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