Salathé Wall, Yosemite

We were planning to go to Powell River (up BC’s Sunshine Coast) for a 3-week climbing trip, but a last minute switch of plans was in order. Two reliable and independent sources told us there would be rain. They were right, as soon as we left for Yosemite, it started raining in BC.

– There is a high chance you misinterpret my style of writing and think that the trips I do are terrible and I hate it. Of course that is not true, but I can understand why you would think so. –

I had already become good friends with the idea of climbing in Powell River due to the easy logistics and short drive, but I was also craving sunshine, so on September 16th, we were on our way to California. The departure wasn’t as smooth as this sounds, since we had to pack and also buy a lot more stuff than for Powell River. A couple of hundred dollars or maybe more were spent. Todd reasoned that the rest of the trip will be cheap in comparison, which, turned out to be only partially true. We had forgotten to pack our tent, so we bought one. But since we did not own a 3-person tent yet, the money was worth spent. Todd also tried to convince me to eat out every occasion possible, which isn’t cheap.. But let’s start from the beginning:

September 16/17, 2018
We left Vancouver with a small delay but crossed the border and arrived at Trader Joe’s pretty quickly. Shopping at Trader Joes’s is always fun, and we stocked up on food for two weeks. Then, a bunch of driving, lunch at MacDonald’s, driving, dinner at MacDonald’s, driving, breakfast at MacDonald’s.. wait, there was a night in between. We slept at a very nice rest area in California. The usage policy for rest areas in the State of California allows for 8 hours of rest, so we took an 8 hour rest.

We arrived in Yosemite around 5 pm the next day. During the last 2 hours of the drive, Todd had decided to become very impatient and grumpy. I asked him what’s up and he said: “I just wanna be sitting in the Valley and look at El Capitan..! “We spend the evening looking at El Capitan of course.
September 18, 2018 (day 1)

We had to start climbing immediately! We, I mean, Todd had decided that we have to climb the Salathé Wall and since I had no better idea, I agreed. I wish I had a little more readily available input for our climbing decisions, but by the time I open the guidebook, Todd had already read it twice, looked up all route beta online, copied the topo, made a list of extra gear needed, made a plan for the cruxes of the route… Understand? I seem to be too slow when it comes to planning a climb. I guess that is fine, since I just make up for it with being an excellent companion.
My knowledge of the Salathé Wall before climbing it could be described as follows: The Salathé Wall is harder than the Nose, has a decent amount of mandatory free climbing, has a bunch of wide cracks and chimneys, nice bivy spots and ledges and was named to honor climbing pioneer John Salathé. I figured that should be enough knowledge.

We started the Salathé Wall, with the 10-pitch free climbing section called Freeblast. Most parties free climb the first 10 pitches to Mammoth Ledges, rapell 5 times ~60 m to the ground on fixed lines – fixed lines are scary – then pack the bag(s) and haul them up to Heart Ledges to continue.
We made it to Heart Ledges in around 7 h, mostly free, with a couple of french free moves.

When we were rapelling to the ground, we met Maria and Neil, who live in Squamish and who we met during our last Yosemite trip too. Maria was starting on a route called Muir Wall and Neil was just coming down from the first couple of pitches of an A5 route that only saw one ascent so far (Winds of Change). He was climbing with two others, one of which is known for bringing lots of crazy things on the wall. For example a keyboard, a trombone, an amplifier, and maybe some alcohol. Alcohol isn’t that crazy I guess. The Alpinist describes A5 as “Extreme aid. Nothing on the entire pitch can be trusted to hold a fall”. Anyway, the Salathé Wall is Grade VI , and only C2, which doesn’t mean it is easy, but surely not as dangerous. C2 means “clean aid”, so you don’t need a hammer but there might be a couple of tricky aid placements, usually no big falls though.

September 19, 2018 (packing day)

We had driven to Hardin flat road 40 min outside the park (Hyw 120) for the night, since our previous camping spot at El Portal was closed down. We spent the whole day organizing gear and packing food and water for 5 days. We also reviewed a little bit of big wall techniques, before we hopped into the car and fell asleep immediately. I am still amazed how long it takes to pack, considering that all the gear we needed was already in the car.

