The route was covered with water from the run off above , overgrown with plants and loose rock every where. It took us 3 hours to do the climb and was quite the adventure. Going up is the easy part but coming down is where most accidents happen, luckily for us no accidents happened, but we were well aware that they could have. We had to sling loose rock fro the first rap, trust some old tat for the 2^nd and lower off 3 quarter inch bolts with my personal anchor being a nut on a rivet.(scariest thing I have had to trust) Glad to say we made it down just before it became dark. On our drive back we found 8 parties on the captian and I tried to capture them with a long exposure, only was able to get 5.

Thursday the 30^th

   Today is a big day for Jared and Steven, we dropped them off  and they are on their way to the base of half dome to climb the regular northwest face in a day. They will hike the death slabs today and bivy at the base, then blast off at 3 in the morning tomorrow. We are excited and anxious for them but we know they will crush it and have a story for us that I will gladly share with you. As for Dan and I, we are sitting in Deegans deli finishing up this weeks recap while eating breakfast, drinking coffee and watching the wild life. 

 Once done with this we are heading out to climb Mr.Natural 5.10 at Glacier point and off too Cookie Cliff to try some hard slitter cracks, Mainly 5.10’s and 11’s. My body is wrecked from all the climbing and I will be happy to take a break once I get home. But until then we have to keep pushing ourselves. We are coming up on the end of our trip and I don’t think I will post again until back in Tucson just because of how hard it has been to get internet. I hope you enjoyed the last week from me/us and it was not too boring. Much love, I miss you all and cant wait to see you shortly. Thanks again for all the support! :)

-Will

1st post and 1st week in Yosemite!!!

 Hey everyone, welcome to my new blog! The email list grew to more than I expected and I am found it easier to use this site because I can post the in order along with the days rather than just a file of pictures for you all to scroll through. Alli is to thank for setting this up for me J

  

   Im sorry it has been almost a week since I have put anything out there but we have just been on the go and the service isn't the best so I have had to wait til I could find internet service. There is only one place in the village that has it and also at my friend Greg’s house in El Portal. I have a lot to get you caught up on and will try my best to make this as enjoyable as possible!  Again thanks for showing an interest in my life. So where shall I begin…

Thursday night May 16:

   We arrived at our originally intended campsite was right outside of Bishop on BLM where most Boulders stay (Bishop is known for its world class bouldering). When we got there, there was a sign saying campsite closed but nothing saying as to why it was closed, we were tired and it was almost midnight so we set up camp anyways. Jared and I decided to walk to the restrooms before heading to bed and looked at the bulletin board. We were shocked to see why the campsite had closed down… Plague! Apparently there had been a recent plague infection in the area with deer mice and squirrels and the campsite had closed down 3 days prior to our arrival. Needless to say we ran back to the site and told Steven and Dan of our findings and that we needed to move to a campsite several miles away. We packed up and relocated, we were not happy about having to do this but it was not worth the risk!

Friday May17:

   Today is Dan’s birthday!! I won’t say how old he is because he wouldn't like that but I will say we have started calling him grandpa! We rose early because we were all excited to get to the valley. We drove back to Bishop first to go to the grocery store and get about a weeks’ worth of food for all of us. After this we were on our way to Tioga pass which takes you through Tuolumne Meadows and into Yosemite from the east of the Sierras. Tuolumne is also a big climbing destination with large exposed domes, some of these domes are more than 1000 ft tall. Tuolumne sits at over 8000 ft. and still had some snow on the ground, too cold for enjoyable climbing. We made some stops to take pictures, take in the fresh air and of course look at rocks!

 We continued on through the winding roads and lush forest with pine trees reaching more than 100 ft in height. At this point we are all dying with anticipation because we know we are about to arrive at a place we have only seen in movies and pictures. Finally it happens,

we get our first view of half dome, the top of El Cap and the Rostrum, all of our expectations are met and also exceeded. We are so excited that we speed on down to the valley floor along the way Dan is blowing his horn (which is a semi-truck horn) through the tunnels, it felt like my ears were bleeding but I did not care because we have arrived! We immediately went to the closest place we could find to get a good look at Elcap and just sat there, taking it in, it is breath taking, more than I think any of us expected.

 The great roof

 leaning tower and bridal vail

 tunnel view

We started questioning where we would stay, the place to be if you are a climber is camp 4 but naturally this is full and hard to get into. So we settled for Wawona which sadly was a 35 minute drive away but it was our only option. We make it to camp, get a reservation and set up camp. As soon as we are done we jump in the truck and head back to the valley to get a couple hours of climbing in before sundown (which isn’t until almost 830). We climb at a place called swan slabs because it has some easier climbing and the approach is only a couple minutes from the parking lot. We had time to do 3 climbs before the sun went down and we headed off to camp to get some rest for the next day.

Saturday May 18:

   We wake up early to head to the Valley to get a good day of climbing, first stop Church bowl! We do church bowl lay back 5.8, church bowl tree 5.10(my first 10 gear onsite) and bishop terrace 5.8.  While we were there a bobcat walked within 5 feet of us, all while looking at us, but just out on a stroll. After church bowl we continue on to the base of El Cap to do some single pith climbs.

