Trip Report- Doggy Dome - Discovering a new wall in Southern Yosemite in the dead of the winter of 2012

visit this link to see the video diary of the day...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC1sdey8hl0

So after memorizing the directions to Watchtower I show up with my printed version just in case. I left the coast around 4:30am.
It’s 9am. I didn’t want to get there that early (freezing!) but I did. It wasn’t too cold actually. Sweatshirt weather. I have my gear and my dog and am psyched. I start off down the obvious little dirt road and then after about 5 short minutes it all goes south.

It looks to me like maybe a logging crew went in there. Or maybe a bomb went off? The trail disappears into a confusion of trees, stumps, and debris. Trees are covered with orange marking tape, blue tape, and blue spray paint. It looks like the setting of an Axmen episode. Confused, I head off into what I think is the right direction. I keep going, tying orange surveyor’s tape into the tree branches so I can find my way back... bread crumbs through the forest. Patches of “trail” appear and disappear. At least they look like a trail. But maybe not. After jumping huge logs, crashing through seemingly endless brush, I finally get the feeling that I’m not going the right way. It shouldn't be this hard. But I'm committed. At least the wasps aren't around yet... too cold. Still snow on the ground. It's January for cryin' out loud!

I whip out my little map, use my key chain compass and line up the eastbound sunrise and keep going. Eventually I run out of surveyor’s tape. Damn. I don’t see anything but an ocean of green, trees as far as I can see, which isn’t very far. No clearings, no boulders, no crags, nada. No semblance of a trail whatsoever. The hair on my neck is bristling, the fear that I’m about to get seriously lost in a dense forest is entering into my mind. But the thought of returning to the truck and going back home at 10:15am and not getting to my “new” crag is overwhelming… sub plans, taking a day off, arranging a babysitter, my wife’s look of disgusted disbelief. I reason I’d be better off getting lost and suffer a dramatic night in the snow than return home beaten. Plus, maybe I can find a clearing and get my bearings. So I become a cairn making machine. Every 10’ I build a tower out of whatever materials I can find… sticks, pine cones, and rocks. I stack them on stumps, boulders, across snow fields. I drag my feet and create long lines in the pine duff. I use my machete and chop my way through the brushy undergrowth.

An hour later, over two hours in, I’m fully committed and for sure nowhere near where I’m supposed to be (my goal is to drop in from the top of the formation), but I don’t care. At least I’m somewhere and if I keep going I’ll run into something. Right? Probably flawed reasoning, but I’m way beyond reason at this point. My dog keeps wandering back in the direction of the truck. Even she doesn’t trust my judgment, and I have to keep calling her back.

The hill begins to rise sharply, strewn with many, many large room-sized boulders beneath the tall pine trees and deep scrub. I’m screwed. It’s a maze, and there is no way I’ll be able to navigate through it, or cut through it all, let alone leave a bread crumb trail of cairns to get myself back to the truck. It’s over. I’ve failed.

But in desperation I move on up another 150' to a snowfield I see in the distance to the right. Maybe I can get one last look before I turn around. Then, through the trees, I see a huge rock face! Something!! other than trees!! It ain’t the Watchtower but maybe it’ll be something I can stand on and figure out just how lost I am. I double my efforts and machete my way up to the base.

And then it hits me… this looks familiar. I pull out my aerial photo I took two years ago and match up the runnels and cracks... Holy crap... I’m at the base of the cliff I’ve been looking for! I was a half-mile off course, at the bottom of the crag and not the top, but I ended up right where I wanted to be. A miracle.

I hustle up the slabs. It is 11:45am. I size up the 200'cliff and drop my 30 lb pack and get busy. By the end of the day I have 5 new FAs and new objectives for the summer of 2012… Then I follow my loyal dog Sydney back to the car and decide to name the dome for her.

Doggy Dome

The End