It's true that big walls often promote a random thought process and encourage free association. To some degree this occurs while leading, but it takes on whole new proportions while belaying for an hour or more at a stretch. I often find myself thinking about things or people I haven’t thought of in years. Songs often pop into your head from nowhere. Songs that you can’t get out of your head. Unluckily for me, these songs are often pop hits from the early 70’s. Even worse, the band that sticks out the most from the host of one-hit wonders is Abba. “Dancing queen, strong and clean, diggin’ the dancing scene.” Don’t ask me why. Second runner up: K.C. & the Sunshine Band. Sometimes it's a wonder I don't throw myself off.
Such was the case for five days while Michael Brodesky and I climbed The Nose on El Capitan. Originally, I had proposed climbing El Cap via the Triple Direct. It was supposed to be technically easier than The Nose, and I felt that possible crowds would be thinned out by the time the Triple Direct joined The Nose for the last third of the route. However, I was swayed by the classicness of The Nose and it’s historical significance.
Mid-August can be a chancy time to climb The Nose. The likelihood of hot weather and crowds is high. We hoped a Sunday morning start would decrease the crowd potential. Unfortunately, my attendance at a bachelor party the night before guaranteed that I wasn’t very good company on the early morning drive from the Bay Area. I finally gave up pretending I was awake and nodded off for the duration of the trip, rationalizing that it was better for me to get as much rest as possible before the climb.
Shouldering the haulbag to the start of the climb was Michael’s job since I had done my duty on previous outings. However, while the approach for El Cap was easier than any of our previous wall climbs, the 9000 cubic inch megapig, bulging with water, was like having a VW strapped to your back. Still, Michael was bounding down the trail far ahead of me. For the final steep section of the approach we broke down and set up a hauling system to be safe.
The climbing finally got underway around 11am. The first three pitches were rather straightforward aid climbing up cracks. Due to the less than vertical angle of the rock, however, the hauling was a bitch. After the first pitch I whined so much Michael took over the leading just to shut me up.
It was ominous looking up at the great prow of El Capitan staring down at us. I couldn’t believe we were really there. Washington’s Column. Half Dome. Leaning Tower. All our previous walls together, while great adventures in their own right, were just stepping stones to The Nose. We planned on doing additional climbs to get us ready, but time and schedules didn’t allow it. This would be our only chance this year.
The fourth pitch brought us to Sickle Ledge, and company. A party had their haulbags stashed on Sickle Ledge, and a climber had just finished ascending their fixed ropes to ferry an extra load. They were planning to take their time and climb a possible six more days. They had climbed to Sickle Ledge the previous day, but another party cut ahead of them, and they decided to take a rest day to prevent bunching up. Now, we were there. Negotiations quickly began to allow us to go first, but we agreed only to meet later and discuss the matter back on the ground. Regardless of the outcome, we strong-armed the megapig up the 4th class section to the upper end of Sickle Ledge as planned. This would bring us to the bottom of pitch 6 and save us time the next day.
After fixing ropes back to the ground we met up with the other climbers, a boyfriend/girlfriend team, and convinced them to let us go first. They were planning a slower pace, and if they caught up to us we would let them pass without objection. Besides, our haulbag was already ready to go at the top of the 4th class pitch.
The next four days passed in a blur. The team ahead of us, a pair of Europeans, bailed out after reaching Dolt Tower. Thankfully, they left us some water, since Michael and I each dropped a liter bottle of water. We never saw the boyfriend/girlfriend team again. They didn’t climb the next day, and, perhaps, bailed out altogether. We had The Nose all to ourselves!
The first night on the wall saw us short of our goal to reach El Cap Tower. Instead, we settled in at Dolt Tower. Even so, we managed to make Camp 4 the next night as intended. This required climbing the last pitch by headlamp--a new experience for me.
A special treat greeted us at breakfast on Dolt Tower. Two pairs of base jumpers launched off the top of El Cap, and roared by like jet planes before deploying their chutes and gliding down to their getaway cars. It looked like a great way to descend the route. However, only a third of the way up the route, it was intimidating to know that they could safely open their chutes so far below us that their canopies appeared as tiny as postage stamps.
