Church Bowl

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informal trip to Church Bowl, Yosemite, 03. Dez 2006

the party arriving

I'm doing the "Liebacker"

Clint

pictures at the top, left-to-right: Half Dome, as seen from the street, Church Bowl, as seen from the street, view from the wall to the other side of the valley

Party of four: Clint, Ian, Greg, Moritz. Later we met Darko, Colin and a few others.

This time we left very early in the morning, at 6am. Clint was driving, and he and me enjoyed the first rays of the rising sun while both on the back seats preferred getting a couple of hours of additional sleep. The 4h drive was only interrupted for some groceries and by a police officer, kindly telling Clint that his brake light didn't work. Said "Half of our job is education" or something like that. We went through Arch Rock, passed El Cap and arrived at Church Bowl at 10.15am. Temperature was 10 C in the shade. We met the others at the parking lot.

Darko quickly lead Revival and I followed him having a second rope attached to my harness which we wanted to use for a toprope. The climb felt harder than 5.10a, most probably because I was not used to granite and to the fact, that you can use even a 3mm crimp as a perfect foothold because it's so grippy. However, I managed to get to the top without sitting in the rope. It's a cool feeling beeing alone with the granite, and I think I got a glimpse on what Yosemite climbers mean by 'granite desert'. Another cool thing is that the temperature rises significantly as soon as you get above the tree level and into the sun. You sure wish you weren't wearing all these fleeces any more... I stayed at the top on a cosy balkony enjoying the warmth while Darko was rapping down and Ian was coming up.

On the next climb I figured how much friction there actually is on slightly positive granite! A small finger crack together with that is enough to bring you up! Wouldn't have guessed that. Besides that friction experience, I played a little bit around with "crack techniques", wich are essentially new to me. I think, it will take more time to trust two crossed fingers in a crack with your body weight! But Colin told me, that for him it worked all of a sudden - that's one thing I like of climbing! Finally I did my first chimney, which was another funny experience. That one was easier than I thought.

The sun downed about 5pm, and soon it was getting badly cold. We grabbed our things and headed to the cars longing for the pleasant warmth of the heater... We stopped at In'n'Out Burger, "traditionally" as I had been told, which is kinda funny because on my last trip to Yosemite with Philipp and Henning we did just the same.

Back in the car, I asked Clint about what he means by "hangdogging". He smiled and explained, that would be if your leading but the problem's too hard and you keep sitting in the rope and desperately trying to solve it. Well, the hanging part of the word is pretty obvious, so we tried to guess how the dog comes into play. Clint suggested, that a dog which hangs his ears and tail might be feeling sad and guilty, just like the climber who's so desperate that he almost thinks about using some of his gear to aid it... That might be it :-)

We've been back at Stanford about 10:30pm. Thanks to Clint who organised a great trip!