“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” Literally. That quote from Dickens definitely sums up the past year of my life. On the up side I met the most amazing woman ever and decided that she was the person I wanted to marry. I have a decent job (teacher) that I like and it gives me the freedom to still go on adventures. After years of climbing more or less full time I finally feel like I can maintain a balance between the rock and the rest of my life. On the down side my father, who was also my best friend passed away suddenly in February. It was him and my uncle who took me to the mountains on a backpack trip when I was eight. I climbed the Grand Teton with my dad, uncle and best friend when I was 18.
After the service someone asked me if I would still climb or would it now be too risky. Having seen death would I change my lifestyle? Or would I stay true to what I loved and all the great things my dad and I had seen and experienced in the mountains together. As I’m sure many climbers have found, I felt myself drawn back to the mountains, back to the wild places, and of course back to El Cap. I decided that I would take a small urn with some of his ashes up the Captain with me as a remembrance. I had climbed the Zodiac last year (2011) and while it was intense and scary it felt like we where dialed and the route went smoothly. We climbed it in three nights and had a blast. I felt like I needed to up the ante and get on a route that was longer and harder to see if I could hack it. My friend John who I had climbed the triple direct with in 2009 was psyched and we started planning. We decided on Mescalito as our top choice because it looked hard but not too ridiculous.
We were both super psyched to climb a route on the dawn wall. We still had to wait for school to end and we both had commitments in June. We would only have 10 days in the valley to get up the route so if anything went wrong we would be screwed. The school year ended and I immediately took off in the car for Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon with my girlfriend. We visited old friends and spent a day swimming in a river in Sedona. So gorgeous. Then Sarah and I went to the Grand Canyon and I proposed as we hiked down to the Colorado River to camp. She actually said yes and we drove back to Colorado for one day before we flew to Connecticut for her cousins wedding and to hang out with her family. On June 10th I got on a plane leaving Connecticut at 6:00 a.m. and flew back to Denver where John would pick me up and we would start the drive to Yosemite that day. We hoped to get to the Utah/Nevada border that night and hopefully get to the valley early enough on Monday to lead/fix the first pitch. We arrived in the valley on Monday afternoon around 3:00 and ran into a friend named Greg from last year. He said there wasn’t anyone on Mescalito so we grabbed the rack and ropes and started hiking up to the base. John said he wanted the first pitch so he racked up and was leading only 2 hours after we pulled into the meadow.
The first pitch is pretty spicy, some hooks/bolts/free climbing up to some fixed heads. John styled it and after cleaning the pitch and stashing the rack on the first anchor we were down on the ground by 7:30. We bolted to Curry for pizza psyched that there was nobody on the route and we had a pitch fixed. Originally we had planned to maybe blast the next day and try to get to anchorage ledge to bivy, but after reading some beta that the ledge dripped we decided to go back the second day and fix to 4 before we blasted off. In the end it was definitely the right call. We got up early the next day and hiked up to the base. Pitches 2 and 3 were mine and I was psyched to get on lead. Pitch 2 felt fairly mellow but I was surprised at the number of fixed heads.
Pitch 3 was more intense and I found myself doing a short pendulum off a head to another head. They all seemed pretty good but I had never seen that before and it felt intense.
John lead the 4th pitch which had another pendulum but he got it done and we were back on the ground around 8:00.
Sh#t, these were full days and we weren’t even off the ground yet. We had talked about wanting to blast the next day (Wednesday) but when we got to the ground I mentioned being a bit more chill the next day and blasting Thursday. We still had a lot of logistics to deal with and I didn’t think we could get it all done fast enough the next day. We decided to make the call in the morning but after not crashing until almost 11:00 and waking up sore we quickly decided to blast on Thursday. This turned out well because it took 4 trips and almost the whole day to haul our water, the bags, and the food to the base. We also repacked the bags and hauled everything 1 pitch so the gear was off the ground and away from the bears. Now we were psyched and ready to go. We woke up early the next day and hiked up with almost nothing. We got rigged and spent the next couple of hours getting us and all our crap up to our high point at the top of 4. The hauling was tough and it took both of us to get the bags up. Our goal was to finish the Seagull that day and we knew it would take us a long time to get it done. Pitch 5 was mine and it was my first C3 pitch. I was a bit nervous but it was all there. Offset aliens and mastercams are money. I was able to haul this pitch myself but it wrecked me. The hauling always crushes me on the first day but you know it will only get easier. John headed off on the Seagull which we knew would be one of the cruxes.