September 20, 2018 (day 2)

Ready to go! Well, not quite… a little bit of repacking was in order since we had to take two loads to the base of the climb. Unfortunately, 40 L of water weigh 40 kg, which is to heavy together with all the other gear. So, we hiked in one of our loads, told the photographer Tom Evans in the Valley that we will climb the Salathé Wall (I will show some of his pictures in a separate post!), used one last bathroom on the ground and hiked in the second load. After some more repacking, the adventure was starting.

I felt a mix of excitement, unease and regret of having agreed to this voyage. I told myself that for this day, we “only” had to jumar and haul 5 pitches, then continue for another three pitches to Hollow Flake Ledge. This shouldn’t take too long. But the hauling was very unpleasant, because the bags had my body weight around 140 lbs. So Todd had to do a little bit more hauling that day, he is stronger and he weights 40 lbs more… and it was sooo hot that day. Since we had to get to Hollow Flake Ledge, we had to climb the Hollow Flake, one of the cruxes of the route. It is rated 5.9, but it is offwidth and difficult to protect, so forget about grading. Todd is good with wide cracks and chimneys, so the wide climbing on this route was up to him. I was super nervous watching him..

Todd: “OK, I pushed up the #6, but it is almost completely open now..”
Me: “OK!” thinking: shit.
Todd: “I would love to have a Valley Giant…”
Me: “Right, were is the Big Bro?”
Todd: “I have it, but it is still so far, I don’t want to place it yet”

Small excursion: A valley giant is a caming device that, as the name implies, is gigantic. They are hard to get a hold of since there is only one guy who makes them in his basement. We had bought a big bro #4 instead, a not quite as useful spring loaded piece of protection for wide cracks that, once placed cannot be moved upwards easily like a cam can.

So, after placing the #6, there were another maybe 20 m of Hollow Flake to tackle and just one Big Bro. Not ideal, some grunting followed, some hectic placing and replacing of the Big Bro and a big sigh of relief. Someone had fixed a line to the anchor, which was reaching down, so Todd grabbed it with an exclamation of relief. Somehow, we managed to get into the dark that day and I wasn’t super happy having to rapell without a headlamp to free the haulbags from the flake (the headlamps were in the haulbag, what a beginner mistake…). Todd reminded me that the moon was quite bright.
September 21, 2018 (day 3)
Todd showed off with some beautiful chimney technique to start the day and then I lead two pitches to the base of the Ear.

The Ear Pitch is another crux of the route. Crux in this post doesn’t mean that the pitch is really hard, it means that the pitch has to be free-climbed, is a bit scary (you should not fall) or you have to make some smart decisions on your way to not loose a bunch of gear in deep cracks or traversing terrain. The Ear is one of those ” mandatory smart decisions” pitch, which does not sound like a lead for me.. No problem for Todd though since he had read all possible tips and tricks online ahead of time. We had a met a group the day before who bailed because they did not climb the Ear smartly.. they lost their big pieces (#5 an #6 Camalot) in there, which Todd gladly removed.

After the Ear, there was one pitch to the Alcove and another one to El Cap Spire, our bivy for the night. Coming up behind El Cap spire was wild..

On top of the spire, we did not even need the portaledge for the night. I think I was quite content that evening. And by content I mean that I was unhappy, but not too unhappy. When we went to sleep, the guys on the “adjacent” A5 route were playing some nice music. Every evening, sounds of the trombone filled the valley, it was quite beautiful and relaxing, if I had been in a mood of relaxation.

September 22, 2018 (day 4)

Every day we woke up a little bit earlier to hopefully climb a lot when it is not that hot. We drank around 8 L on the first and the second day on the wall, but it was not as hot the following days. Todd started the day with a classic photo from pitch 21. Then he continued a bit and we eventually switched leads. Our camp for the night was the Block (pitch 25). I think that evening we decided to not eat the burritos we had prepared for dinner, anymore. It had been so warm and we did not want to risk overfilling our poop tube. But we had plenty of chips and snacks and applesauce instead!

We went to bed with bed time music again and I woke up around 4 am. Not that I had actually been sleeping, but for the sake of writing, “waking up” just sounds better than: “I was pretty awake after I had turned around over and over again, had tried to stop thinking about where I was, covered my eyes to avoid the bright full moon, felt that my legs are really really warm, unzipped my sleeping bag, fully zipped up my sleeping bag, wondered what I am doing here, felt squished against the wall, thought about climbing, worried about climbing, got scared about climbing, looked at the moon, tried to think positively, tried to feel excited, felt excited, felt scared again…” To summarize, I woke up at 4 am to the sounds of gear and voices.

