The Nose 5.14a or 5.9 C2

Sitting here in a restaurant two days after completing the most sought after rock climb in the world, sipping a self prescribed dose of cadillac margarita pain killer its still feels pretty surreal. For me it started many years ago when I first drove into the valley and laid eyes on El Captain. I had come the valley for a hiking trip up half dome….. I had no idea at the time the pull on my life which El Cap would later impose.

For the last year or so I have had it stuck in my head that I must climb El Cap, and starting with The Nose. After doing a lap on Astroboy and The Nose (to under dolt tower) in the same weekend last year with my friend Shaun, I knew it was only a matter of time now unti I made my charge, and moreover that I preferred to climb it the first time "in a day".


I began getting as much mileage in the valley as possible, both on free climbs and big walls. I studied all the materials I could garner on the nose. I trained relentlessly in the gym. I trained extensively on how to deal with the many logistical issues of climbs of this nature with major overhangs, traverses, and pendulums.

As I got more and more set to start about the business I hit the first major obstacle in this mission…. how to find a partner who was up for this challenge… someone who was crazy enough to do it, had the skills and fortitude to pull it off, and safe enough that we can get each other home safe no matter what obstacles we encounter along the way.. kind of a tall order… finding partners in climbing is not all that difficult… finding good ones is a whole different matter…

Out of sheer happenstance John and I were put together through a mutual acquaintance in a climbing club… within a few weeks, John flew in from Washington, I scooped him up from Oakland airport and we were off to the Valley for our first NIAD testing runs….

Over the coming few months we did several more "testing" runs and one attempt at a wall style ascent.. on our wall style ascent, we got blocked badly by a sh#t show of other parties and decided to bail.. plus as we already knew.. hauling on the nose is pretty awful.. so given our ability level we felt we had "tested" enough and it was time to go for it… so this is our story from my point of view…

    8:30am John flew into Oakland, I picked him up and we were off to the valley.

    1:00pm we were in the valley at the bridge saying hi to Tom and crew and informing them of our mission..

    4:00pm we had setup our camp in the pines, and racked our gear, eaten a ton of pasta, and ready to "sleep" as much as we could until about 8:30pm when we planned to get up and moving..

Sleep for me did not really happen, between pre mission anxiety and it being the middle of the afternoon, the best I could do was fake sleep and just lay there and rest as much as I could stand it… my mind reeling with the prospects of what we faced in a few hours time..

    8:30pm we are up and moving.. final preparation being made… eating another huge portion of pasta.. downing gatorade, water and coffee.. knowing we will not have any real food for quite some time.. pre hydrating as much as possible.. knowing its only a matter of how badly we are going to be dehydrated, not if… nervous.. anxious… psyched… READY…

    9:15pm we drive to the meadow, park, gear up and head up the trail by headlamp…

    10:15pm john is leading up pine line by headlamp… although we have done the normal 4th class approach many times.. we preferred to start on pine line at night with our 30 pound NIAD pack.. seemed safer…

Our whole deal with starting at 10pm was to make passing parties easier on the lower route, and to minimize the water we had to carry by doing more night climbing in cooler temps..

John has the first lead block, he will take us to p8 in 4 pitches by linking 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 with our 70m rope.. which was way kewl.. and much safer than our previous short fixing while free climbing setup… however we are in fact doing all of this in the dark.. so we are definitely a bit slower going than our day time tests… ;-(

    12:00am we were on p4 at Sickle Ledge negotiating the passing of two parties, one party of two, one party of three… they both kindly let us go by and we were very thankful.. the party of two was actually bivy'd on sickle, but the party of three had just hauled to sickle and were starting their push to el cap tower. the party of three were really kewl guys.. and they definitely kept the psyche up for everyone on the wall.. these guys were more psyched than I think I have ever seen anyone.. was pretty awesome to see and hear… later in their climb on sunday.. they had this awesome sign hanging on the wall!


