Month: December 2014

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final salathe blog 3/3

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We made an early start to avoid climbing in the heat too much, and the first day went well. It was all pretty straight forward and we found ourselves putting up our protaledge with plenty of daylight left, which was lucky, because it was the first time we had done it! With Chris and I hanging off one bolt battling with this strange camp bed must have provided Masson with much amusement as he was sitting in his eating beef jerky!

We started the next day early as we were keen to press on and get to grips with the route. Once we reached Heart Ledge we had the added complication of having to haul our bags up after each pitch. They were heavy but space hauling made it easier. (space hauling is when someone dangles on the end of a rope and uses their weight to haul the bags up, it involves lots of sliding down the wall and jummarring back up, all pretty tiring). We had heard from some Spanish friends that one of them was soloing a route on the east side of el cap and had just started hauling her bags after the first pitch only to find they were too heavy to lift. She added another pulley in the hauling system to make it easier but they still wouldn’t come. She thought maybe they were caught below a little roof or something so she added a final pulley and they eventually started coming. When the bags were within 10metres of her she realised they were so hard to haul because there was bear on it! She swiftly lowered them back down!!

mess of gear!

Climbing Salathe Wall, Yosemite

Now came one of the most daunting pitches of the climb, a monster off width, a type of crack you can either do or you can’t. It turned out on this day that Masson couldn’t. So he used a little bit of aid to bypass this section. Trying the route onsight was a massive undertaking, and he didn’t seriously think he could do it, but if you never try, you never know. At the end of the pitch we decide to see how much we could free but not to worry too much if we had to aid, and so slightly more relaxed we set about the rest of the climb.

off-width

Yet another off-width on Salathe Wall, Yosemite

We were aiming to bivvy on El cap spire that night. Before we were to get to this incredible bivvy there were some amazing 5.10 jamming cracks where everything just flowed perfectly and you could really appreciate being on El Capitan. When I was seconding one big chimney pitch I suddenly realised I had to do some tricky bridging or face a big swing. As I was wearing my trainers I wasn’t confident I could second the pitch. I shouted up to Chris for some encouragement, then unclipped the last bit of gear and committed to the 150ft swing. It was all pretty exciting stuff 18 pitches up salathe wall only attached to a centimetre wide bit of rope!

out the ear

Seconding the Elephants Ear pitch, Salathe Wall, Yosemite

We arrived on top of the spire, a bit of rock we had seen pictures of tents pitched on. Looking forward to this luxury bivvy after hanging in our harnesses for the last 12 hours, we were gutted to see the top of the spire was anything but flat! It was still an amazing place, a 50 meter pillar completely detached from the wall. So we set up our portaledge as it was the flattest ting around and sat on top the pillar chatting and taking in the view.

leaving the spire

El Cap Spire, Yosemite

After flaking through the ropes we realise the core on one of them was exposed, possibly from when I took my little swing earlier, so we wrapped it in finger tape to protect it. With 20 pitches of Salathe wall done and over halfway, we slept well that night.

We plan to next bivvy just below the headwall which means a long day ahead. Even though he hasn’t free climbed all of it Masson wants to see how the rest of it is for a future attempt. On one pitch he being pushed to his limits after over 2 days of really hard climbing, he has just enough time to warn us before he takes a massive 50fter. He gets flipped and lands heavily on his back. Chris and I look at each other and my stomach turns, looks like he should have really hurt himself. But just as we are thinking how on earth were gonna get him down, or up, or rescued, he flips himself over and dusts himself off, then proceeds to tell us how ”It’s a good job I like falling!” bloody lucky yank!

as masson takes a 50 foot fall...

