Yosemite with Sarah, Rasmus

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Yosemite, 2. - 4. November 2007

Sarah

sorry linkcam

spaghetti fest

Moritz

Oh yeah, back to the Valley, the fourth weekend in a row. Originally we wanted to visit Stefan down in LA, where his Stanford Racing Team participated the Darpa Urban Challange, you know, robot cars trying to cope with normal traffic. But Stefan was of course pretty busy that weekend, and Rasmus and Sarah sort of preferred to climb again, so there we are. This time getting there was much more straightforward, highway 120, SAC secret spot on Evergreen, breakfast on the parking lot of Camp 4 where we wanted to stay the night, rack up, go. We wanted to send Selaginella this time, and it looked much more promising than last time, be it only for being a team of three instead of five. We hiked up to the base instead of doing an approach climb to save some time. Unfortunately Rasmus and Sarah remembered too clearly that I said something like "wow, this was easy" after following up the first pitch (5.7 ow). They teased me to the point where I actually grabbed lead and what shall I say- it was easy!

Selaginella, 5.8, lead Moritz (1st pitch), Rasmus (2nd pitch), Sarah (3rd+4th pitch)

We had two half ropes this time, none of us too familiar with it, and one of the ropes being brand new. We actually unpacked it on the parking lot of Camp 4. Of course we know a new rope should be reflaked a couple of times to get the kinks out, but then again, we're not these whiny gym climbers, come on! Half ropes kink more? Bullshit! (Welcome spaghetti fest I should say now that I'm writing this). Leading on two ropes worked great, I clipped both ropes to all the pieces. We weren't sure anymore if that's how it works, but I wasn't going to risk long leader falls so it probably was alright. (After doing some research I know you're supposed to alternate pieces with half ropes and to clip both ropes to the same piece with twin ropes. But I didn't find anything saying you should never ever clip both half ropes into the same piece. Don't do it with two single ropes, though.)

All was good until I got further up and experienced more rope drag. Soon I couldn't pull up both ropes at the same time anymore using one hand only so I had the idea to did it subsequently. Wrong!! At least you should pay attention not to clip a knot... I needed to place a second piece and clean the messed one to undo the knot one handedly. Anyway, it was still an easy pitch after all.

I belayed up both followers, and this time I tried Sarah's trick to do so: Redirect both ropes and belay off your harness, should work like charm. Wrong!! Even when I sat in the harness as much as possible, the swedish counter weight made it impossible to feel anything on the second line. Plus, the Reverso wasn't in self blocking mode, which made rope hauling a lot harder because one hand needed to stay at the brake ropes. Don't do this if you have a bit too much of rope drag in the system!

I was happy to swap lead, and Rasmus was getting on the second pitch. He clipped the highst piece of my anchor, a micronut, got up and placed a good cam. He went up 1.5m higher, then he fell. His cam hold, but the micronut blew off cause it wasn't made for outward pull. Fortunately I had realized before this happened that I was self anchored only using my daisy and I had corrected this before he fell. If I hadn't and if his cam had pulled, too, we both would have dangled off my daisy and nothing else...

Sarah was leading the third pitch while we were belaying and fighting the spaghettis the third time. She actually had to stop in (!) the super exposed vertical traverse to wait for slack. Soon after it happened. Rasmus was getting ready to follow, he had his shoe in one hand when he reached for something else, and down it goes... We quickly agreed there was no way we get the shoe back today, so he put on the other shoe and a sandal. He was so mad at himself! Well, I guess, he's not gonna drop something again in the near future! Then, up from the pitch, we could see the shoe lying on the first belay ledge. That lifted his mood a bit and he was hoping to get it back from the pinboard at Camp 4 or something. We topped out shortly after sunset.

We had another great car camping meal at Camp 4, salmon, steak and veggies from Sarah's new propane grill, her beloved Miso, beer, marshmallows. We came up with a plan for tomorrow morning: Rasmus and I would do the first pitch of Selaginella again to retrieve the shoe from the ledge while Sarah would do some paperwork she brought. Later we would meet up at Sunnyside Bench to do some hard toproping and call it a day.

In the morning we did as planned. Rasmus lead the first pitch and found the shoe (yeah!), I followed. We wanted to rap off of the flake (why hadn't we done it the other day?). So we put the webbing back in place Rasmus had taken by mistake last time and used a booty biner as rap ring. We taped the gate to prevent accidental opening, plus we backed it up with a booty sling we had found on the ledge as well, which I thought would make sense. Wrong!! When we pulled the rope it soon got stuck because the sling had turned into a friction knot! We were lucky that another party was at the base just getting started, they freed our rope.

We headed over to Sunny Side Bench where we found Sarah taking a decent nap instead of doing her homework. She wouldn't wake up until we were throwing things at her! We had peanut butter and jelly and peanut butter and banana sandwiches (though Rasmus refused the latter- don't know a thing about food the Swedish!). Then I lead up Jamcrack and set a toprope for the harder climbs and we were enjoying a beautiful autumn day in the Valley. Sarah picked a separate pair of shoes for every other move on a climb, in case of Jamcrack even for the same move, Rasmus enjoyed his pink sling and I pitied my sorry linkcam. It hadn't survived the last lead, a trigger cable had come off while it was dangling off the rack. (I went to REI to get it replaced. The pin which holds the trigger cable had pulled. When I got the new linkcam I noticed, they actually have changed the design- no pins sticking in plastic anymore but a solid metal rod! Apparently my cam wasn't the first failing that way...)