    1:30am on p7 while I am cleaning the second pendulum point in our double pendulum path over to the stovelegs.. my speed jug setup for following makes things very hard here.. and while back cleaning a cam just before the penji point, my feet blow and I end up upside down skating back across the face… with a 30 pound pack on no less… its strenuous but I instantly get myself back up right, I managed to keep my grasp on the cam and didn’t drop it… and we are back to the business… I finish following the pitch.. and I am ready to take over the lead and take us to El Cap Tower… I was very thankful we were in the dark actually… taking a pendulum fall like that upside down with a heavy pack in the day time when you could see the exposure.. would have been worse mentally… ;-)

    2:00am at the start of the stovelegs its now my lead block to take us to El Cap tower… I am VERY happy to get that heavy pack off and get on the sharp end in the dark.. I motor up the first stovelegs pitch free very quickly and feel great to be in such a kewl place in the dark.. jamming in a killer and classic crack.. if that pitch were near the ground.. there would be a line wrapped around the valley loop to climb it every day.. so good!!… the aforementioned psyched guys are hooting it up and keeping everyone jazzed

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Next I am in the first OW pitch of the stovelegs and things start to go a little sideways for me mentally… not sure why.. but somehow I get a bit sketched out in the insecure wide flaring section.. and it takes me WAY longer than it should to lead it and get though it… while its definitely a burly pitch.. i just felt I should have dispatched it better… but I try not to think about it too much.. John is very patient with my laggery on that pitch and we push on… I am still a bit slow linking the final two wide/OW pitches to dolt tower.. but definitely a bit better.. if only a little… man those two pitches are burly in the light.. and down right scary in the dark…

Next we pass another gracious party from colorado bivy'd on dolt tower.. and we re-up our water with some abandoned water there.. and I set off to link the first two pitches off of dolt tower…

Sitting here now I can not imagine how I got myself into the predicament which follows… but it happened none the less.. basically I somehow without realizing burned the couple pieces of large pro needed for the wide climbing pitch I was linking off of dolt, on the first easier pitch… and by the time I realized it I was committed and decided to run out the ENTIRE 5.9 wide climbing pitch with NO PRO at all.. looking at a death fall if I blew it… with my hand size.. I had got myself into a situation where I had on the order of a 140' runout on off fists and sustained hand stacking… my god what the hell is wrong with me and why did I let this happen?? I kept my sh#t together and pushed through it regardless and have never been happier I think to make the anchor!!!! I think I really taxed my guardian angel with that nonsense… not something I will ever do again if I can help it!

After cleaning the sh#t stains out of my shorts from the nauseating death fall runnout.. I quickly dispatched the next pitch and gained El Cap tower with sun now fully coming up..


    7:00am standing on El Cap tower… trying to put the ridiculous maneuver I had just "gotten away with" out of my mind.. and happy to turn over the sharp end to John now for his next block to take us to Camp 4…

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From here forward the El Cap time warp kicks in and I have no real sense of time.. so I will just kinda spew off things as we went.. but no more timeline.. :-(

So we made El Cap tower in 8h 40min.. which is way slower than we hopped.. but it was dark after all, and we did already pass 3 parties… so all in all… not a horrible start… but at this point we can already tell that hitting sub 24 hours is going to be a real challenge.. with that said.. we could also tell that all the parties above us had either bailed or topped out over night.. as we saw headlamps moving up high all night towards the top as we climbed the lower route..

I dont think I have mentioned it yet.. but we are on sighting from above dolt to the top, as neither of us have ever actually climbed the route higher than that before…

John takes over now and does a great job dispatching the texas flake, and back cleaning the bolt so I can jug the outside of the flake.. and not suffer horrifically inside the flake with a big pack… with that said.. jugging the outside of texas flake is very nearly a free hanging jug.. I didnt ever consider that until I got under it… which with a 30 pound pack, and being a 125 pound dude.. is REALLY HARD… to make matters worse.. obviously I knew from here on up the route only gets WAY STEEPER and I was going to be in for a fight to the top on the pitches I followed.. although of course the pack would get lighter as we went burning food and water supplies.. we of course would be more and more destroyed.. so it was going to be a fight to the finish with our mini-pig backpack..


Next John makes solid work of the boot flake..


we devised a good strategy for quickly getting us both through the boot flake which involved our tag line.. but unfortunately our tag line turned out to be a bit to short.. and we decided that I would just jug and clean the boot, then lower out after he did the king swing..



Next John pulled off the impossible in my opinion.. and STUCK the king swing on sight on his very FIRST attempt… WOW… I was upper impressed!! he just got down to business and did what you have to.. run like hell.. commit.. and refuse to let go!


GREAT WORK John!!

