Yosemite, Informal Trip
aus mowiki, der freien Wissensdatenbank
Informal trip to Yosemite, April 27th-28th, 2007
Patience, Francisco, Martin and me met Saturday 5:30am at Tresidder and left soon after. We took the "North Route" to Yosemite, had a pleasant ride in my Jeep. It was doing fine, except that the check engine light came on at some point. I wasn't too worried about it, because I did't want to let this spoil a great weekend (it turned out to be 'random misfires', nothing too serious). We arrived at Church Bowl around 10:30am and met the other. It's been about twenty of us and I don't remember all names. It was sunny and a lot of mosquitos were around. Though they didn't seem to be very hungry, you should bring a rappellant.
Clint set up topropes on several routes, but since we were so many non-leaders, there quickly formed lines on the ropes. I started with
- Revival, 5.10a (UIAA 6+)
which felt indeed easier compared to the last time I did it. I guess I just wasn't afraid of finger cracks any more. We climbed a variation of Revival which included the slab at the beginning. The first time I tried I tried to traverse over too early, the second time I found a way relatively fast and climbed the route. But later on, when I wanted to redo it, I couldn't make it. I tried ten times but for some reason I lost confidence in my feet. Not the best prerequisite for this kind of slab whith its amazinly tiny feet. I figured it may be better to do something else instead, so I started making Cafe Latte: espresso with hot milk (here's to you, Frankson!). Then, I did
- Church Bowl Lieback, 5.8 (UIAA 6-)
which really was relaxing. I was surprised, how easy it acutally was. Then came
- Black is Brown, 5.8 (UIAA 6-)
which felt way harder than 5.8. So I cancelled my original plan to do some mock leading today. Somtimes you have to admit to weak days. However, I couldn't resist trying the 5.10c variation of Revival, consisting of even tinier footholds. I lowered my expectations and made it to the top! So that made my day and we left to the North Pines camp site. We set up our mats near the river, no tents this time. Soon after we went to Curry Village for the usual Pizza and beers - expesive but satisfying.
Sunday we went for the Base of El Cap, but not after espresso and breakfast at the camp site. We met Darko and Chris, who too readied their breakfast. They even had scrambled eggs with cheese... Darko said, that he sold his Jeebus - sad news, it was a fun car! Arriving at the base, we found a toprope at La Cosita (Clint?) and started on it:
- La Cosita, Right, 5.9 (UIAA 6)
It felt easier than last time I did it, so maybe this is going to be a good day. It turned out my Mammut shoes are definitely not made for crack climbing, and soon their tiny holes had grown larger. And my feet hurt badly in the crack. We met this guy Steve and his wife, who supposedly is one of the people freeing El Cap, and he did
- Sparkling Give-Away, 5.11a (UIAA 7+)
like nothing. I watched him closely at the crux, which is a finger ledge with no feet. So you need to place a foothook on the left, shift your weight completely to it, which acutually involves pushing up on two fingers of your right hand. Once you made it, you can reach for a jug. Before you get to the crux, there is an interesting finger traverse. Aaron got on it, was able to traverse over without using his feet. Then he tried to dyno the crux which didn't work but resulted in a nice picture (see link below). I could do the traverse with using two foothooks, but the I struggled with the crux. There was no way I do it like Steve. Finally I got it with the help of the rope... Then I got on
- Sacherer Cracker, 5.10a (UIAA 6+)
It has an easy offwidth start which almost killed me. It was my first offwidth, and now I begin to understand why most people don't like it... It follows a nice fingercrack, which was fun as long as I could pretend my feet didn't hurt. Then comes a handcrack where my hands and feet fitted just perfectly, but then it turns into an fist crack. That was definitely not fun any more. My feet hurt so badly I had to rest in the rope after every two meters. Finally I got close to the top, where I got the choice of an offwidth or a chimney. That's when I gave up. But still I felt real good having done the longest crack in my climbing career!
We hit the road again at 8:30pm, stopped in Oakdale at Carl's Jr for something they call "burger" and were back at Tresidder at 1:00pm.
Thanks again Clint, for a fun weekend!