I got to lead some of the most classic pitches on the route--the fun, but unprotectable chimney of the Texas Flake, the beautiful and exposed Boot Flake, the airy King Swing, and awesome Great Roof. One of my favorite pitches was the Pancake Flake, directly after the Great Roof. At 5.10a, it is a lieback as beautiful as Wheat Thin on the Cookie Cliff, except 24 pitches off the ground. It was our fourth day of climbing, and, despite the great rest spots, I had no energy to free climb it, especially burdened with a big wall rack. I got to climb part of it twice after forgetting the haulline. One day, though, I hope to return and free it.
The most sobering part of the trip was watching back-to-back helicopter rescues to either side of us on El Cap. The tragic drama took place 1000 feet below us, and, unable to clearly see what was happening, we hoped the rescue teams were simply practicing. We later found out that both accidents involved Yosemite veterans who were seriously injured in falls. Neither of them were wearing helmets.
At the Glowering Spot, a long pitch below Camp 6, we realized that we were being overtaken by another party. So, we rushed to get to Camp 6 ahead of them, and secure the best bivy spots. As it turned out, the 3-man team was attempting a 1-day ascent. They had been climbing continuously since 2am, and it looked like they wouldn’t make it to the top in 24 hours.
It was dark when Michael & I reached Camp 6, and the other team yelled up from the Glowering Spot to ask us to fix a line for them to jug. We obliged, and, as Michael set up a fixed line I rapped down to retrieve a stuck rope. They were low on water and food so we gave them some energy bars and refilled their water bottles. However, we weren’t about to give them our Spaghettios or Dinty More stew, but we offered them a can of beer since I hadn’t been in the mood to drink either of the 2 cans we brought. Graciously, they declined. In return for our hospitality they offered to fix the next pitch for us, but we were right on schedule and wanted to climb the entire route ourselves.
One appalling and disappointing aspect of the climb was the amount of trash we saw along the way. It was most evident at Camp 6 where trash and human waste filled a footwide trench which ran along one side of the ledge and which was easily 10-feet deep. Empty cans and water bottles were piled halfway up the trench despite a recent cleanup effort by climbers from Prescott College in Arizona. It was sad to see that many climbers had such a lack of respect for the rock they climbed, and that those who should have a strong appreciation for the outdoors would be so quick to trash it.
The stretch after Camp 6 brought us quickly near the top. As Michael lead the bolt ladder of the final pitch I tried to imagine Warren Harding’s all-night marathon to finish the route. The bolts we clipped in minutes were each painstakingly drilled by hand during Harding’s 14-hour push that lasted until 6am.
As I cleaned the traverse of the last pitch I got a shock when one of my ascenders popped off the rope. Luckily, I had just tied in short. The other ascender held just fine, but my confidence in their reliability was shot, and I was shaking. I vowed to throw out my Clogs until Michael later informed me that the same thing happened to him using his Petzl ascenders. Trembling, I finished the traverse on pins and needles, tying in short every couple of feet.
The Top. We made it! Five days collapsed into a moment, and, suddenly, it was over. We got lucky. We had great weather, no crowds, and none of the numerous inevitable mistakes cost us more than a little time and a couple liters of water. And, despite being twice as long as other big walls I’d done I never got that get-me-off-of-this-rock feeling known as summit fever.
There were many memories I would take back to the ground with me--Michael’s bad jokes as I climbed in the dark to Camp 4, the enigmatic “KFS” written in red tape at the top of the King Swing, dubbing a couple of quad cams “Blue Boy” and “Mr. Green”, the huge detached flake held in place by slings on pitch 10, listening to the fools on the open air tram yell up from the road every hour or so during the day, the base jumpers, the helicopters, the terrible canned hummus experiment, the clouds that threatened rain but never did, the monstrous loose block at the top of pitch 31.
All along the way I was continually amazed--amazed at the first ascent party’s vision, amazed by teams that can speed climb it in a day, and amazed that Lynn Hill was able to free climb it. Compared to these things, what we had done was nothing--just two more names on the ever-expanding list of climbers to do The Nose. Yet it meant a great deal to us. Climbing El Cap didn’t have to do with setting speed records or getting mentioned in climbing magazines. We had reached the top, neither of us got hurt, we were still friends, and we managed to have a good time doing it. These are the qualities that make for a successful climb. Without the rest, summitting means little.