Sweeeeet!

Despite the Rock'n'Roll 1/2 marathon coming up next weekend I ditched my long run this past weekend and went back to Yosemite Valley for the first time in almost half a year. And what a trip it was! Ben and I took an early Saturday morning start from the Bay Area and got to the Valley around 9AM. Our plan was to spend Saturday on short routes in the 5.10 range and do something long on Sunday. So it came that the first stop on the way was Highway Star, a 5.10a close to the road, just after the intersection of HW 120 and HW 140. The approach is about 3 minutes, and despite its 4-star rating in Supertopo there was no one around. I took a look at the route and decided that I'd give it a shot on lead...My first attempt to lead a 5.10 ever! The route starts up a flake, continues in a finger lieback section, before a hand traverse leads to a finger traverse to nice hand jams to the anchors. The crux section is the change from the hand traverse to the finger traverse, since the rock is bulging out slightly. I managed to lead to this point, but was completely pumped after placing a BD .75 cam at the beginning of the finger crack. I lowered off at this point. Lowering down I unclipped the rope and Ben lead the climb. After he lowered off, unclipping but leaving the gear in place I gave it another shot. With the pre-placed protection I made it to the top with a few hangs. After Ben TR'ed a 10b variation and lead the 10a route a second time I cleaned the anchor and we moved on to Schultz's Ridge. We had been looking for this crag on a previous trip and didn't manage to find it. This time around it also took us some bushwhacking for the better part of an hour before we finally found it... Although it's about 2 minutes from the road if one starts in at the right spot...
Here Ben lead 'Second Thoughts' (5.10a) which I cleaned. Since an other party (Meg and Laura) were on the other 10a in the area Ben looked at the 10c in between and decided to give it a shot. One short hang in the 10c crux section was all it took to get him to the anchor bolts. I cleaned the route hanging at the 10b section and also in the 10c crux.
After this we swapped routes with Meg and Laura, and I lead 'Warm Up Crack' (5.10a). I managed to do it clean... I guess tightly spaced bolts in the lower part really helped. The climb was also not as pumpy as 'Highway Star' in the morning or 'Peruvian Flake' in the Royal Arches area, which we climbed afterwards. But hey! It's a start.
As mentioned we finished off the day with 'Peruvian Flake' a 5.10a finger crack between Serenity Crack and Royal Arches. Again Ben lead this one and I cleaned. Between 10AM and 6PM we had gotten five different climbs in the 5.10 range in three areas in...not bad. After this days effort we met my parents at the Curry Village pizza deck for beer and pizza...There's nothing better after a day of climbing!
By 9PM we were in our sleeping bags in the North Pine campground with the alarm set to 5:30 in order to get an early start to climb the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock...