Ascensioni in Yosemite Valley come Tick

Rope was getting in the way

Epic day out in an absurd position with Yosemite falls putting on a show with peak flow of the year after all the snow melt.

Ethan and I brainstormed this one the night before and decided it sounded like a good idea - no real beta to go off we just took everything and went. 3500ft of elevation with a big pack was a slog, had a lot of tourists in awe of whatever we were doing.

Crazy amount of fixed ropes at the top (6) definitely needs a garbage disposal job. Fixed the 80m rope - which was clutch, a 70m would've required coming off rappel onto some extremely suspect traversing. Mixture of free and aid on the first pitch - 3 x #4s were again a good call. Second pitch was the technical aid, which is absolutely eased of all hooks by God's greatest gift in Yosemite - a rack of totems. Trusting a half engaged totem took a hot second, but it's bomb as the package says. Also turns out carrot bolts (rivets) back in Australia aren't so special, they exist here too - but they don't take plates, just nuts or actual rivet hangers which of course we didn't have. Sick position on the pitch then a bolt ladder to finish.

Got to the top, figured neither of us have ever rigged a tyrolean before but it was pretty easy to figure out. The rope access course I did before coming here actually paid off here in making it easier. Jugging the tyrolean was the hardest part of the day. Everything went perfectly??? We were both shocked.

Yosemite animal bingo was on fire on the walk off. Saw a Marmot, peregrine, brown bear and cub, California king snake, Alex Honnold on his bike at camp 4.

Does it count as a clean send if you undergrip on mega jugs on a 5.8 then fall 2m onto a ledge standing and your belayer doesn't even notice?

Sick Yosemite intro - p6 was the scariest thing I've ever led, 2 pitons and one worthwhile cam placement over 30m of traversing while still not totally trusting the granite smears - the handholds were the equivalent of pulling on a stale arnotts lemon crisp at points.

Felt like I went through a footwork class over 10 pitches and it finally started to click by the end. Shit's rough in the valley.

Linked 1/2, 3/4, 7-8.5 then ran out of rope.

Just another route to add to the list of things that might make you a believer. I had the pleasure of jugging/climbing/shenaniganing behind Sam on his glorious 22 hour all free ascent of El Corazon (the El Coraziad).

Brittany, Victoria, and I jugged to Mammoth the night before to try and maximise our sleep then the next morning Adrian and Sam simuled to Mammoth and collected their pre-rigged belayers (Brittany and I (Victoria just came to hang out and talk shit bc she’s a legend)) and Sam and I started romping while Adrian and Brittany chilled on the ledge to give us some time to create a gap so Adrian could start his attempt without us being in the way. Pretty classic scenes on the big stone if you ask me.

Highlights included: - Listening to multiple Lorde albums in full - Jugging the Nietzsche chimney and being rewarded with a lie down on Babsi’s portaledge - Taking a whole bunch of fucked up pendulums cleaning Sam’s gear to save time (“should i lower out or just take the fall?” “nah you’ll be fine there’s nothing to hit just take the whip”) - Sam firing every pitch like an absolute machine with only one fall on the Beak Flake - Jugging with two back packs - Down aiding the end of the roof pitch because Sam forgot to back clean his gear and i couldn’t lower out and also did not want to take the 15mpendulum whipper into the Tower - Having a chorus of 10 or so people from different routes cheer Sam on as he sent the roof traverse as the sun finished setting - Arriving at the tower and being handed a cup of tea that had been made by Miska and her partner who sent Golden Gate - Honestly just the whole thing. Supporting your friends to achieve their dreams is the fucking coolest thing ever.

I won’t forget this day for a long while. Thanks Sam.

For the descent take care, it might not be easy to locate it especially in the dark.

After topping out you follow a trail and a bunch of cairns down. Then you continue walking down on some slabs The rap station is as you walk down facing the valley to the right hand side (Skier's-right) A chain on a ledge with usually some fixed ropes, We did 6 raps (the last 2 were short)

Do NOT go left! Do NOT rap from the tat and old rings that are on a very dead looking tree.

