All these things describe past Saturdays trip to Yosemite Valley pretty well.
After a first aid climbing practice in Joshua Tree, Ben and I figured we could step it up a notch and try the El Cap Tree route on El Capitan. Rated at 5.7 C2 it didn't look too bad. It was also recommended as: "The first pitch is a brilliant aid lead for beginning leaders and cleaners (make sure to have pendulums and hooks understood before jumping on it)." (seen on SuperTopo.com).
Well, can't be too bad, right? Wrong!
After roughly half the pitch Ben bailed and I had no intention to try my luck on that one...
And, ok, I'll admit it...I don't really have the hooks down yet...
Well, the strenunous approach a short review an how to follow pendulums and climbing the beginning of the first pitch took up about 4 hours.
Being quite bummed we faced the question of what to with the rest of the day. The topos we carried showed that our options were rather limited. We decided to give it another shot on aiding and decided to do the first pitch of Pacific Ocean Wall.
My turn: I rack up, and start the free part at the bottom of the route. It's rather easy. BUT, in my opinion the rock was way more loose and scary than anything I climbed at the Pinnacles in the recent past. There are huge loose blocks, which just wait to be pulled off. Anyway...I made it to the beginng of the aid section and freeze. It's a tiny (well not that tiny, maybe slightly smaller than fingers) crack that eats nust...but all the loose stuff below had freaked me out pretty badly, so that the prospective to put my wait on gear was not too appealing to me...time to bail.
Ben TRed to my high point and aided the pitch to the end. A really nice effort! I jumared up after him and cleaned the route. I still have to work on my jumaring setup, because the separation between the upper and the lower ascender was too large...
After rapping off we packed up and started the descent...well, the walk back to the car, since we were only at the base of El Cap. After negotiating scree and boulders for about 20 minutes Ben turned around and said: "Let's not come back here, unless we have a very good reason!" That summed it up pretty well...We had been to the base of ElCap once before, and it was pretty much for no good reason as well. To make it short, the descent was no fun at all.
Back at the car at 5:30 we figured we had a good two hours of daylight left, so we decided to check out the bolt ladder on the LeConte boulder. There are actually two... One for each of us to lead...Ben gave me the choice: "Ridicilously overhung or rusty?" I choose ridiculously overhung.
I think it was a good choice, but gosh...it was a hard work! But fun! We still need to figure out how to clean roofs and such, we managed to clean it, but it didn't seem to be the most efficient way.
So yes, we were humbeled by El Cap. We re-thought our plans, which on the drive in on Friday night got a little out of hand ;-). We got a good workout in, between the approach, the descent and the fooling around on the LeConte Boulder. After all a nice day in the Valley. Last night I couldn't stop looking at the pics I took.
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