Salathe Wall 5.13b or 5.9 C2

I love big routes. But I seem to have a problem keeping wall partners (I do not dwell on that fact). After my 1st 3 walls (with 3 different guys), I had cycled through all my partners. The next 6 I ended up soloing. But that still left the Salathe, which was a more than what I felt I could solo. In a weaker moment, Elaine agreed to climb it with me. We did Prodigal Son in Zion as a practice climb. It went well, so we felt we were ready.

Elaine and I arrived in Yosemite on Saturday afternoon and the valley was in a heat wave. On Sunday, this included high winds when we were on the Free Blast. Fortunately, the temperature and wind decreased to nice conditions when we started the main part of the Salathe. The next day we packed and hauled up to the third anchor on the Heart Ledges rappel. Afterwards, we saw Tom Evans at the bridge and told him we would be on the Salathe and we both were over 50. He took some great pictures of us when we were on the climb.

On Tuesday, we finished hauling to Heart Ledges and started the main part of the climb.
Pitch 12 – We waited a bit for a faster moving free climbing team to climb through. On the pitch itself, the move to the bolt was hard for me. After that, rope drag slowed me down. The hauling was a struggle due to the weight of the haul bag and the slab we were hauling up. I had to get both feet above my waist and do a downwards squat while using one hand to pull up on the rope.

Hollow Flake – Easy climbing up to the pendulum point and then Elaine lowered me. After swinging over, I realized that I forgot my knee pads. What a grunt. The haul bag got stuck in the Hollow Flake and Elaine had to pop it out.
Pitch 15 – I was unwilling to try this one on the outside. Instead, I put on my knee pads, dove deep inside, and slowly shuffled upwards. At one point, the rope snaked behind my leg and caused me to worry. But then I realized there was no way I could flip over if I fell. I finished this pitch and rapped back to the Hollow Flake Ledge where we stayed that night. It has a nice spot for two people if they don’t mind overlapping legs. It was fairly flat and was tucked in behind a rock. A little sand fell on us that night.

Wednesday began with jugging pitch 15, freeing most of 16 and some of 17, and hauling a heavy bag.
The Ear – I left my helmet behind on this one and was glad I did. Once I was in the chimney, I would place a piece, go down a bit, go sideways, then go back up to place another piece of gear. There is a bolt on the face outside the chimney that was helpful (it kept the rope from running up behind the last cam). From the bolt it was easy climbing to the belay ledge. I could not haul from the ledge because of the friction of the haul line over the ledge. I ended up moving the haul point below the ledge to make it manageable. To my surprise, Elaine enjoyed cleaning this pitch. She did a fair amount of chimneying up and down to get out each piece. She followed it without her helmet.
Pitch 19 – Long pitch. Towards the end I looked up to see the crack got wide and wondered what I was going to do since I did not have any gear that size and was too far out to tag up gear on the haul line. Fortunately, the wide part was on the next pitch.
El Cap Spire – Above the Alcove, I had to make a step across from one boulder to another with a lot of air below. At the end of the pitch, I made another step across from the main wall to El Cap Spire. The step to El Cap Spire was tough for Elaine, but she made it and managed to clean the gear. It got dark on us shortly after we finished up the haul / clean. I had planned on leading the next 2 pitches that evening so we could make Long Ledge the next day. We decided that we could spend another night out because we had enough food and water, so I left the next pitch for the morning. El Cap Spire is a great place to camp.

Thursday started out with pitches 21 and 22. There is some easy free climbing at the end of 22 that was fun. The hauling wasn’t bad for the rest of the climb.

The Jungle – The free climbing part was good. It was dripping, but I could find enough dry stuff to keep it reasonable. I combined this with the next pitch (and a lot of rope drag) to bring us to the top of The Block. It was late enough in the day that we decided to stay here for the night and go for the summit the next day. We were going slower than I had planned, but we believed we could finish the climb with our available food and water. I did fix the next pitch to Soul le Toit ledge that night to give us a head start.

Soul le Toit – My first piece was a big Camalot which is always a nice way to start (provided you won’t need it later). It has a section of free climbing to get to the pendulum. This is made all the more interesting when you realize that you will have to down climb it all if this is not the right route. This was the last ledge until Long Ledge. I used the haul line to rappel back to The Block. The Block is not a great place to sleep.
Friday morning, I jugged the haul line while Elaine finished packing. Then she lowered out the haul bag and I hauled while she cleaned. Two climbers who were working on Free Rider rappelled by us while we were on the Soul le Toit ledge.

The Roof – Wild pitch! I initially traversed too far and had to come back a bit. Aiding though the roof was very strenuous. Elaine did great following it. This was the 2nd hanging belay in a row. We avoided all of the other hanging belays by linking pitches.
The Headwall – I had enough gear to link these two pitches. It was warm and I did not need a jacket for this – which is in contrast to the bundled up shots I have often seen of climbers on this part. There is a pod just before Long Ledge that I had a hard time getting through. After Elaine cleaned, she said she thought I was spacing the gear too far apart. I made a mistake here and set up the haul on the 1st pair of bolts I encountered on the far left of Long Ledge. We had to do another mini haul to bring the bag over to the center part of Long Ledge. It was nice having a ledge again – we ate a bit here. We decided to keep going with the idea that we could always rappel back to Long Ledge for the night if we were slow. It looks like a spectacular place to sleep.
Pitch 32 – The start of this one has a serious pucker factor. Most of the lower part had less than bomber gear. I had to feel around a corner and guess at what gear to place. About mid-way, the gear got better and I back cleaned the lower pieces to reduce rope drag for the free climbing part. The free climbing starts above an inverted cam hook move. After the initial free moves, it got easier and there were places for good pro. It ended at a good belay ledge (and easy hauling).

Pitches 33 and 34 – Pitch 33 had reasonable free climbing to start with, then a nice crack. The squeeze on pitch 34 was a pain. I had to tag up the big cams for this part. The bag got stuck in the squeeze and Elaine had to keep it out while I finished the haul. It got dark on us while we were cleaning and hauling.

Pitch 35 – I was using a fading headlamp, but this pitch did not take long since it was all easy free climbing. I placed just one Camalot on the whole pitch. It was nice to top out and sleep on a nice sandy spot without a harness. I think we finally went to sleep around 11 PM.

Saturday – It is good waking up on top of El Cap. After all the work to get there, the time pressure to get going was gone. This was my fifth El Cap route and Elaine’s first. It took us a half day longer than I expected, but we did not hold anyone up and had enough food and water.

East Ledges decent was hot! I am glad we had 6 liters of fluid to start with. We used it all except for about a cup. A bus arrived when we got to the Manure Pile Buttress parking lot and gave us a ride to our car at the bridge in El Cap Meadows. We found out from the bridge crew that Tom Evans was referring to us as “The Elderly Couple” in his daily report. It was interesting to read Tom’s daily report and see there were big crowds on The Nose and compare it to the nearly empty Salathe.