Regular Route on Fairview Dome, aka the North Face

I know this is majorly delayed, but here it finally is: The trip report of the Regular Route on Fairview Dome in Tuolumne Meadows.

The morning after coming back from Carlsbad I got up at 4:30 (the time I usually got up in NM anyway), packed up my gear and drove over to Sam's place in Milpitas. From there we headed out to Yosemite around 5:30. It is always amazing how fast the drive out there is when there's no traffic. Including a gas stop and a coffee stop it took us just over 4 hours to the Cathedral trailhead, where we stashed our food in the bear boxes. On the way there we passed the pullout for Fairview and were amazed that there was only one car parked. Even by the time we got back it was just one car... It took us a bit to sort out the gear and rack up. After a walk of about 20 minutes we reached the base of the route and could jump right on. Sam started leading the first pitch and chose the left of the two parallel cracks. He did a solid job all the way through the crux about 2/3s up the pitch. He continued on and linked pitches 1 and 2 with my 70m rope. Following the crux I had a pretty hard time due to the slick rock. I can't imagine how that's supposed to work when the crack is wet, which is supposedly the case often. Sam also took the lead on the next pitch, the 5.8 finger crack. At the next belay I took over the lead, and from here on we swung leads to one pitch above Crescent Ledge. At this point I got off route, because I was following another party, to which we had caught up. Following, Sam took the right way while I belayed from above. Things went downhill from here on, at least for me: I suffered from a severe headache. I don't really know what was the reason. I definitely was well hydrated. The most likely reason must have been the lack of sleep and insufficient food. Anyway, Sam lead the rest of the route in three pitches with me following. Since the upper pitches are quite easy we pitched it out, but hardly placed any gear. We reached the summit at 6:30PM after 8 hours on the route. I took it pretty slow on the descent... so that we got back to the car around 7:30. Since my headache got better as soon as we were back at the base it might actually have been related to altitude, although I've never had problems at altitude before. At this point we decided to cut the trip short and drive back to the Bay Area the same evening. Unfortunately Taqueria Algave in Oakdale was closed by the time we got there, so we stopped at In&Out in Manteca for dinner.
I got back to my place around 1AM that night...