I spent the 4th of July weekend in Tuolumne Meadows, almost a tradition by now...
I picked up Clement at 6 AM on Friday morning, and we got to the Meadows around 11, thanks to the line at the park entrance. Well, it was a holiday weekend after all...
On the way we decided to climb on Medlicottd Dome on Friday, and kept some options for Saturday.
We started out on Super Chicken, a two pitch 5.9, where I led the first pitch witch a flaring 5.8 section, and Clement led the stellar second pitch. A really nice route! After rapelling off we moved over to the base of Shagadelic and Piss Easier. Our goal was to climb Goldmember... Clement led the first pitch of Piss Easier, I took the second lead...
Once at the base of Goldmember we weren't quite sure if we wanted to actually try the route...
It was supposed to have 9 bolts in 190ft of sustained face/slab climbing on Tuolumne gold-polish... The problem was that we only spotted two of the bolts from the start. We started thinking about a backup plan, but I decided to give it a shot... I clipped the first two bolts, and moved straight up, which (as I later found out) was off route, but actually easier. I managed to place a few pieces of gear in a small roof, and found the remaining bolts. Yay! It turned out to be a very nice route...
To finish off the day we climbed 'D'Oh', and toproped 'Beer' and 'Donuts'.
On the way to dinner we picked our goal for Saturday: The West Pillar of Eichorn's Pinnacle.
Eichorn's Pinnacle is located on the western slopes of Cathedral Peak, so it requires a lengthy approach along the John Muir trail and some cross-country travel to reach its base. Once there the route follows an obvious wide crack. The first 5.9 pitch is not bad though, although the crack is wide, the protection is good and there a plenty of knobs on the outside, which make good footholds. With 160ft it is rather long though, so that we ran out of gear towards the end. The second pitch is a completely different story! I didn't enjoy the pitch a bit... first one has to traverse a slab section, which was fine, rounding the blank arrete was little fun though... followed by a roof with a flaring wide crack. Once that is passed, there is another roof/chimney/OW combination which was also little fun to climb (especially with a backpack).
From there on the climbing eased off. I led the third pitch, long wandering handcracks. A traversing pitch brought us to the base of a 5.9 flake, the last obstacle before the summit...
After the rapell we gained the shoulder of Cathedral Peak and took the trail back to the car.
It took us ten hours car to car.
No pics this week :-(
No comments:
Post a Comment