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I quickly lower out and clean the upper part of the pitch to the p17 belay… Here we get our first snag… the rope from my jugs gets stuck below us.. not a huge deal.. I just rap back to it.. un-stick it.. and re-jug back up.. we only lost about 15 minutes… no too bad..


Now the 2nd truly terrifying moment occurs.. as John leaves the p17 belay, he inadvertently steps on a flake just above the bolts which starts sliding down several inches making that all too familiar sound which indicates a large death flake is about to let go.. and take us both with it!! by the grace of which ever god you pray to it stops and doesn’t completely detach… for the remaining time of that belay I feel like a trapped bug in a glass being cooked by the sun waiting to explode… there was nowhere for me to hide from this thing… if it let go.. I was going to the deck with it.. and best case for John was a cut lead line with no belay..


I tried to mark the flake with my chalk.. but it doesn’t take well.. I yelled over to the colordo boys who were coming up on the boot flake and informed them of the hazard… I also asked them to pass the word down the route as best they could!!

I am sure John led that pitch plenty fast.. but if felt like an utter eternity to me standing under that thing.. and when he finally called out "off belay" and "roped fixed" I got the hell out of there lickety split!!


The pitches getting across the grey bands were basically SUCK'fest pitches… the only ones on the whole route which I really didn’t like.. and felt like were very loose and dangerous pretty much throughout… plus add the sideways and down climbing aspects.. and for me they are just a required evil you have to cope with to climb all the other stellar and classic pitches… maybe in our next run we do the lynn hill traverse and skip some of that??


By late afternoon we were now on Camp 4.. taking a much needed break, eating some bars, and getting ready to swap leads over again as its now my block to take us to Camp 6.. We are pretty exhausted by now.. as we have already been climbing since 10pm the night before…. but I am still super stoked and really looking forward to some of the classic pitches like the Great Roof, and Pancake Flake…. I can now see looming over us… what an awesome monstrosity of a roof!! I really had no idea how big it was until that moment… I mean from the ground you know its large.. but you will never really know its full scope until you are face to face with it!

So as Tom said in his report I think… we lollygagged a bit (rested)… not sure how long… didn’t seem very long… then I got racked up and back on the sharp end to take us to Camp 6… I dispatched the pitch off of camp 4 leading up to the great roof.. and I am now foaming at the mouth to get at the great roof pitch… John quickly cleans the pitch and get up to me, and I am off to tackle this beast…

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I was truly having a blast as I led the great roof in the evening glow.. was very surreal… while I was climbing I felt like I was moving pretty efficiently.. but given how tired we were now becoming.. im sure I was probably slower than I thought… as evidence im sure… I finished the great roof just as the sun was setting… while it indicated we were really starting to fall off our pace… it was an amazing and sureal experience to finish that pitch with the sunset in the meadow as a backdrop… and the what seemed like 20 miles of exposure for added awesomeness!!

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Now I set about tackling the pancake flake… at this point I was just completely wrecked physically.. its completely pitch dark again.... and no matter how much I had longed to free this pitch… I just knew I would take dangerous falls in the dark if I choose that option in my current state… so unfortunately I aided the thing.. somewhere higher on the pitch when it gets very thin.. I just finally bonked and started having trouble seeing straight and focusing enough lead safely… even on aid… i think I slowed to a snails pace.. and took something on the order of 2 hours to lead the pitch.. the majority of which was on the upper thin bit… when john got to the belay we talked and deemed me unfit for lead duty without a bit of rest.. so we only had one pitch left to gain camp 5.. but it was a burly bastard.. john offered to lead it.. and get us there so we could take a nap before continuing…

what a partner… he was hurting just like I was… but he took one for the team and lead that burly bastard and got us to the lower less exposed ledge on camp 5… I jugged… even jugging that pitch was really hard in the flaring groove… I suffered and eventually joined him.. where he was already passed out on the ledge..

In my delirium I had desires to gain the upper camp 5 ledges where we could stretch out more for the nap.. which were only 20-30 feet higher… and I had ambitions to retrieve some water someone abandoned on an even lower ledge.. about 15 feet down… i made a couple of foolhardy attempts to attain these goals.. and had to back off after a few feet of progress because I was so zonked I could not process the required actions to safely pursue either endeavor… I surrendered… so we both sat on that small tapered sloping ledge.. put on our light synthetic puffy's and rain shells.. pulled out the emergency space blanket bivy sacks we brought.. and got in them… and proceeded to half sleep and half shiver for the next few hours until the pre-dawn light arrived… I am not sure exactly.. but I think we stopped at camp 5 and crashed somewhere around 2:00am… around 28 hours into our endeavor..

