June 27th-July 6th, 2016
I don’t like all those hikers, they look so greasy and battered and keep talking about how many calories they should be eating; just like climbers I guess.
There are a lot of cool peaks to climb here, and the best thing is that the approach and decent trails are very nice as well. With almost each climb, you get a little hike. Sometimes the hike to climb ratio is even larger than 1, which is probably not ideal. Good news for Todd, I have had enough of hiking, so I will not ask him anymore to go on a hike. Todd thinks hiking is boring, I think that hiking with Todd is boring, so we are all good.
The longest approach to a climb we did so far was to Matthes Crest. 3h hike, 3h climb, 3h hike out. The climbing was very easy along a ridge and the mountain was very cool.
Furthermore, we had an exciting day on the Regular Route (12 pitches, 5.9) of Fairview Dome, which is one of the 50 classic climbs of North America, therefore supposedly very enjoyable. It was a great climb and we climbed it quite fast as there were some puffy clouds forming and moving towards us. There are often afternoon thunderstorms in Tuolumne, so you are not supposed to climb when you see puffy clouds, but we only saw them half way up the route, so we decided to just go fast.
Going fast was especially easy from pitch 7 to 12, as those can be simul climbed (climbing at the same time until the leader has no gear left to place).
We made it to the car and within 10 min it started to rain, good timing.
And then, there was some more climbing of course, including the West Cracks on Daff Dome (5 pitches, 5.9), the Direct Northwest Face of Lembert Dome (5 pitches, 10b) and Cathedral Peak.
Cathedral Peak is a very easy and popular route with lots of possible variations, so we simul climbed a variation and thereby passed most of the people that were on the regular route and had the summit for ourselves.
When we hiked down we counted 20 climbers on the upper part of the route, looked kind of funny.
Overall, we were always quite fast and efficient and on top of one route, I forget which one, I said: “Todd, you are so fast!” and humble Todd just replied: “Yes, now just imagine two of me!” Not the answer I expected, but I know that I am not a slow climber either. Unless it is wide cracks, like on the route Eichhorn Pinnacle (5 pitches, 10b). It was Todd’s favourite, I found it pretty awful.
We have climbed a lot of the classic, fairly easy routes, that bring you up cool peaks and often involve 2h approaches. Climbing here is an interesting experience, because even if we have been here for more than a week, hiking and climbing still feels kind of hard at this elevation of 2500-3000m.
On our rest days we usually read by Tuolumne River or drive down to the next village Lee Vining to get cell reception. There is a really cool salty lake (Mono Lake) there.
It used to be half the size in 1982. Then they found out that taking the fresh water from all three tributaries and diverging it to Los Angeles for 40 years wasn’t such a good idea and they started protecting it.
We walked to the base and found one of the major species of the food chain in this ecosystem, the alkaline fly.
July 7th, 2016
We worked ourselves out on the Third Pillar of Dana (5 pitches, 10b). It was probably my favorite. The hike in and out was very nice, except for the 1.5 h decent in a loose gully to the bottom of the route.
The views were spectacular and the climbing was very good, more sustained than other routes we climbed so far.
Todd got a good shot of me following, I was getting pretty tired but the last moves were amazing overhanging jugs.
After topping out, we followed a pleasant trail back to the car and drove down to Lee Vining, where a music festival was taking place.
July 8th, 2016
And now, we are having breakfast with a view on Mono Lake and wonder what our plans are for the next week(s).
