The South Face of Noth Dome

This was an epic day… the kind of day that makes me love climbing. We started climbing at 6:05 am and made good pace simulclimbing the first half of Royal Arches. It was the first time I used a Micro Traxion and it made everything feel so much safer. Graham and I cruised up to the pendulum and took about 15 minutes and multiple attempts trying to free it. 5.10b... no way! Just then, another party flew up and we let them pass. Turns out the leader was Eric Sloan, the author of the current Valley guidebook. He was taking the software engineer who built his website up the climb and they were going fast. We gave up on the attempt to free the 5.10b slab, repassed Eric and essentially climbed alongside him for the duration of the climb. Royal Arches is one of the rare routes you can make that happen since there are so many variations. We had a great conversation about a variety of climbing topics and we also discussed the death of his two friends who fell 1000 ft and died on El Cap the day before. Right as the sun hit the wall, we reached the repel rings and said our goodbyes as we continued on the 5.5 (sandbag) slab to the spring. We climbed the route in just over 3 hours. We took our time hanging out at the spring and roped up for the 4th class slab up to the top of the arches. We had a long leisurely lunch and started the hot and long hike to North Dome. 

Yosemite is magical and climbing in Yosemite is even more magical... That was apparent on this hike. Sometimes, I want to slow down and appreciate the scenery but, in a way, being on the move all day is the perfect way to do such a thing. We got to the base of the route and started climbing at noon. The sun was out, and I had a bit of an eerie feeling starting the unprotectable 5.6 slab. I have realized I really enjoy slab climbing but it scares me more than any other type of climbing due to the fact that it is always runout! I really think it's all about confidence in your feet. If you believe your foot won't slip... it won't. It's all in the head. The second pitch of the climb changed the vibe. The 5.7 mantel out of the large right facing corner was hands down the coolest move I have ever done. Graham said the same. It went from warm, shady, and quiet, to sunny, windy, and exposed with incredible views of half dome. It was epic and the traverse moves and crack that followed put a smile on my face the whole way up. We got to the first chimney pitch, and I didn't really know what to expect. I found the 5.6 chimney on Royal Arches kind of difficult, so I was a little worried about the long 5.7 chimney I was about to lead. I sang and moaned my way up it... it was quite physical, but I found it really, really fun. The move coming out of the chimney was a perfect hand jamb to mantel and it quickly became our second favorite climbing move ever. 

We continued up more sustained climbing to the final pitch of the route per Eric Sloan's topo. I was in the grove today and I was stoked I got to lead every pitch. The topo took me up a thin crack which suddenly ended in a burley looking slab climb. It looked doable but fall potential looked high. I double checked the topo and it didn't make sense. I compared it to the Supertopo guidebook I had on my phone and after a search on mountain project, I realized I was about to head up a section of 5.9R slab. No thank you. I downclimbed, removed my gear, and headed right on the original finish of the route which is a traversing left facing slab corner which required an additional belay. We topped out around 6:30 pm exhausted and stoked. Half Dome looked unreal and after a cliff bar and a small ration of water, we began the loooong hike down to North Dome Gully. 

We killed our last drops of water on top of Washington Column and descended the gully. Earlier in the day we had dreamed of making it down by 8 since we had assumed that was the time the pizza deck would close. Halfway down the gully we ran into someone who was running the gully for fun... how crazy. We asked what time the pizza deck closed and when he said 10, we were back in business! We continued down at a slowish pace with darkness on the horizon. Suddenly we lost the trial, then suddenly, darkness hit. We put our headlamps on and found a repel anchor. I knew that we shouldn't do it since the decent should not require any repels but Graham was struggling on the downhill and he convinced me to rig the rope to rappel. We repelled under headlamp and made it to the top of another cliff. The ledge was covered in ants. As we pulled the rope, there literally must have been thousands of them on the rope. They crawled up our legs and bit, but it wasn't too bad. I rigged a second repel and the next ledge appeared to be ant free. However, there was another cliff and this time we didn't see any more anchors. I was over it and I noticed a possible way out to the right. I told Graham to start hiking as I coiled the rope. I caught up with him and after 10 minutes, we found the trail. We still had quite a way to go and our hopes of reaching the pizza deck were fading. We reached the end of the gully around 9:10 and the original plan was to hike back to the road and hitchhike back to the car. Looking at my map, the car appeared to be under 2 miles away so I suggested we just go for it since no one would likely be driving and willing to pick up two sweaty climbers at this hour. I took all the weight on my back and after a check of the time, we began to run. We ran all the way back at the car (walking quick on the uphill). It was awesome. We got back to the car covered in sweat with smiles on our faces... it was 9:46. We drove over to Curry Village and made it the pizza deck just in time for the last order of the night. One large pizza, cheesy bread, and two beers. It was glorious. We devoured everything and snuck into the Curry Village showers for a wash. We met quite an interesting character also sneaking into the showers that night and we had quite a long and interesting conversation about life. He was just laid off from his job and went full vagabond traveling around the US, surrounding himself with nature in search for happiness. We took a liking to each other and I recommended he read some Karuac and take up climbing.

March 2024 Afterthought

I still remember the song that was stuck in my head on the chimney pitch:

https://open.spotify.com/track/69d5AEWSN2bOmd19hDOR4P?si=08292cf434f24e48