Father / Son! Nose Ascent!

My 14 year old son Pierce had been doing the after school Touchstone Climbing Team Training sessions twice a week this past winter. I didn't push him to do it. I crossed my fingers and hoped he'd enjoy it or even "stick with it." He has continued going now for over 6 months! - I couldn't be more pleased except....  this early spring I floated the long shot suggestion by him that he should climb The Nose with me this season with another dad and son in the climbing world. He said yes with virtually no hesitation! Just that he was willing to try it was a giant win for me. (I was more pleased)

The Executive Director of The American Alpine Club, Phil Powers, and his son Gus were the other two that I'd set up to climb with us. I figured if another Dad/Son Team was counting on us, Pierce couldn't so easily back out. As the dates got finalized between Phil and I, suddenly it was less than a few weeks away, I thought I'd broach the subject of Pierce training for doing The Nose, rather than just showing up and hoping I could drag him up. Pierce actually said he'd like to spend some time in the gym working out how to jug effectively. - I was flabbergasted, - in a positive happy way. After two sessions in the gym the date was upon us, we met Phil and Gus in the meadow at 6pm on Thursday July 6th.  Although normally it is too hot to climb in July we were granted a reprieve and it was only in the 80s.

Scramble ledges before the first pitch of The Nose.

That evening we took a load of water and ropes to the base and got to organizing the gear for a single push ascent. On the approach we were delighted to see a colorful king snake guarding the scramble ledges up to the base.
After all was looked over and packed we set out for the base and spent the night there with ropes rigged to the base of the first pitch. We were almost asleep under a near full moon at dusk when two loud noises grabbed our attention, two base jumpers were taking advantage of the light at the end of the day and when their chutes open it made a startling noise.

Waking up at 4:30am we quickly tightened down the two haul bags and three packs and set off up the route. I led the first few pitches with two 70 meter dynamic lines and a 100 meter static line,- taking it up at the half way mark. This longer rope allowed me to essentially drag up four lines, thus when I arrived at the anchor, all three could jug while I started hauling. This system worked while the pitches were less than 50 meters long, but as we moved along through complicated pendulums and pitches being longer than 50 meters we changed tactics on the fly and had the boys jug first and Phil or I would follow up on the line they had finished on first. Suffice to say, we used a variety of rope tricks to keep everyone moving as best we could. On this first day we loaded the three back packs with as much water weight as the followers could bear to enable the bags to be light enough for hauling with only a single pulley.

In the hottest part of the day Phil took over the lead getting us out of Dolt Hole Cracks and moving us into the Stove Legs.  I finished off the Stove Legs and we all arrived comfortably on Dolt Tower around 5pm.

We opted to push on to El Capitan tower and were able to set up camp before night fall. Given the full moon we didn't really need to rush as the dusk light was as bright as 2 hours after sunset with the shining moon reflecting off the light grey granite. We all gorged on canned soup, bagels, and other savory snacks. I fixed the ropes up to the top of The Boot Flake so we could get a jump on the climb the following morning.

While I was leading up to fix the ropes we saw another base jumper zooming down by the Dawn Wall
just hundreds of feet to our right.  The startling noise from the chute opening sounded off, we could not make out the jumper's chute in the lower valley and hoped it was just the dimming moon light playing tricks on us. Bummer, we heard sirens minutes later and a group of SAR folks scouring the talus field with headlamps in search of the body!  (We later learned this was a hiker/climber who did not have a chute. Unknown as of the writing of this blog if it was an accident, suicide, or other cause.) Despite the rather ominous feeling in the air from a jumpers ground fall all of us slept like... Rocks. Everyone was completely exhausted from the 14 hour day.

Another 5am start rustling out of our vertical campground and we were all up on top of Boot Flake by 7:30am. We made it around the corner into the Gray Bands thus "buying" ourselves a few more hours of shade climbing before the sun beat down on us the second day on the wall.

Whilst climbing a plume of smoke came out of the forest at the west end of El Cap Meadow. Hours later there was a full assault via helicopter and fire engine ground crews to get the fire out. Quite a complete fill of "sights" for the boys first run up El Capitan.  We lost a helmet a few hours into the day so we had nothing less than a standard wall ascent. - You've simply got to drop something at least once to ring home the concept that you are REALLY OUT THERE on a big wall.

Wild Stance, one long pitch to the top from here.

