Warbler Appreciation

CMAC and RJ don't make sense, from the standpoint of valuing historicity and respect of rational discourse.

can someone explain how a disappearance like this really goes down? is it actually what everyone is saying? they just deleted him and all his posts?

I don't even care if the user asks for it to be deleted, it's here and some momentary sour grapes shouldn't have us throwing out the good with the bad.

so the history won't be entirely lost.

I don't believe Chris et al would wipe out the entirety threads that contain valuable information.

The Warbler

climber
the edge of America

Dec 17, 2006 - 11:10am PT
Mark and I didn't have much ice experience to draw from when we decided to try to do the Widow's Tears. We had a whole lot more afterwards, that's for sure. Myself, I had only done the top of Sentinel Falls with Mark and Jim Orey, Mark had some time on ice before that.

We were the first climbers to winter in Camp Four that I know of, and to spice things up we took to the frozen waterfalls. Sentinel Falls got us excited about it and we turned our attention to the big one down the Valley with the ominous name. The Widow's Tears had drawn the attention of many of the few top ice climbers in America. Chouinard was interested we heard, Porter made an attempt, and we met Mike Weis and Jeff Lowe for the first time on the road below the Tears one day when were they drove by as we were scoping it.

The first time we went up there just to get a look up close. The Widow's Tears ampitheater is an awesome place, stunningly beautiful in every season I've been there, and in winter the sparkling white ice against the dark stone draws the eye up to the sky and stirs the deepest of climbing urges. The line falls in a gentle spiral turning 90 degrees from top to bottom in over a thousand feet. It is broken into three almost equal length sections by two ledge systems that sweep from one buttress to the other, adding to the symmetrical architecture of the ampitheater. We convinced each other we could climb it.

What we lacked in experience we made up for in free time. We were able to wait and wait until the thing was climable, if only barely. I think we did the approach six times before we got up it. One of our efforts was especially memorable...

Frank Brown (Jr.), longtime Broiler Room waiter, climber and all around good guy wanted to share in our adventure and offered to help us carry loads. He sweetened the deal with a loan of some ice screws and we couldn't say no. We all did the approach and stomped out a bivy platform in the snow near the watercourse so we could conveniently fill our bottles. At 2 AM we awoke to freezing rain and by 3 it was a full on snowstorm and we decided to bail. Thought we lost Frank at one point on the descent when he busted through a snow ledge and disappeared down the slabs into the darkness. He stopped about forty feet down on a ledge and was rattled but OK. We got back to the car in a rainstorm just before dawn.

That afternoon we were dismayed to see that a hundred feet of the route was gone. Fortunately, immediately after the storm there was a cold snap and in a few days it had reformed and looked doable again. When we hiked back up for another go (without Frank) we were met by a sobering sight when we reached the slabs below the snow bowl. Big ice chunks were strewn around in the forest, remnants of the section that fell, and when we gained the snow bowl we realized that the icefall had scoured the fall line down to rock in a thirty foot wide swath taking our bivi platform with it.

That night we bivied well to the side of the watercourse and walked to fill our bottles.

The next morning we finally started climbing. The first pitch was my first lead on ice, and I found my way up on the thin, sometimes seethrough ice slowly. I only placed one screw, straight down into the thick ice on a ledge, mostly I placed pins where I could and ran it where I couldn't. I finally reached a nice ledge on the right side of the flow with one bolt from a previous attempt by someone. Mark led quickly up the last steep section and found a belay in the back of a hanging snow bowl with rock anchors. Our excitement turned to disappointment though, when we discovered one of Mark's crampons had lost some allen screws and was useless. Another descent, this one especially frustrating due to the perfect conditions we finally had.

We returned that night after scrounging some screws on the Valley floor, and the next day climbed to the high point of the first traverse ledge by about one o'clock. We crossed the ice flow and pondered the next section from an alcove on the right side of the ice. The next pitch was the steepest of the route, twenty feet of 90 degree ice slowly easing to 75 degrees over its length. As I psyched for it though, ice chunks began raining down sporatically and we realized what was happening. As it was already March, late in the season, the afternoon sun was melting ice on the rim, and as it fell it was finding its way to the fall line- our route. We made our first smart decision and set up a bivy in a cave with a good view of the next day's climbing. The bivy was wet and plagued by a small but incredibly aggressive mouse, but we had a decent night's sleep.

The next morning I cast off on the steepest ice I had climbed. When I went to place the first screw I nervously fumbled it and it fell to stop bridged between the toes of my Super Guides. I set a pick and carefully reached down to retrieve it. Which brings up a factor I haven't mentioned- our gear selection was pathetic. Five or six screws and a few warthogs, which made the one I dropped real important. One 80 cm axe, one 60 cm Chouinard piolet, and one Chouinard alpine hammer. The leader had to lower the tools for the second to use following. All wool clothing- no pile, no gortex, no helmets, no headlamps.