During the night it was pretty amazing.. given the circumstances… I would drift in and out.. dreaming about the gnarly spiders we had seen by headlamp on the previous couple pitches… then awake to the most amazing view of the sky and milkyway.. and the rest of el cap glowing in the moon and star light… it was truly incredible.. ive done several big walls at this point.. and in all the suffering and work that goes into them in whichever style you take them on… one of my favorite parts of the experience is late nights high on the wall… where you feel like you are on top of the world in very special places… that considered against the scale of the people on the planet… VERY few get to experience…..

As the light starts to come up with sunrise.. we force ourselves to get up and start moving.. when I stand up… I immediately writhe in pain and sit back down.. I just had virtually every muscle in my body simultaneously cramp when I stood up… In my mind I actually just got very nervous… because if I could not remedy this… we were going to be in trouble.. we did not bring a second rope to bail with… we only had our lead line, and a 30m 6mm tag line.. technically we had a system worked out to get 165' rappels out of those two in a dire circumstance.. but attempting to bail from that high on the wall with that setup was a feat we wanted no part of unless someone was going to die otherwise… so this meant I needed to triage this major problem quickly… as I thought about the limited knowledge I have of how the human body processes carbs for energy.. I realized my problem… which is really obvious when your on the ground at home.. not so much when your in that circumstance.. I needed carbs and sugar… stat.. ;-)

I choked down some of our stock of goodies.. executed the water recovery mission to get the gallon someone left… and within the hour I was raring to go, racked back up and started about the task of finishing my lead block taking us to camp 6.. I quickly finished the lead to gain the top of camp 5.. then started up glowering spot pitch…


wow what a pitch… after finishing the lead of the glowering spot.. and gaining that little belay ledge.. you are in full on brain melting exposure mode for the duration of the route up the nose…



LOVED IT..

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next I dispatched the pitch (fun and burly) bringing us up to camp 6 where I got to get off the sharp end for a while and let john work his mojo…


at camp 6 we changeover the rack, pack, and so forth… get ready to and john starts up the changing corners pitch… at this point we are exhausted but still stoked and we can start to see the summit coming into view.. and we now know that all we need to do is just keep pushing and we are going to send!!!

john get two pieces up above the camp 6 belay ledge… I am standing under and to the side next to the wide crack where everyone throws way to much nasty shit… and out of no where.. I hear a POP… and john comes sailing down at me… before I can even react.. I am being pulled up and slammed into the rock face and john is decking on the ledge… HOLY SH#T… we took a minute to check ourselves and figure out if we were hurt.. and neither of us was seriously injured.. just banged and bruised… john out weighs me by about 60 pounds.. so when he hit the bottom piece above the belay I got violently yanked and plastered into the cliff.. fortunately though… my rag dolling was just enough resistance to soften his slam into the deck.. such that neither of us was seriously injured… once again I was thinking in the back of my mind.. how badly this could have gone if one or both of us got injured and we had to execute a bail from that high without two full ropes… we are both very experienced.. and I think we could have pulled it off.. but it would have been epic to say the least.. and definitely required leaving gear and getting very creative on the fly…

like the stoic animal he his.. john dusted himself off… reevaluated his situation.. and was back off on lead… and fired changing corners in great style… it was an incredible pitch.. I didn’t get to lead it.. but just watching him, and seeing it on follow.. it was still one of the more memorable and awesome pitches of the whole route… we did have one other issue on this pitch which slowed us down a bit.. while I was jugging and cleaning the pitch.. I was tying off backups every 30 feet or so.. so I had decent loops under me.. the wind had kicked up quite a bit at this point… and one of the loops lassoed a flake way off on the left… of course it had to do this while im jugging and extremely steep, almost free hanging pitch with a heavy pack… but I was near the bolts on the upper part of the pitch.. and was able to clip in direct… rig a gri gri / jumar system to rap/jug my way over to the flake and retrieve our rope.. our ONLY rope.. ;-) fortunately the recovery didn’t take too long and we were back on track…


john took us up the pitches through the alcove to the final two pitches leading to the top out…



here I took over the lead again… linked the two pitches into one enormous pitch.. and was standing on the summit in rare form…