Trull belaying on Salathe Wall as Masson takes a big fall…

Masson took a back seat to relax his nerves and we aided up to below the headwall later that day. Because of how we needed to set the 2 ledges up (one above the other) all 3 of us were hanging off one cam and a rusty bong, the bolts backing it up were below us… was an interesting night and the most amazing bivvy I’ve ever had. There we were, on the most famous bit of rock on the planet, the sunset looking like the horizon was on fire. We were a day below the top and maybe a day away from being able to swim in the river, drink beer and get out of our harnesses…Tea was a hefty chilli wrapped in tortilla and lots of gummy bears with our legs dangling 2500ft above the valley floor. By now big blue was empty and we were low on water so it was a thirsty evening. It was a perfect still night so we could hear our friends near Zodiac jamming and wondered how they were getting on with their attempt to free their route. It was a bit surreal when all the climbers all over el cap started making monkey calls to one another! It sounded like there was a troop of baboons on a big wall! God knows what anyone in the valley must have thought was going on up there!

The next morning we climbed the great roof and aided up the headwall, unsurprisingly no one was psyched to try and lead the E8 pitches! Apart from Chris having a bit of a moment seconding the roof it was dreamy climbing in an amazing situation. Early in the afternoon on Friday, with considerably lighter haul bags than when we took them up to Heart ledge on Monday, we topped out on Salathe wall.

After finishing the last of our bagels and sorting gear, we started the painful east ledges descent. Masson and I carried a haul bag each and Chris got the bum deal being lumbered with the two portaledges. With all that gear and 5 or 6 abbs the descent was an ordeal in itself, but all that mattered was getting down and not being in your harness, clean clothes, and a proper toilet. And drinking something other than water!

posing

Success on Salathe Wall!

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2/3 Salathe Wall Blog

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Arguably Salathe Wall vies with the Nose for the title of one of the best routes in the world. It’s certainly an amazing line but being harder than the nose, we didn’t seriously consider it ourselves, but with Massons experience and confidence, we had a new lease of life. However, stood below a wall that stretches up for a vertical kilometer, with a slightly dull head, we both felt pretty nervous. But we were super psyched to finally get to climb on El Capitan!

We had lots to do to prepare, we needed to check we had the right rack, and we needed food and water. Masson decided he wanted to have a look at freeing it. Now, he was certainly strong enough, but would need time up there to work the route, so we decided we would spent 5 days up there to stand the best chance. 5 days of food and water for 3 people = some very heavy haul sacks!

Chris racking up

Sorting Kit in Camp 4

We headed to the supermarket and filled a trolley with: 36 bagels, 6 bags of gummy bears, 30 energy bars, 15 tins of chilli., 5 packets of pop tarts, 6 packets of beef jerkey and enough chocolate to make a stick obese. Luckily a friend had a staff discount card from the valley so we got all this half price! Now came the next problem. Water. We reckoned on needing 50litres for the 5 days. Great, no room for beer then.

We had nowhere near enough water containers for a start. So, we trawled through the big bear proof garbage bins that Yosemite has, for decent bottles…. But find barely any… Sean the Belgium realises the garbage bins are a bit of a treasure trove, all the bottles in there are worth 5c each if you hand them into the recycling. And the bins a pretty big in typical American style. We hear about a couple of Brits a few years back who couldn’t climb because their rope got damaged, but after 2 weeks of this bottle “collecting” they had enough money to buy a new rope!

As if by magic we manage to ‘acquire’ big blue, a big solid blue plastic 35l container that fits nicely in bottom of haul sack, we then ‘acquired’ a hose so we could siphon the water out of it up on the wall! It all seemed like a really good idea, though getting water out of it would prove easier said than done up ont the route!

So we’ve got all our food and equipment together and we begin to hike the 150l of it all to the base. Now this was a very sweaty task in the humid forest, there were times I thought my shoulders were going to implode under the weight of the sack – I was carrying big blue! Good job El Cap is practically roadside!