September 23, 2018 (day 5)
After another hour, Todd finally agreed that there were in fact voices, so we hopped out of bed.. better: we slowly extracted ourselves from the portaledge and quickly packed up to not delay the fast in-a-day-group who was coming up behind us. We chatted a bit when they came by, gave them some water and started pretty quickly too. They passed the group ahead of us too and were soon out of sight. We met the group ahead of us, Ivo and Miska for the first time that day. They were free climbing Freerider and we heard them shouting and cheering lots. Todd also shouted once that day, I wasn’t sure what he had said, so I looked up and a cloud of tiny yellow droplets rained on us. Not that I actually saw that they were yellow, even if one actually hit my eyeball.. Well, lucky us, that was the first time we had been peed on! People usually collect the pee and then pour it down slowly on the wall to the side of the route where it hopefully doesn’t hit anyone. Sometimes it does though.

After that pitch, it was my turn to get up pitch 27, 28, and 29 and at the top of pitch 27, I finally met Miska and Ivo in person. They were about to free climb the Endurance Corner (12b) and I was about to aid it, ha. Since they needed a rest and they had already placed gear, I linked the pitch with the previous one and aided up their gear, built an anchor quickly and started hauling. Todd followed up quickly too and gave them some cliff bars for letting us pass, knowing they did not have much food left (my idea). We were in a prime spot to witness Ivo’s climbing. When he was half way up, we noticed that we had to get our haulbags and ourselves out of the way to not block one of Ivo’s critical footholds. I quickly placed a tiny cam off to the side and Todd and I pulled ourselves and all our gear to the side the moment Ivo was getting close. We were all really concentrated and watching him climb and he made it up cleanly! He finished the pitch with a loud shout of relief, then he cried, because this was his last chance to free climb it since they were out of supplies after 7 days. And I almost cried too, I don’t really know why though.

Once we had all enjoyed his moment of success, I continued to the right around and over a roof. Todd was looking very happy following.

All of a sudden we were on the headwall, super exposure.. It was Todd’s turn again and he quickly aided up the headwall, linking two pitches into one massive steep slightly overhanging pitch. I wondered if Todd was actually that fast or if it just seemed that way. I might have been too busy telling myself continuously that I am not scared.

Following was challenging, due to the exposure, but we were getting close to Long Ledge our spot for the night! Just a small traversing pitch and there we were sitting on a ledge eating sandwiches in the sunshine. It was only 3 o’ clock that day and we lounged quite a bit until we set up the portaledge and went to bed with music and full moon.

September 24, 2018 (day 6)
To start the day, Todd did some hook placements off from Long Ledge and a section of run-out free climbing that apparently did not feel like 5.8 at all! Prime spot for falls and injury according to a Yosemite Search and Rescuer. Todd seemed a little bit shaken after that pitch. And by shaken I mean that he mentioned that is was scary, which is as shaken as he gets according to my experience. Then there was a glorious 10.d pitch, that Todd really wanted to free climb.. for 2 meters, haha.. oh, we were so tired :)..

Todd continued bravely with another chimney and soon we were at the top and relieved..

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Let it suffice to say that the hike down is not nice.

After the adventure, we were really tired and we also knew that there wasn’t anything cooler that we could climb in our short vacation and with two days of rain coming up soon. So we relaxed, ate and did some tourist activities in the Valley, i.e., drive around the park and go into the stores and take pictures in El Capitan meadows. We also checked into Camp 4, climbed a bit more and Todd rediscovered the Cafeteria that serves amazing eggs, bacon and fried potatoes for breakfast (I would like to add an unimpressed: “wow” at this point, since the breakfast was far from amazing). Fast food and Todd are very close friends. There was a Yosemite Clean Up Event (Facelift) going on in the Valley, so there were lots of evening events scheduled, even for people like us, who did not help to clean, so we were able to watch the Freesolo and Dawn Wall Movie.

On one of our tourist strolls through the climbing shop we met an “old fart”. I think we talked to him for over an hour, it was very inspiring. He congratulated us to our success and asked what was next. When I said that I am quitting my short big wall career since it is too scary he build me up and pointed out all the good things about big wall climbing and what great memories I will have when I am old. He also mentioned that climbing with women is great and he would have killed for climbing with a women back in the 70ies when he climbed the Salathé Wall..

Two things were confirmed through this conversation: I am an excellent companion
and Todd can focus on killing deer instead.