Yosemite with Sarah, Rasmus, Clement, Stefan
aus mowiki, der freien Wissensdatenbank
Yosemite, 18. - 21. Oktober 2007
So there we are again, going to Yosemite Valley. Sarah has done a good job motivating people I guess, anyway, there's four of us going Thursday evening. Sarah and Clement in Sarah's car, Stefan and me in my Jeep. Rasmus couldn't get off so he's coming Friday evening. All started out way too confusing, even by my standards. It was the flow of decision making at it's best... In the end, Stefan and I stopped by WalMart in San Jose to pick up a gas grill. As always when you enter WalMart it suddenly strikes you why this country needs all these warnings like "caution, coffee may be hot"... We found the grill but apparently it was dissembeled into a zillion pieces. We didn't exaclty feel like jigsawing the piece so we got a $6 one-way instead. We met Clement and Sarah at a gas station in Oakdale, we wanted to drive together from there cause both Stefan and me didn't know the 140 route by heart. But then Sarah took a nap, and French guys are slow drivers as we all know so we quickly lost em. We wanted to meet again at a spanish sounding village close to the park entrance where there's supposed to be a secret bivy spot. We got to El Portal, thought this it, let's give it a shot. We drove back and forth through this village which is really plucked into the mountain. After half an hour we gave up. There was no way we find it without Sarah. It was about 2am when we decided to go to Camp 4 instead. But just when we were about to go back to 140 again a car approached which indeed was them. We followed them to the Campground, quickly set up the tent, put the food into the bearbox and ourselves into the sleeping bags.
The next day we started out with some easy stuff at Middle Cathedral, nothing too exciting. Except for Sarah's leadfall on Pee Pee Pillar right, which was super slick because of the rain in the night. She added a few blood sprinkles to the finger crack but was fine. Clement had some concerns about us not putting a knott at the end of the rope. Well, it was more kind of a lecture on why a knott in the end of the rope is absolutely necessary. He got really excited. Though he sure got a few points, it was funny because he was just about getting to lead. Eventually he got going, went up 2m and stopped claiming that he'd need a rest because he'd "talked too much". The rest of us was smiling.
- Pee Pee Pillar (left), 5.7, lead Moritz
- Pee Pee Pillar (right), 5.10a, lead Sarah
We'd stayed at Middle Cathedral longer than we'd planned to. It was afternoon already when Sarah took us to the Lower Yosemite Falls area. Apparently you can't climb there in the spring because the falls are running and the climbs are actually under water. But now in fall, the rock is dry. It looks almost pitch black, some black vegetation grows when it's wet, funguses or something. Quite a contrast to the usual Yosemite granite! This area is not listed in the Supertopo guidebook, so we were looking for anchors and easy cracks. We found some 5.8 stuff, Sarah lead it up, then I got on it. By the time I got down it was dark.
- not in topo, 5.8 (felt like), lead Moritz
We drove back to the Portal Campground where some of us should start cooking dinner and some should take Sarah's car to the Pizza place at 140 where Rasmus was to be dropped off in the evening. He would find the key on the left front wheel and directions on the driver's seat and was supposed to find the campground all by himself. I find this funny because a German never ever would come up with a plan like this... Anyway, when Stefan and I got back to the Pizza place with two cars, Rasmus had just arrived. This coincidence made things a lot easier I guess. We had a really splendid meal. Sarah brought food for all of us, soup, chicken for the grill, wine, all of which cooked to perfection by Chef Clement.
The next day we went for the Five Open Books area. Sarah was really excited to do Selaginella, supposedly 5 pitches of really alpine stuff with chimneys, mantles, stimming, offwidth... But to get there, we wanted to do an approach climb rather than scrambling up the climber's trail. So Rasmus and Clement got on Munginella, while Sarah, Stefan and me started Commitment, a 5.8 climb featuring one 5.9 move (people like it cause they can say they lead 5.9 afterwards).
- Commitment, 5.9, lead Moritz (all 3 pitches)
I was to lead the first pitch. But I struggled with the first moves, supposedly 5.8 crack, but it was leaning, flaring and really slick. I couldn't find reasonable handjams so I tried liebacking. I didn't trust my feet, got a bit sketched, tried to get a second piece in while in a shitty position (as always when you're scared) and fell just when I was about to clip. I fell 2.5m back to the ground, stopped by two V shaped polished trees rather than the rope. Fortunately I only got a few scratches. I got mad at the 5.8 bitch that had spat me out and got on it again, this time I pulled through the hard first moves and placed a piece in a good position. Way better!