We walked to the base of the nose and watched some parties on it making their way through the great roof, this was an incredible site to see.  We ran into a party coming off the first pitches of the Zodiac but they had warned us that a bear was following them. I was sad that I wasn't able to see the bear but little did I know that I would spend the next couple hours dealing with bear 81. We walked over to a climb called Moby Dick 5.10 but before we could get climbing the bear came back. They aren't really aggressive towards human they just want to get the food in your backpack. So bear 81 is sneaky and came up from behind, grabbed a ladies backpack, ran down the hill about 30 ft, stopped and started ripping her bag apart in search of a clif bar! Steven came out of nowhere and started chasing it and yelling at it, I decided to run after and help Steven as well (kind of crazy).

Magically we got the bear to leave her back pack and scared it far enough away to get the backpack back. Even though we scared it off from the pack but it lingered around for the next hour or so, we couldn't start climbing til it was out of site.

Finally dan was able to get on Moby dick and Jared and Steven got on the first pitch of Salathe wall, but before long the bear was back. Lucky another party showed up just in time to help “protect” me from the bear as I was belaying Dan. Jared’s backpack also received some damage but is still usable. When the sun started to set we went back to camp and went to bed.

 Sunday May 19^th:

   Nothing to epic today,  we woke up and packed because we were no longer wanting to make the drive from Wawona to the valley. We started packing for our first big wall, the South face of Washington column.

After packing we went to stay at my friend Greg’s house for the night before heading out early the next morning.

Monday May 20^th

   Well today is the day! We are headed out to do our first big wall aid route.

We started moving around 345 and actually got on the road at 415. After arriving at the Ahwahnee(a very nice hotel and our trail head for the column) we packed the food we would need for the next 2 days which consisted of breakfast lunch dinner and another breakfast and lunch for the next day, we were off! It wasn't that long of an approach, 1.4 miles, but included 800 ft of elevation gain! Now 800 feet might not seem like that much but when you have 40 lb packs its not a fun hike. It took us 2 hours to get to the base of the climb, we took a bunch of stops but still it felt like we could have done it faster. Jared and Steven were the first ones to get on it while Dan and I just hung out at the bottom waiting for our turn to  get started. The first pitch is a really easy pitch that goes at 5.7 and is free climbed. The 2^nd pitch is a very clean 5.11 corner but goes at C1… in aid climbing (aid climbing being where you are pulling on and relying on the gear to get up the wall) there are 2 different types:C- clean aid, where you are using easily removable gear and there is A: which literally means aid, and we now know of it as having to hammer pitons, pin and other metal objects in.

There was one more pitch that went at 5.7 and took us up to a natural ledge known as dinner ledge which is we would be staying the night.

This ledge was pretty big and could fit 6 people pretty comfortably but the one down side of these ledges is that they tend to smell like urine :( after getting to the ledge the main goal is to fix the next 2 pitches so that when you wake up in the morning you can just jug the lines and already have a head start in the day. Again Jared and Steven went first, the 4th pitch is known as the Kor roof (after Layton Kor who sadly just passed away this last month) and is the classic pitch on the whole route. It is about 15 feet deep followed by another 60 of crack to your next belay station, they did this pitch fast and made it look easy.

I was up next and this was my first aid lead of the trip, i have done very little aid and never aided a roof. i wish i could tell you all that this went with out any hitched for myself but this is not the case. I went through every emotion in the book trying to lead this pitch, the worst part for me was trying to not pee my pants because of how scared i was. it took me almost 2 hours and alot of whining and telling myself i couldn't do it, but for some reason i pushed on. I wasn't able to complete the whole pitch because i had ran out of the proper gear but lucky for me there were 2 random bolts that i was able to build an anchor off of and lower back to dinner ledge. With this pitch fixed it was the end of the climbing for the day, we made dinner, watched the sun set and went to bed. In the middle of the night i was awoken by what i thought was a large squirrel trying to run off with Jared and Stevens food but found out in the morning that it was a ring tail cat!

Tuesday May 22nd

So since i did not completely finish the pitch the day before it was my job to get back up there and finish it out, this time around i felt much more confident about aiding and sailed up it pretty quick. Sadly before we started in the  morning another party that showed up late the night before woke up ahead of us and started climbing first , so both Steven, Dan, Jared and I were delayed for almost 3 hours! We got really bored and started taking pics and videos...

By this time we were already realizing that we were probably not going be able to finish the route but Jared and Steven were set on finishing so they pushed on. we continued on through 1 more pitch, I was reluctant because I was required to do a mini pendulum but after all was said and done i was very excited that i did this because it was my favorite part. From the top or the 5th is where er retreated at about 2 in the afternoon. we took our time going down because we knew we were gonna have to wait for Jared and Steven  We got to the base of the climb and tried climbing Jo-Jo 5.10, i wasn't able to do it but Dan 1 hung it which was quite impressive.

We started worrying about where Jared and Steven where at because we hadn't heard from them until nearly 8pm. They had finished the climb but were so tired that they decided to stay another night on the ledge. Dan and i continued on to take showers and eat a 4 star meal at the Ahwahnee. 

Wednesday May 23rd:

REST DAY!!! we did nothing which was awesome. we hung around Curry village and reorganized gear while Dan and Steven planned on going up the Prow tomorrow. We layed in the meadow for 5 hours and just watched climbers on the captain. Jared and i got interviewed by a gentleman who was doing a motorcycle tour around the west( Stephen Craig Tavella/ heart-sign.com). 

Thanks for reading so far! I hope to be able to post twice this upcoming week but again service is bad and we are constantly on the move! <3 - WILL BUTT

ps sorry for spelling errors and punctuation. too tired to edit :P