After the raps follow a long but obvious trail through the trees and back on the road

Unbelievable route. I fell off the Alien Roof pitch which is one of the coolest cracks I’ve climbed after a decent onsight effort that got me on to the face after the roof. I also had to take and lower on the offwidth pitch because I left my #5 behind like an idiot and then got too scared to run out the whole top half of the pitch. Otherwise did everything else. What an awesome collection of steep splitters.

the most in over my head i've been. had (mostly) mentally prepared for the approach, adventurous/old-school style, steepness, offwidth, but not the squeeze chimneys, nor the exposed bottomless #5/#6 crux. led about the first half of p3; was a terrified gumby; Owen was a total champ.

back at cars 2:45am. brought and placed both #5s; a #6 may have been useful if not completely necessary, but neither of us have one anymore for the exact same reason :p

Very good Route!

Heaps of chossy rock to look out for though

Made me feal a bit that I was climbing in the mountains...

We linked 3-4 easy

And 7-8 in a mega 70m long pitch

I would suggest not linking 1 with 2

The start of 2 can be a bit commiting, Nicer to have the belayer next to you, to stop you for decking

We aided the bolted pitch

Could have been fun to try climb it, but not fun if we wasted that time and got caught out in the dark for the last couple of pitches

Especially when you need to do 12Raps to get out Rumor has it to better Rap that do the walk off..

First proper day in the Valley and we get sandbagged on to this by Adrian. First pitch was a rough warm up and I got pretty scared. I took an exciting fall on to an abysmal flared cam that some how held and that set the tone for the pitch. Pretty amazing though. The rest of the climbing was also hard and rad and scary. We bailed from the base of the crux as Adrian and Vic were back on the ground and we were ready to come down. Worthy.

Learning the hard way how to crack climb! Ooof

Day 1 we climbed to pitch 5 and fixed back to dinner ledge. Stoked to get the redpoint on pitch 2 this time. Day 2 we climbed to pitch 9 however bailed due to running out of daylight before the last pitch. Great adventure.

mega fun adventure, worth the crowds. tests your ability to climb everything: splitters, boulder sequences, steep jug haul, chimney (p5, p8), committing to balancy mantle above a first bolt/ledge (p4). pitch breakdown was arbitrary but worked out well: I somehow got the bouldery pitches (p3, p7) and not the reachy ones (p1, p6)

Moslty free, up the the 7a pitch, aid what we had to aid

4 days and 3 nights in the wall (el cap tower ->great, camp 4 ->crap, camp 6 -> super slippery) with prehauling to sickle ledge. Amazing and exhausting experience!

Did it in 2 days with a really beautiful night on dinner ledge. Good for practicing some aid climbing.

Steak-salad-day. 'If you cant climb the good-looking 1000m peak, climb its chossier sister'. Id heard about the training methods for this route involving garage door sitting and asphalt parking lot crawling but really henry and i should have put more time into practising going down waterslides at wet and wild without sliding. We got the day started at 5:30 in the carpark to avoid pony-boy's unplanned summit shiver-bivvy scenario. An added incentive was the thunderstorms predicted for the afternoon. But it doesnt rain in yosemite so we werent worried. Got to 'the narrows' at about 2:30, just as the thunderstorm rolled in on schedule. I struggled through with much swearing, henry got the bag stuck on second. I tied him off and rapped back into the chimney to encourage him to ditch the bag! Lucky he had slightly better sense to just take stuff out of the bag till it fit through the chimney. Squeeze struggling while feeling the thunder rattling the rock is a slightly stressful but pretty cool experience. The storm cleared and we went through to the top via an incorrect but very fun series of sporty flake pitches out left, got some photos and then saw another storm inbound. A double header! Tailed it down the gully at 7:15. The rain belted us as we raced down choss, followed by slippery slab waterfalls, henry hurriedly navigating. One particularly sketchy downclimb was bailed off and an impromptu rap down the slabs cost us a couple of slings but we were granted our continued survival in exchange. This journey was being viewed by all our friends through binos in the comfort of camp 4 so were glad we could provide some wet-weather entertainment. After another hour of glissading through broken trees and avoiding unannounced cliffs and waterfalls, we stumbled across a tourist track at 10:15. The car was parked for 16:45. I cant imagine what henry and i will go through on our second climb together. We both deserved the bin pancakes i promised for someone climbing stalathe with me on my facebook ad.

