Yosemite with Rasmus
aus mowiki, der freien Wissensdatenbank
Yosemite, 26. - 28. October 2007
To the Valley, the third weekend in a row. Rasmus and I leave Friday evening, we're looking forward to a mellow weekend in a team of two. Both of us like easy climbs, plus we want to spend some time at the base to pratice gear placements and to try several new anchor ideas from my new anchors book. This is why we stopped at REI and got two double length slings, because supposedly they work wonders on some anchors. Well, at least that's what "The Book" says. We stay Friday night at the Evergreen Secret Spot, only one more car there. We quickly set up Rasmus's swedish "everybody-has-it" tent and hit the sack.
On Saturday we got in line for the Nutcracker which must be Yosemite's most popular 5.8 (competing with Bishop's Terrace I think). It wasn't too bad, only one party of three who just got started and another three guys were waiting to jump on it. So we waited and practiced the opposing nut placement, where two nuts hold each other in place in a horizontal crack. Apparantly it's not so easy to get this configuration bomber. Finally we got on the route. We did the 5.9 variation of the first pitch which was pretty fun actually.
- Nutcracker, 5.9, lead Moritz (1st, 4th, 5th pitch), Rasmus (2nd, 3rd pitch)
At the first belay I took forever to decide on an anchor solution because I had all these different ideas from The Book in my mind. I guess that's the downside of being focused on the best possible anchor! Eventually I called off belay and Rasmus followed no problem. The second and third pitch were up to Rasmus. When I got to the third stand, we figured that the sun had become quite low - already! I hurried on the roof pitch (4), but when we both were at the 4th belay the sun was about to set. I totally hadn't expected to be caught by dark this time, given we were at the base around 11am. So I didn't have my headlamp with me (I can't believe the same shit happened to me the other day on Haystack...). Rasmus was much more clever so we had at least one lamp.
I put the headlamp on and got ready for the last mantle pitch. The Supertopo makes it sound really awkward, so we didn't quite know what to expect from the mantle move, although it's only 5.8 ("falls from here have resulted in broken ankles..."). I quickly pulled through the mantle move and the following traverse with no pro, and by the time I placed the first piece after the crux it was dark. Fortunately the climbing is easy now, some 5.6 face. I stopped a couple of times to check the topo for the right way, but it worked ok. Then I got to the section where the topo says "tiny nut" followed by "5.5 no pro" for the rest of the pitch. I was well above my last piece and I couldn't tell if another tiny nut placement was yet to come, so I decided to downclimb 1m to get this tiny stopper in. Then I moved up again, but, of course, my rack caught the rope or something. I shook it loose, went further up to a more stable position. When I looked down so see if the nut was still in place, I just saw it downsliding and disapearing in the darkness. Excellent.
So I was some 3m above my last piece with some more 3m with no pro to go, but there was no way I downclimb again because I couldn't see the tiny footholds anymore. So I decided to go for it. I felt strangely calm, relaxed and focused, and luckily the rest of the pitch wasn't a problem. I topped out, set an anchor, belayed Rasmus up. He climbed in complete darkness, moon hadn't rised yet, but he really cruised the thing. It took us some time to find the scramble down but we made it back to the car safely.
We drove over to the SAC campsite where we met the whole lot of SACers! We cooked dinner, had a beer and listened to the story of Chris's and Justin's ascent of the East Buttress. We set up the tent again cause some raindrops were coming down already and went to sleep.
On Sunday, we went for Glacier Point Apron. The approach took us forever, we totally got lost in the jungle. Finally we found our project,
- Harry Daley, 5.8, lead Rasmus
and Rasmus lead both pitches. But when we were at the top, it started to rain again, and we hurried to get down. I decided to try to rap directly to the ground, I could tell that the rope either reached or was too short by one or two meters. It turned out it was too short by 1.5m, so I had to connect my daisy chain to one rope to get to the ground. Rasmus followed me, he's a bit heavier than I am, so for him it was only 1m short. We quickly got back to the car, drove over to Swan Slab where we had lunch and espresso under the back door of my Jeep, and soon the rain stopped.
We practiced anchors and at the end of the day, Rasmus did Penelope's Problem. We got on the road around 7pm and were back in Palo Alto by 11pm.