It involves a lower off/pendulum right off the anchor which is weird and then he went around a corner so I couldn’t really see what he was doing. He sounded tuned in and the pendulums looked pretty sporty. He finished the pitch and I lowered out the bags. We were definitely glad to have a long lower out line for this route and used it quite a bit. There was a long piece of tat (blue haul line) on the anchor at anchorage ledge. At first I thought it was garbage and Tom had suggested taking it down but it proved valuable. Since John hadn’t clipped anything on the first lower out to reduce drag it made my first lower out really long. I had to lower off a loop in the tat that was about 10 feet below the actual anchor in order to not swing at the bottom of the lower out. I actually didn’t do this the first time and had to jug back up to rerig it to avoid the swing. The Seagull is an amazing feature and the traverse at the end was pretty wild. We had heard rumors that the Seagull is expanding but it felt solid to us. I got to the anchor about 7:00 and we set up the bivy. On the ledge we joked about how we had to go to the top because neither of us could think of any way to reverse what we had just climbed. It was kinda scary but exciting to feel committed to finishing the climb. We woke up early the next day and John would lead 7 and 8 and I would get 9 and 10.
John moved through his block and by the time I was getting ready to lead 9 it was getting pretty cloudy. The forecast said a 30% chance of thunderstorms but no big systems. The clouds built as I finished 9 and it was sprinkling by the time I got to the anchor. I tagged up my rain jacket and started to rig the haul. We heard a lot of thunder but it never really opened up. We spent a couple of minutes deciding what to do. If the storm really came in we would get soaked and the best plan would be for me to rap back to eight and set up the bivy. The down side was that would mean we were done for the day and had only climbed 3 pitches which would mean we were behind schedule. After a few minutes I realized it made sense to do the haul and that I just had to get the bags up as fast as possible in case it opened up. Thank fully it was the easiest haul yet and I got the bags to the anchor ahead of John cleaning with a fair bit of yelling/cursing at the piggies to move.
The weather cleared as John reached the anchor and I decided I should start up pitch 10. I had heard it was one of the cruxes but I was surprised to see a bunch of fixed gear. There were 6 or 7 large beaks with beefy tie off webbing. I have since found some video of Tommy and Kevin on that pitch and believe they placed them to have gear for free climbing. Regardless they took some of the sting out of the pitch and it felt pretty mellow. We finished climbing just before dark and by the time we sitting on the ledge we needed our headlamps to see. The next day was hot in the morning and John took the morning shift again. He would lead the pre-molar and I would get the molar traverse since he lead the Seagull.
That way we would each get one of the big traverses on the route. The premolar involved a traverse on large hooks into a corner and it was a long pitch. I took off on the molar traverse right as we were getting into the shade and had a lot of fun.
The gear was pretty good and the penji wasn’t to bad. I think I got it on the second or third try. I set of on the next pitch hoping it would be quick since it had a few bolts and some easy free climbing at the end. It wasn’t bad but by the time I got the bags to the anchor and John cleaned it was 7:00 and we knew if we started the next pitch we’d be climbing in the dark. We decided to stop there and get and early start in the morning but that meant we needed to climb 5 to get to the Bismark the next day and we definitely didn’t want to miss that ledge. In the morning John lead the 5.9 squeeze without much difficulty but we lost a red alien on that pitch because the trigger broke and I couldn’t clean it. (Boooooty). Pitch 15 was definitely the crux pitch for John and he climbed it well. We still hadn’t placed a pin and we were starting to think we could climb it clean.