I did read the supertopo description of p2 but was stoked to get out and climb so applied a healthy amount of cognitive dissonance and figured I could 'just sit'. nowhere near enough gear with doubles up to #2 then singles up to #4. all four hexes got placed. fought valiantly for the onsight until about halfway then was completely flash pumped. top piece of gear was always placed on lead until the final offwidth. not the first time i've been completely shut down by '5.9' but afaicr the first time i've had to pause part way through pulling up rope to dry heave into a bush.

'Stoners highway is the best 5.10 in the valley' say all the 5.13 climbers in the valley. Maybe its the only one that makes them feel something. I could believe that. I had mixed feelings originally when gen wanted to take the 5.7 bail out of the reputation opening pitch, but it turned out to be the right move because i had a right coniption on the 2nd. Gr 20 slab sequence 3m above a .2 stuffed in a pin scar 4m above the next piece. I was 10/10 scared for 20 minutes of up and downing the sequence. I tried to recall vague images of the product disclosure on my travel insurance but i couldnt even read the crimps right before my eyes. Finally pulled it, trapsed up the ramp to the chains swearing and brushing sweat from everywhere. From there it didnt let up too much either. Gen had a 5.10 crux 5m above the chains with no gear. I extended by petzl adjust and prepared for a dive to the side. Impressively (impressively?) bold for a classic.

12.5hrs car to car. Pretty glad we planned it this time and started at 530 instead of 9! 3 person party with audrey and ariel. Solid nav efforts from audrey kept me from running after the wrong approach trail cairns like a puppy. Ariel contributed with the surprise mini fireball bottle at the top right as the clouds consumed us. Nicer climbing than i expected and good spirits only started to diminish on the hell of a hike back afterwards. Mandatory snow but slides on the east side of the dome were checked off. I booked the last 5k of the hike so i could make dinner for 25min before the girls arrived. Little did i know they were only 3min behind me! Bit of a dog act making them wait for my pasta to boil

When Henry and I first arrived in Yosemite, my stoke to climb much of anything was pretty low. Our campsite in El Portal was 40 minutes out of the park and offered all the social life that retirees in rental RVs could dream of. Oppressive heat baked every wall, and day by day the Valley seemed more like a concentration camp for hoardes of ill-informed tourists than a climbing destination.

After being cited by park rangers on our third day of climbing I was ready to throw in the towel, and had Henry not been on this trip I probably would have.

Nonetheless, the pile of aid gear we had both amassed beckoned to be used, and with some inspiration from Nick and Dave (and assurance there’s no rangers hiding in the stovelegs) we set off.

I should note that both Henry and I wanted to climb pure alpine style, that is without fixing and hauling to Sickle. In hindsight our early arrival at El Cap Tower meant we could have done this, but on Nick’s advice we compromised by hauling every pitch (including Pine Line and first four) but fixing lines from Sickle and sleeping on the ground. Personally I think this is a big concession in style, but it possibly avoided an epic and got us ahead of the crowds, so I'm happy we did it.

Day 1: Jug to Sickle. Henry led every pitch to arrive on El Cap Tower at 5:20pm.

Day 2: Mini epic on the Texas flake. Originally Henry was to take the first block, but we swapped for me to lead this pitch. Didn’t die. Henry flashed the King Swing and I recovered from a pretty bad bonk to lead from Grey Bands to Camp 5. The Great Roof was seeping with slimy algae, which made backcleaning the entire thing (so that Henry could lower out) a pretty spicy experience.

Day 3: Bit of a slow start while 4 all-star NIAD teams passed us. Triple-crowners Nick and Danford, Connor Herson, Tom Herbert, YOSAR rangers… we felt like the only gumbies on the wall! I led the wild bolt ladder clipping 3 bolts in the top 30 meters and we followed the final NIAD team down to the valley floor.

Overall a pretty cool end to a pretty cool trip, and possibly my last log here. I've started to realise I'm not quite eloquent enough to express how I feel on bigger objectives in writing, and most often I simply don't want to. Back in Sydney in a bit

proper adventure for my first day in the valley, including a long guidebookless approach and spectacular summit. led p1+p3 clean; briefly pulled on gear seconding 5.9++ p2 variant. fully committed to v-groove on p3 well above gear, somehow stayed on more due to stubbornness than actual friction (or maybe because i was going for a substantial ride on a #0.4 whether or not I gave up, or because I thought I was on 5.7)