Summit Bivy Camp. Nose top our tree directly behind dead tree

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Our tentative plan was to bivy the second night at Camp VI, but the team was making great time and
we opted to cut weight by leaving a gallon of water at Camp VI and sprinting for the summit to top out before the evening required headlamps. With some tricky pitch linking and darn good spirits all around we made it to the summit in the final minutes of the dusk light. - a new double father/son speed record! (Probably the only double father/son ascent.)

From the top of Zenyatta Mondatta you can see El Cap Tower, Texas Flake, Boot Flake, and the whole expanse of the route from bottom to top.

Sunday morning we loaded the boys up with packs and started the 4 hour descent. -It was darn warm on the descent and we stopped regularly for water breaks, and even got one small creek stop for a refresher. We made the obligatory stop at the top of ZM to get the back sight of the profile shot. Once we navigated all the down scrambling on open granite slabs, negotiated the four and half long rappels, and made it through more lose scrambling and scree, the boys hit the forest trail and were waiting for Phil and I at the parking lot tables.

Super proud of Gus and Pierce. They put in a ton of effort and "enough attention" to safety to pull this off. They never really whined or asked the classic: "How much longer til...?"  Can't think of a more rewarding thing I would of wanted to do with my son this summer, and it's only early July.

On the mile hike from Manure Pile Buttress to El Capitan we found a number of thimble berry* patches with perfectly ripe berries. In 34 years of Yosemite adventures I can't recall ever seeing them so plentiful. We all got our fill on berries. Upon return to the meadow we all took a jump into the ice cold Merced river, then headed down to the Awahnee** all-you-can-eat brunch for a refueling. Perhaps not classic, but well deserved by our boys.

Feeling darn appreciative of all I've got.

Papa Hans


ps. One of the challenges at "my gym," Diablo Rock Gym, is to go 24 hours without internet or phone. I opted to do my 24 hours when climbing with my son. I brought my phone for emergency and pics. It turns out the battery basically died mid way so I more than met that challenge. Interesting how those gadgets can "steal away the present" if we are not conscious of their power.  Be present with the special people in your life.

*They are a lot like raspberries, and at first sight appear to be unripe black berries. I suppose these could have been Ribes berries, but with their great flavor I think they were thimble berries.

**Now called the Majestic.(grim)

Humility

This weekend I headed out at 5:45 am Sunday morning from the stables parking lot with the goal of climbing The South Face of Mt Watkins with Will and Naomi. Between “reading” descriptions from The Super Topo guide and Yosemite Bigwalls guide by Erik and Roger, we figured that we would be at the base of the route around 8:30 am.

I put “reading” in quotes above because I only skimmed the directions in regards to the approach, and peaked at the maps. After all it’s MT WATKINS right? – How could you walk up Tenaya canyon and miss it? – Well we did miss it, until we made 5 hours of mistakes in wrong turns and misguided steep scrambling.

Six hours and two minutes after leaving the stables parking lot we arrived at the base of the route! We decided against climbing out of the ditch given how late we arrived at the base. (translation/clarification: “topping out on Watkins, El Cap, or Leaning Tower, is just crawling out of The Ditch, so really do have to “enjoy the journey.”) So, we had a great adventure, exploring various slopes and tiny trails in Tenaya canyon, found a cool water hole, our legs are super fit -or will be when we recover, and we now have a gallon of water stashed at the base of  The South Face Route!

I just got through presenting stories to The AAC International Climbing Meet Friday evening. I was telling them how we have these incredible wild walls here in Yosemite AND they are so accessible and close to your car door. –Funny sort of “foot in mouth” adventure for Sunday. I don’t call 6 hours close to the car door.

Points to remember:

-bring people with you that like to adventure. We had an adventure, the outcome was unkown. We got to explore around a beautiful canyon, in a beautiful place. Our group was joking and laughing and having a good time.

-Read CAREFULLY a couple sentences from past travelers, guidebooks, the net, etc. and save yourself 2 hours, or 3.

-Love the journey.

-When you hike up Tenaya Canyon and you reach West Quarter Dome on your right, THEN you will be far enough up the canyon to head left up to the base of Mt Watkins. (West Quarter Dome is the smaller and on the right when looking up at the two quarter domes. http://www.mountainproject.com/v/105898258)

-when you find a better way don't be stubborn to make the change over to it. Just do it.

