July 5th, Scott Sinner and I woke up at 3:45 am for a car to car ascent of Half Dome's RNWF. This would be my 3rd time up the wall, Scott's first. Arriving to the base of HD, I noticed that the climbers trail no longer existed and some alterations to the spring at the base. I shrugged it off just thinking it was from the recent storms that have been coming though the Sierras.

Scott took the first block to the top of pitch 6. I took over from there since I was familiar with the route. After completing the Robbins Traverse we were exited to enter the chimneys and simul away. I moved out onto the face to climb pitch 11 (my least favorite pitch of the route). In go mode, I followed the terrain that was present. Soon I found myself 140 from the belay. It turned out I was climbing the down climbing portion of the free variation.

I remember yelling down to him at some point that I don't remember any of this. Yelling back "I thought you've climbed this before!"

I was so confused. Stopping and looking at the topo, I knew something was not right. I was lowed 60 feet from a block and was able to back clean some gear, untie, pull the rope and got back on belay.

There was some frustration between Scott and I. He was annoyed because I was wasting time and the fact that I do not see the obvious ledge system. I kept telling him, "Dude, there is nothing there!" I swung around on a pin to check thing out. That's when things dawned on me...the whole system flaked off.



I came back to the belay and Scott tied in to check things out. Yep... the whole ledge system was no more.

This is when I called Dave Miller. We climbed the route a few years ago and Dave knows the route better then anyone I knew. I asked him if he has heard anything about any rock fall on HD. He was blown away! After our conversation he went online to do some research. That's when he created this thread.

Scott and I were both stunned! We hung out at the belay for a good while, laughing and eating Sour Patch Kids before we started to bail.

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While bailing, everything started to make scene. The base, the broken trees and all the trash...



Retreat turned out to be not so bad. Scott and I have gotten good at retreating with one another, that's one thing we are good at. We only had a 60m and 2 grigris. We managed to get down with a mix of down climbing and rappelling. We bootied some bail gear from previous parties. When on the ground, we only left 1 nut and 2 carabiners from our own rack.

When packing up, we ran into a group of 3 foreigners who were going to climb the route the next day. They spoke little to no English. We tried to explain what has happened...we only hope they understood and did not attempt the route.

I really want to thank Dave Miller for getting the word out. I did not want anyone else to go up there and epic, get hurt or get rescued.

I believe that this happened during the recent stint of storms in the Sierras. This would explain why no one herd it and why we were the first to come across it.

We are still scratching our heads about the experience...but most of all, laughing about it.

Be careful out there yall! Next time you climb something, double check to see if its still there!