I was so happy I wanted to explode.. so many emotions.. so much hard training put in.. so much work and fortitude required to be standing here… I had my own private mini emotional meltdown up there while john was headed up towards me from below.. hidden under the overhang…

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unbeknownst to me at that time.. john was fighting for his life down there and having some very scary moments of his own… our strategy for the final bolt ladder was simple.. I would runout the vertical parts of the bolt ladder, and sew up the traversing bolts.. so that john could safely and simply re-aid the ladder self belaying on a gri gri, and backed up by tie offs… we are VERY tired at this point.. during our strategizing.. the thought of more free hanging jugs with that pack was a nightmare.. to be avoided… however when john started up cleaning the pitch in his own tired state.. he changed his plan on the fly and just kept jugging that part.. after all he is strong as an ox, and also very efficient at cleaning traverses on jugs… so he decided to do it that way.. well that nightmare you read about cleaning traverses on jugs happened to him.. and his top just popped.. thank god he is smart enough to have put the beaner though.. and that his bottom jug was engaged and held… because he realized to his horror at that point that he had not pulled any slack though his gri gri, and that he would have taken a likely death fall if it had gone the other way…

these small things we can miss when we are that tired can be the difference between life and death… and I am so happy in this case that things worked out in our favor… another guardian angel also a little worked from our adventure!

topped out!! we are both alive.. unhurt.. and just completed bucket list level adventuring in reasonable style… I cant speak for john.. but I know I was in a just completely surreal state at this point… overwhelmed by the magnitude of the whole thing...

we have been climbing and living in a vertical to overhung world for long enough now, that its a real challenge to walk on flat ground.. at least for me.. it took quite a while.. like a day actually to fully regain my equilibrium.. while I had been on a wall longer before.. I had never in my life worked that hard on one… and even writting this now.. my fingers and toes are still swollen a bit.. and every muscle in my body is still very sore… ohh does it hurt so good!!! ;-)


after the summit obligations we headed down the east ledges decent… racing to get to the pizza deck.. we had not eaten real food in over 40 hours, and we could almost smell it from 3000 feet up and miles away… it was calling like a beacon in the sky.. ;-)

on our way down the EL decent.. we ran into some really great guys from Argentina who were scouting in preparation for a NIAD of there own coming up in a few days.. they were kind enough to offer to help us carry down the rack and ropes and packs… how awesome were those guys!!! we looked like death.. and it was just stelar of them to offer… john refused the help completely.. what a guy.. he just had to pull his weight all the way to the car! he is a great partner, and real trooper… while I felt the same way.. I did relinquish the rope and let them carry it.. I kept the rack though! ;-)

so we trudged for what seemed like an eternity in my state.. rapped.. and actually only a couple hours later we are back to the meadows.. alive… WOW

we hit the pizza deck.. and proceed to devour the best tasting pizza of our lives… and by coincidence we ran into the same guys again there.. and spent our evening exchanging stories, beta, and strategies.. it was really a perfect ending to our journey… I could not have asked for more…

now only the final crux to surmount… making it back to our campsite to collapse into much needed comas… in route I get pulled over on suspicion of "drunk driving" by a park ranger… thank god it turns out he is an avid big wall climber.. and his wife I think is actually a notable wall climber.. and he runs my id to ensure im not a wanted guy.. but is totally cool about the whole thing.. and completely knows what its like to be wrecked after a major wall as whooping… and I had actually not had any alcohol at the pizza deck.. was way to dehydrated to drink.. just had water and orange juice... we actually chat with him of our own volition for several minutes.. he goes on his way… and we collapse in the tent…

WOW what an adventure!

We slept like the dead… worked to our limits.. happy

the next morning we gorge on breakfast at the lodge cafeteria.. hit the meadow and chat with Tom and crew.. and another team who summited zodiac the previous day… showered up at curry village.. and started the race to Oakland.. to get john on his flight home…

While we failed in our goal to climb the Nose in sub 24 hours… it was a wonderful failure.. and we are still very proud to have sent it… give or take we were climbing for about 36 hours, and somewhere around 40 hours car to car… not bad for on sighting the upper 20 pitches…

just this evening we already set the seeds to do it again in the fall now that we have seen the route.. and nail the sub 24 time!.. LOL