I had a great time sharing stories with the AAC group on Friday evening and a super time instructing some of them at the base of El Cap on Saturday morning. I learned a few things “teaching” these experienced climbers. How lucky am I?- Getting to teach a class at the base of El Cap?  I am fortunate that I've picked up techniques from Europeans, Puerto Ricans, South Americans, Brits and Ozzies, Russians, and Asians. I was reviewing some of the ways to use cordelettes with the AAC folks and right there in front of everyone made the decision I'll never double fisherman my cordelette ever again. It reduces the flexibility of the cords use. It deploys

quicker when left untied, derigs quicker, more flexible in application and in adjusting once applied. I'll have a video and or images to post in the future about this. Yes, yes, I'm sure many of you our there are saying DUH, why did it take you so long to figure that out? (Big Thanks to Carol Kotchek and the AAC for inviting me to participate.)

Saturday afternoon I got to go up five pitches on The East Buttress of Middle Cathedral with Diane Payes. Again, we didn’t top out or even get out of The Ditch. That was better then OK for us, we got to climb on awesome granite terrain, with a beautiful alpine glow light on El Cap across the valley, and earn our meal with The AAC group later that evening.

I hope you got to summit something this weekend, or crawl out of a ditch, or just embark on something where you didn’t know the outcome before starting.

Cheers,

Hans

keep like minded people around you...

Holly Webb has been in the Yosemite climbing community for over a decade. She has an impressive

5:30 am El Cap Meadow

list of El Cap ascents. Holly asked me if I’d help her with her “40 by 40 goal.” I said “sure” and then asked just what that was. Holly wanted to climb El Cap 40 times by her 40th birthday. Both Holly and myself currently do not reside in Yosemite and both of us have spouses, work, and kids* to keep us from long protracted adventures up El Cap. I went down the list of routes she may want to do that we could knock out in a day, or that we thought we could do in a day. When it came to The West Face she admitted she had never done the route despite the fact that she had done 27 different routes on El Cap! Done!-West Face it would be.

The Plan: Meet in El Cap Meadow Saturday morning before the sun was up. check in on the gear and supplies and get the hike done by headlamp before the sun could over heat us. Climb as much as possible in the strategic west facing side of El Cap for as long and fast as possible to avoid the sun, perhaps making the summit before “The Orb” gazed on us.

Holly was to bring the complete rack. She’s got more new gear then me. I brought the 70 meter Bluewater. We weren’t planning on stretching pitches or short fixing, but it’s nice to have for emergencies if you want to bail. -And of course could be used to extend some pitches if you wanted. We both brought our favorite energy foods and I threw in a holiday beef log. It was going to be hot so we brought 3 liters of water each. (and some NUUN to flavor it)

Our plan was to free what was fun, french free tougher stuff, or outright aid anything that gave us pause. “Just climbing” the route cause we aren’t hung up on style so much as going up and covering tons of cool ground. -And, it was TONS of cool granite terrain. Despite The West Face being perhaps 2/3rds the length of the tallest El Cap routes it’s still a long route with 16 pitches, many being 50 meters long. If you super imposed it on the east wall it would be taller then the Zodiac.

About 50 meters from the base of the route we turned off our headlamps and could hike the remaining gully by dawn light. Around 7am we started the route. The first two crux 5.11 + pitches of the route are right off the ground, so it’s a tough start to your morning after the hike. We didn’t bother freeing much of those pitches. We did both completely free the 5.10a airy 4th pitch. It has an ultra classic roof move that looks way harder then it is.

The downward traversing pitch.

During the next 7 pitches we mixed and matched some free, aid, and french free to arrive at the top of pitch 11, The Grand Traverse. It was around 11:30 am and we figured we should stop for lunch and enjoy some beef log, trail mix, and other goodies in our bellies for the remaining long 4 pitches, rather then on our backs in the small packs we each were carrying. We mixed and matched again until Thanksgiving ledge then simul-climbed to the top in two long pitches. Topping out in 6 hours and 1 minute from when we started at the base.
Being “The keeper or Librarian of the Speed Records” I looked up to see what the fastest known time was previously. I was stunned that the record for a Female/Male team was 5:59. OOPs we should have taken a little shorter lunch.

ohh, and to the title of this post:  It's nice to have goal seeking friends, be they in your neighborhood or just on your phone list. If you are going to pursue challenges, invariably you are going to need the support of someone who has challenges of their own. When you find like minded folks, put em in your Rolodex for future adventures.

*Holly’s kid is a national champion show dog.

Timed a ride back on the shuttle, a rare but nice finish.