My lead deteriorated into 80 degree frozen snow plastered in a corner, and the rockclimber in me pushed me close to the possible pin placements on the edge of the waterfall. Axe shafts to the hilt and kicking steps got me slowly higher, along with laybacking the edge of the ice where it met the rock. After what seemed like hours I reached a spot where I could belay and brought Mark up. The steps I had kicked blew out on him several times, but we were past the steepest climbing. He moved out onto the open ice on the next lead, and found good screw placements. His belay put us within an easy pitch of the second traverse ledge.

Upon reaching the ledge we realized we were threatened by the same falling ice situation as before and we didn't think we could top out before dark anyway, so we decided on another bivy. As we only planned on one night on the route we had little to eat and our down bags were wet. We saved a small cube of cheese for the following day and settled in for what was a long grim night for a couple of California rockclimbers.

The first pitch of the next day was the funnest of the whole route. Good solid ice, moderate angle, exhilarating exposure as the steep part of the waterfall lay just below. I was feeling good on my points and strung the rope out between screws, it was starting to look like we were gonna pull it off. I reached a belay with rock anchors sheltered below a small overhang and Mark followed.

His lead was the steepest on the last day and I was glad he had to deal with it. When he started up it the ice was different and we soon realized that it was because it was the section that had recently fallen and reformed. The whole thing was hollow, thick enough, but hollow, with the sound of running water underneath it. Mark was gripped but making progress and I had resorted to slumping over at the belay to protect my head from the shrapnel he was creating with his tools. I was rudely jolted from my isolation when I felt a sudden blow to my shoulder. The blood rushed out of my head and for a second I thought I was going to black out from the adrenaline rush. A big chunk of ice had just missed my head and the impact combined with the lack of food and my exhaustion momentarily overwhelmed me. I snapped back just in time to hear an utterance from above followed by the sound of jingling hardware, and the rope jerked taut banging my head into the roof of my belay station.

Mark had taken a good twenty footer, but was OK. I was afraid he might hand me the sharp end, but he just got mad and got back up there and sent it. When I followed his lead I was shocked to look through holes in the ice and see it separated from the rock by a foot in places. The hollow horrorshow ended at an ice roof that crossed the waterfall where the section had detatched previously, and a different challenge presented itself.

The next pitch entered what is really a steep gully with the left side being nearly vertical for 150 ft to the rim. The back of the gully is lower angle but was filled with honeycombed frozen water, unprotectable by screws. I set off kicking steps searching with my picks for anything that would hold them, mostly they just bottomed out and raked down the rock. I put falling out of my mind and carefully moved up on my feet, leaving Mark behind and climbing without protection for forty or fifty feet. Finally I got some protection pins in rock ribs that emerged from the crunchy white stuff, and worked my way to a good rock belay putting us within a short lead of the rim. Mark quickly was up to the top. It was just getting dark when I summited and we collapsed in the snow to watch an especially serene full moon rise over Yosemite Valley.

The epic wasn't quite over. After packing up our gear, we wallowed upwards through waistdeep snow to the forest on the Valley rim, then west to a steep couloir. An hour of sliding, groveling and semi controlled falls brought us to the road at the Wawona tunnel. We had no car, so we walked nearly to Sentinel before someone came along and gave us a ride. We collected all the change we could find when we got back to camp and spent it on junk food in the vending machines at the Lodge at 3AM.

The section of ice that Mark fell on fell off again three days later, and the climb never reformed that season.

The Widow's Tears is an ethereal creature, demanding patience, good timing, and determination from her suitors. When it's set up it offers a real alpine experience right in Yosemite Valley. Doing it in a day is the way to go if you're an experienced ice climber, we were happy to just survive and get up the thing. Let's hope global warming doesn't make the climb even more elusive.

The Warbler

climber
the edge of America

Dec 18, 2006 - 11:44am PT
Hey Peter- how bout that Bridwell? He was the master of sending wide eyed innocents out on dicey terrain. He always had a good reason for not doing it himself, and he knew we all were anxious to win approval in his Valley. It sure made a kid push himself.

Are you talking photos of Lynda and friends nude sunbathing or the Widow's Tears? I'm sure most of these fellers would rather see the latter, but alas, I have neither, Mark might have both. I'm hoping he'll post up with his perspective on the Tears.

I always wished the Valley would get a winter that made all the incredible possibilities there doable.

So bust out a tale of the Strand solo for us! That route's got a lot more steep on it than her sister, I remember seeing Mike Graham hobbling back to camp after pitching off the first lead on a FA attempt, can't recall who he was with. What's up with the solo idea?!