A comment from my friend: “I am glad you are climbing the nose (whatever that means – I hope it does not sneeze!)”
So we climbed the Nose, and it was a great adventure. We spent 3 nights on the wall, which is one night less than we packed for – hurray, slimy, slightly sour tasting leftover burritos had to be eaten…
Of course this was not a fast ascent, but we are still proud considering that 50% of the parties trying to climb it bail because they are much slower than they thought they would be. I guess we took the opposite approach, we assumed we would be slower and were actually faster, despite never climbing longer than until 5 or 6 pm. Todd ended up leading 18 pitches and I did 13. The last two should have been mine, but due to the eagerness to get to the top and the intense waste of time involved in switching leads at a hanging belay, Todd continued to the top. I paid for my laziness as the last pitch was much harder to follow than to lead.
June 13th, 2016
We climbed the first 4 pitches to Sickle Ledge in the morning and set up three 60 m ropes for rapelling to the ground again. We used these fixed lines later that day, after packing our haulbag with freshly prepared burritos, to haul our gear (~130 lbs) and then on the next day we started our adventure ascending these ropes.
June 14th, 2016
After ascending ~180 m, we continued to pitch 11 (Dolt Tower), which we reached fairly early (5pm) and I had a pretty good sleep on our portaledge. Todd apparently did not have a good sleep because he was worried about the climbing to come. Of course he did not share his worries in case they transfered to me. Well, it would not have made a difference to me as I was already maximum worried, but how could he know.
June 15th, 2016
The next day we woke up at 5.45 and continued around 7.30 with our climb. It was the day of the King Swing, a traversing pitch where you have to run across the wall and swing far left, stick some gear in the crack and hold onto it. To get to it, you have to climb up behind Texas Flake (a 35′ chimney with one bolt in the middle and no gear) and then continue up to Boot Flake, an apparently completely detached flake, just sitting on the wall. I am glad I did not know about the detachment when we were on it.
The King Swing was of course Todd’s job, so he got ready by taking of his jacket despite the cold wind to show his bright green shirt to the audience in the valley. And the audience indeed saw him (probably through binoculars) and they cheered as he managed to hold on to the crack after his 3rd swing. Tom Evans took a great picture of this from the valley and it can be found in his El Cap Report for June 15th. It was quite fun to be watched, although later on when I needed to use the washroom I thought being watched sucks. You can see pretty much the whole route when looking up from the valley with binoculars, but of course most tourists don’t know where to look. Anyway, darkness was my friend for washroom breaks. We set up our portaledge on pitch 19 that night and I was asleep after a burrito dinner before it even got dark.
June 16th, 2016
The third day was the Great Roof day. The Great Roof (pitch 22) is as very prominent feature on the route and can be easily spotted from the valley. Whenever I looked at it, I got a bit scared as it looks so steep and exposed. Todd climbed it, but as I had learned from a couple of walls, following a pitch of easy aid is often similarly difficult and I often get more scared than leading it, especially if the pitch is traversing. So I did get scared.
It was also very cold and windy, so other than freezing our butts off, the day was fairly uneventful. We did make it to pitch 26 (called camp 6), a fairly smelly place that day. Even though smelly, I felt great as we had exceeded our goal for the day and were certain to top out the next day with only 5 more pitches to go!
June 17th, 2016
Top out day! The last 5 pitches were steep and exposed. Looking down into the valley, the whole route was visible.
Todd was super excited on pitch 31 (the last one) and I took this photo just before he disappeared and topped out.
The bags must have felt the steepness and exposure of the last pitch too..
And then we were on top at 3.30 pm, hurray! The only thing left for the day was to carry our shit down the East Ledges. To Todd’s dismay we did not make it down on time for icecream or pizza as both places were closed after sorting our gear and showering. A delightful package of Mr. Noodles was the next best choice considering time and effort.
June 18th, 2016
The day after felt great, even if it was Saturday and we got stuck in a traffic jam on the way into the park. Looking at the Nose and knowing we were on that massive and intimidating looking route just yesterday made me feel accomplished, although I really don’t like using that adjective. On Facebook that word is heavily used by people to describe the feeling after an exam, giving a presentation, a day of work or cooking dinner and I got the impression that people either feel accomplished really easily or there must be another word for what I am feeling. Maybe seriously accomplished.
Seriously accomplished, our mission for the day was to get rid of the rope that had made its way onto our roof the day before and retrieve our rope from the base of the Nose. You have to ascend three 60 m ropes to get to Sickle Ledge so usually you throw one down after ascending and continue with the haul line and one climbing rope. Ideally somebody will pick up the rope for you so it does not lay at the bottom of the climb for days or get stolen. For complicated reasons, the wrong rope had been picked up by a fellow climber for us, so we had a super nice 80 m, 9.5 mm Mammut rope sitting on our car. We decided to put the rope back where it was and put a note at the climbers’ campground (camp 4) hoping that the people are still in Yosemite. On our way to the base of the Nose, we saw a big lineup of people low on the route and could not believe how lucky we had been.
We had met 0 people on the route, except for those two speed climbers that climbed by our portaledge at 2 am the second night.
Because Obama was apparently in the park and the traffic was really bad, we decided to stay in the El Capitan Meadows and also say hello to Tom, the El Cap Reporter. Turns out he took a lot more pictures of us and we can have them all. We also met some other climbers including Maria, who was mentioned in the El Cap report a lot, doing a solo ascent of the route Zodiac in 10 days. I cannot imagine doing something like that ever alone, so I am still really impressed.
June 19th, 2016
I might have been so impressed that I even agreed on hiking up the previously described bad decent trail (East Ledges) to the top of El Capitan again and help Maria carry down her gear. So, 6 h later, we were rewarded with cherries and a large amount of icecream. We were happy to help as it would have taken her three trips alone, and that is just stupid as the trail is really not that nice. The only nice thing about the trail are the horsetail falls and a very nice pool where I took a bath.
The water was as warm as the outside temperature and even Todd, who detests water on his skin that is colder than a hot shower bathed timidly.
And now, it is June 21st and we are still in the valley, we have achieved our goal within 4 weeks of our arrival and feel great. Except for my hands, they keep falling asleep and hurt a bit. Two separate, potentially unqualified doctors concluded that it is carpal tunnel syndrome and I need to not use them for a bit.
I think we will take a couple of days off and then check out Tuolumne Meadows for cooler temperatures, or maybe drive to Colorado, or just return to good old Squamish and dirtbag there for a bit.