At the end of the first pitch I should belay my two followers at the same time. I never had done this before but I knew how to do it safely. I just would use both ropes in the Reverso in self blocking mode. We had a single rope lead line and a half rope line. I thought it'd be a good idea to spend some time to flake both ropes as they come up to avoid a two rope spaghetti fest, so I flaked one rope over my left leg, the other over my right. Turns out belaying two on an easy climb and flaking both ropes is a sustained workout. I didn't come to rest a second. We reracked and I started the second pitch, got it up no problem. Again, same workout when belaying the followers. Sarah, who carried the pack, kept yelling up "up rope" which I didn't understand cause I didn't know about this rope command. I understood "top rope" which didn't make sense. So I tried to give some slack, which resulted only in more and louder "up rope's". Man, I could use rest! The stand is directly below the roof with the 5.9 crux move, and the ledge wasn't exactly spaceous. When all three of us where there Sarah complained about my nice German Army pack saying it'd affect her balance and made it real hard. Girls...
To get on the third pitch I stepped behind before under the upper rope Stefan was tied in and got up 2 meters. That resulted in the exact rope mess I tried to avoid by flaking the ropes and stuff. Sarah took command to undo it which eventually worked out- after untieing herself, untieing Stefan and taking me off belay (!). I objected like what if I fall? "You are on a giant ledge!" (3cm feet). But what if something hits me? "You're under a roof!" Well, just before I manged to get a piece in I was on belay again... Finally I was good to go and pulled the roof and the rest of the pitch, piece of cake, except for the awkward but solid exit moves. On top Clement and Rasmus were already waiting for us.
We hiked to the base of Selaginella. When we got there, it of course was too late to do the whole climb, but we wanted to try the first pitch at least. (It's a mystery to me how other teams do tens of pitches a day...) Before Sarah got on lead, another one of Clemen's lectures erupted. This time the topic was about rapping on a half rope and a single rope joined together. Apparently this is bad because the knott will untie itself. He tried to convince Sarah not to trail the half rope but a second single rope but she didn't want to. Because if you try to convince a native speaker when you don't speak the language as your second mother tongue you tend to raise your voice and temper to compensate for less persuasive words (yeah I know what I'm talking about). So Sarah got close to the point of being pissed- not a good thing in a climbing team. I would have trailed the single rope, because obviously thicker is safer and in a climbing team the one who pleads for the highest security standards is right. On the other hand I didn't want to fire up the discussion and a half rope seemed perfectly fine as well.
- Selaginella, 1st pitch, 5.7 offwidth, lead Sarah
So Sarah ended up trailing the half rope on which Clement was following. Rasmus was following on the lead line, both of them where trailing single ropes. Then Stefan and I followed on the single ropes and we all met on the spaceous ledge. Supertopo had promised two bolts for rapping but they weren't there, instead there was a slung flake for rapping. For reasons I don't remeber Sarah lead up part of the second pitch to reach a second ledge with some trees where she set up a rap anchor leaving her cordalette. Again she trailed only the half rope. So Clement followed trailing a single rope. It took them some time to set up rappel using both single ropes, and it was unclear if they would reach the ground. I was confident they did so I was the first person to go down. I discovered the rope had gotten stuck in the crack so badly that I had to set a piece and construct a simple pulley to free it. But then the rope reached and I got back to the ground safely. When we finally pulled the rope I saw the knott Clement had used, it was just an overhand with both ends on the same side and I started to understand his concern about using different rope diameters! I would have used a figure of eight with ends on opposite sides. As far as I know, the asymmetric overhand (and fig8 as well) can start walking when leaded repeatedly. But I've never heard anything like that on the symmetric versions. I know some people prefer the asymmetric knotts anyway because they believe it's less likely to get stuck hopelessly, because there be a greater chance to wiggle it free because of its asymmetry...
Later at the Curry Village Pizza Deck we discussed all the rope handling issues. Now I took Clements part getting excited about belay techniques. I guess mainly because Sarah started it all like "you need to switch to a different system" instead of a milder "you could have done better". Sarah's point was I should redirect both lines and belay off my harness, this way I would feel immediately when I should get some rope up (which I know now doesn't work quite as good as promised). Sure the Hefeweizens we had didn't help to keep tempers down, but well, we are still friends. Still I think it's good to talk about these things.
We stayed the night at Upper Pines where we hoped to find the SAC site but instead we ran into two jerks who wanted to get the camp guard to sort things out. What a German behaviour! So we just grabbed the adjacent site which seemed to be unused and planned to leave early. Sarah was gonna go back to the Bar Area in the night anyway. On Sunday we had a mellow day at Reed's Pinnacle, doing some single pitches and hanging out.
- Center Route, 1st pitch, 5.8, lead Moritz
Eventually I talked the others into my little project, the Direct Route. I wanted to do it with Rasmus, while Clement and Stefan should get to the terrace on the Regular Route. We needed to meet there because we only had two ropes left, because Sarah had taken her's. For some reason I didn't feel too good on Direct Route, unfortunately. I was scared and hangdogged it up- but I made it eventually. Guess I need to come back on a stronger day.
- Direct Route, 5.9, lead Moritz (both pitches)
The ride back was uneventful.