There is a line of fixed ropes that join the route part way at a point on the wall called heart ledge, you can take your bags up here before starting to climb the route. So we undertake the god-awful task of hauling our bags up the fixed lines, no mean feat sweating profusely with a hangover, knowing it will save us loads of nasty hauling if we were to take them on the first day of Salathe. We then head back down to the valley to sleep the night in camp before starting the route the next day.

haul bags

Haul Bags up on Salathe Wall

Walking past the queue at the base of the Nose we have a deep sense of satisfaction that we are the only people on our route. When we get to camp we realise we made a schoolboy mistake and had left our sleeping bags up on the wall! It was a cold night in camp, wrapped in borrowed clothes! But at least our food was safe away from bears up there, friends of our were not so lucky on half dome when they left their food at the base. All that was left when they got down was 1 tin of chilli and a tea bag between 4 of them….!

Last blog on this tomorrow – do we make it?!

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1/3 Yosemite Tales

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In 2008, at the end of summer I flew out to the States to meet my mate Trull. He’s a proper climbing dirtbag, fully commited for life. He had been working his way from Canada down the West Coast of America. We met up in San Fran to go to Yosemite and see what Big Wall climbing was all about, and with any luck climb the Nose on El Capitan.

Neither of us had climbed a Big Wall before. We had both taken our first steps together Winter and Alpine climbing, when we had no experience. We had made mistakes and learnt from them, often by the skin of our teeth. We were sure we could do the same on the 3000ft granite faces in Yosemite National Park. What was there to loose!

el cap from middle cathedral

The mighty El Capitan, Yosemite

We had done plenty of aid in the UK and the Alps, but nothing on this scale, so we spent a month getting used to the style of climbing out there and getting our aid systems sorted on some of the smaller big walls. We had some great adventures on some of the ‘smaller’ faces in the Valley, but that’s another story for now…

For anyone that doesn’t know what big wall aiding is, basically its climbing a very big piece of rock using gear you have placed in the rock to get you past sections that you cannot free climb. Depending on how good a climber you are and what style you climb in a wall like El Cap will take anywhere between 1 day and 2 weeks (the current speed record for El Capitan is around 3 3/4hours…!).

When we felt all our preperation and experience meant we were ready to take on the big one we walked upto the base of the nose. It’s as perfect looking line as your ever likely to see in the mountains. It rises from the very toe of the cliff in an almost straight line to the very top. It’s widely considered one of the very best routes in the world, and we felt the Nose was our best chance of experiencing El Capitan. Now, due to this worldwide reputation, and being one of the easier ways up the cliff, meant unfortunately every over climber had the same dream as us. The route was so crowded we would have had to wait a week to even start the route. I was due to fly back to the UK in a 7 days and Chris was heading to Australia to continue his round the world climbing trip. We didn’t have time! Hugely dissapointed we headed back down to the meadow to swim, collect our thoughts, discuss options and have some beers.

bivvy on Washington column

Looking at Half Dome from the bivvy ledge on Washington Column

Later that evening back in camp we were sat around a fire, drinking beer and playing music (very badly) chatting to mates. Everyone had big plans. Shaun and Nico were heading up to try and climb a new route on the east side of El Capitan and a couple of the guys were going to try and free Half Dome in a day. Everyone was off doing stuff and we couldn’t do what we had planned. Trull and I were a bit dispondent. We had achieved more than we had hoped in Yosemite, but we just still really wanted to climb the Cap.

We were settling on the idea of spending the last week doing day long free climbs, but in the back of our minds we were hugely dissapointed. A bit later in the evening I helped a American lad to get some more firewood. His name was Masson, it was the first time we had met him that evening, so we didn’t know him at all but we had heard he was strong, real strong. At only 18 he had already climbed 5.14 and had done the Nose in 6 hours. We got on pretty well and decided to go climbing the next day – if our hangovers wernt too bad! However around midnight, after a few too many stong cheap American beers, Masson said he hadnt climbed Salathe wall, and that tomorrow we should have a look at it. Being slightly drunk and not knowing any better we both agreed…………

More on Salathe to follow…..