Rob Dillon and myself were sitting around a couple weeks ago in the meadow, looking at all the great lines, and that the forecasted storm would scare everyboady off the wall and we could get on just about anything we wanted. Knowing full well that there would be the post-storm surge of climbers on everything and anything, we fooled ourselves into planning to do the Zodiac on the Sunday after the one day of rain in the Valley.
We meet in the morning to rack up and go fix, but what do ya know? A small army of various parties had the same idea as us. So we sat on our thumbs, checked out the guidebook, considered Eagle's Way, but basically just racked up and started walking the base to find an empty line that somehow inspired us. We walked past several parties on New Dawn and Mescalito, crossing those off our list. Getting up to the base of the NA Wall, we look up, look around, and although there is some gear hanging at the base in between the NA and the Ranch, Rob and I look at each other and just go "Yee-Haw!"
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We get the first 2 pitches fixed, head down and pack up for the wall. We plan on 4 nights, 5 days on the wall- plenty of time to enjoy the pace, take it easy on the many traversing pitches and lower outs, and have the goal of never setting up the ledge after dark. This obviously sounds real good on the ground, but reality often has other plans.
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Day 1 is pretty relaxed. I climb pitches 3 and 4, having a good time on fun, kind of tricky aid with tons of scars and handplaced beaks. These pitches go clean easily only as a result of a double set of offset Aliens courtesy my buddy Dave!
Rob tackles the next pitch, after Mazatlan Ledge, grunting, swearing and getting fully worked in the squeeze chimney. This gets you to an amazing spot under the roof, featuring a cave inside the roof much bigger than I imagined!
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We set up the ledge at the pitch 6 anchors, and I fix the pitch above as well just as it gets dark.
Morning hits and Rob starts some heady free climbing to gain Calaveras Ledge.
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Some more free climbing gets us up to Big Sur, a ledge fit for a king! Somebody bailed from here recently, but was kind enough to leave us some canned fruit, soup, 3 gallons of water and....drumroll please...THREE PBRs!!!
I climbed and fixed the Borderline traverse pitch, and came back to enjoy our booty beer.
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The morning of Day 3 found us doing some funkiness to get ourselves and the bags out from the ledge. Thank God for Rob's little friend, Mr. Skinny, the 160ft. 7mm cord.
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We get it done though, and Rob gets us up through pitch 14 after an extensive backcleaning lesson. I was up next linking pitch 15/16 through the Black Dihedral. The rock texture up there is really cool, due to all the seeping there are calcium buildups which make it a lot easier to step out of the aiders and make some quasi-free moves.
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We get through pitch 18, to a nice little stance. Granted, the Cyclops Eye was only a pitch away, but it was dark, we were hungry, and felt like we were maintaining at a pretty good pace.
Morning 4, Rob gets busy and fires off the pitch to get us in the Eye, and I bitch a whole bunch having a do multiple lower offs some serious mank.
We get up to the ledge, relax for...5 minutes, then deal with having to get the bags across and down to the optional belay. We fashioned a pretty sweet zipline rig with a belay, and got them all over there pretty quick.
Rob started free climbing right off the belay, up some VERY loose and hollow rock, clipping mank which blows the other mank out of the water! Making the C3 Junk pitch look pretty cake, he makes it to the belay, under a nice seeping drip.
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I link the next 2 pitches, which I think was the coolest of the route! Steep climbing up cool features, long reachy hooking and tensioning up good rock got me to belay 23 above the Cyclops Eye, and our bivy for the night. It got cold quick, so we set up the ledge with the fly, and hunkered down with all of our clothes, a flask of vodka (Rob smuggled it aboard!), and the biggest jar of Nutella ever.
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Anyone in the Valley the next day (our Day 5), knows how F-ing cold it was. It was not much better up on the wall. Between me battling the freezing temps and Rob dealing with a seeping and dirty crack which kept spitting him out, we were not having the greatest day.
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We get to the Igloo after a few issues, and due to the impending bad weather we decide to leave the bags, grab our storm gear and climb up to the summit via the El Nino free variation. We may have cheated ourselves out of the full route by missing out on the top 2 pitches, but we made an executive decision to stay safe and get to the top so we could fix ropes back down and take another weather check.
Good decision. As soon as we topped out, we were greeted by David, who had just soloed the Reticent and hooked us up with some roll-your-owns, and had a brief moment of elation before realizing we still had to get our bags.
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We got our storm gear on, and started rapping. Rob tied the bags on and no sooner than I started hauling did it begin to get nasty. An amazing cloudbank and entered filled the Valley from behind Half Dome, and within 10 minutes it was snowing sideways on us, coating our ropes in the white stuff. I jugged up to the top, carefully, and hauled up, getting a bit of help from the wet rock.
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The weather passed, the skies cleared, and we were able to see the most beautiful purple sunset over the Clark and Cathedral ranges. Sadly my camera was still buried deep in the bag....
We pound a couple of Cobras in celebration, pack the bags, and head down. Along the way (around 8pm), we run into a couple of guys who had topped out at dusk off E. Buttress and got completely lost. Contemplating either the long walk down the Falls Trail or an open bivy, they were psyched to run into us! We got em down in exchange for grabbing our ledge!
The rest is just details. We went to ask Tom if he had any pics of us, even though we had forgotten to tell him we were going up. it was kind of disappointing that he didn't but writing up this TR made me realize what a great time Rob and I had on the route, and how much more it makes me psyched just looking at my own pics. This was my first REAL El Cap wall (not counting Lurking Fear), and it has inspired me to do all of the stuff I was more apprehensive of getting on before.
keep rocking everybody!
ryan huetter