There were 2 more fixed beaks in the expando flake at the end which definitely helped the stoke. I got 16 and 17 which I thought were way fun. There were a bunch of hooks and heads on 16 to a long line of rivets. The rivets were pretty good and I just kept moving to get them over with.
17 started with rivets and lead into this cool crack that went into a roof. The exposure was awesome and the aliens were solid. A short bit of mellow free climbing and I was at the anchor. The hauling was pretty easy by now and by the time John reached the belay it was almost 7:00. The bismark was only 70 feet and 5.7 away. We wanted that ledge so badly we could taste it. John lead the pitch and the bags and myself arrived on the Bismark just as it was getting dark. We collapsed on the ledge and noticed a single can of pbr just sitting there. ST member Aliebling left it several weeks before and somehow there was one beer left. It was definitely the best pbr I’ve ever had. I had been thinking about my dad a lot during the down time at belays. Memories flooded back to me with all the fun stuff we did together. I often found my self silently thanking him for showing me the mountains and the national parks and all they had given me. While I was sitting on the ledge I remembered that it was father’s day and it really hit me how this is the way life is supposed to be lived. My dad was an adventurer and a climber (not walls but he loved easy alpine routes) and he had always encouraged me to push my limits and see what I was capable of. I thought about the great lessons he had taught me and how these climbs truly are a unique experience, unlike any other, that I’ll remember forever. We were up late again and lounged a bit the next morning enjoying the ledge.
We didn’t start climbing until 9:30 that day. John lead the Bismark and the one after it.
Pitch 20 ended up being fairly involved and it took a while to get to the anchor.
The topo calls 21 one of the cruxes and I wanted to try it. It started out with either C3R or A1. You are climbing above a ledge/slab and I was a bit gripped and tapped in a beak. It was the only thing we hammered on the route. After that it was hooks to an expando flake which I cam hooked most of the way to the anchor. By then it was 7:30 and we bivied there on top of 21. We had hoped to climb one more that day because we were definitely ready to top out. Now we needed to climb 5 to get to the top the next day. I suggested we set the alarm for 4:30 and I would try and lead 3 in a row and then John would take the last 2. We woke up early and we were psyched to get going. I was leading before 7:00 and lead 22 in under 2 hours.
23 was C1 and only 110 and I was done with it in an hour and a half. It had a pendulum to a belly flop on a ledge at the end, which was fun. I got on 24 and found it to be awkward but safe. Most of the pieces were C1.
We were on schedule and only had 2 pitches left. It was 2:00 when John started on 25 which showed hooks or 5.7. The pitches with free climbing near the top of the wall can be funky and sometimes scary but John was happy to find that there was gear and it really was 5.7. Because the pitch went sideways we lowered out the bags here and I free climbed most of the pitch cleaning because it seemed safer than jugging and way faster. John cruised up the last pitch and we were on top with all our crap by 7:00 p.m.
We spent an awesome night on top and then descended in the morning. Before we started to go down I took the little urn with my dad to the top of the dawn wall and sprinkled just a tiny bit into the breeze. I shed a few tears but I knew he was smiling at me, proud of this ridiculous accomplishment. I felt good knowing I had made the most of this opportunity.
I hate the descent. We had such heavy loads that we double carried to the top of the raps and then single carried to the bottom. One of the rap ropes was trashed so I left my haul line as this was its last wall. We got down, showered, ate pizza, drank beer and collapsed. We went and stared at the meadow the next morning and then got in the car for Boulder since John was going to a wedding in 2 days. This was definitely one of the coolest climbs I’ve ever done and it once again amazes me how bold the first ascensionists were. Much respect to those guys and we know who they are. Hopefully I can make it back to the ditch next year and maybe I can motivate to do a TR on the Zodiac from 2011. Good photos and some cool folks next to us on the Shortest Straw. Thanks for reading
Dan
