Due to an epic winter and one of the deepest snowpacks ever recorded in the Sierra, the road through Tuolumne/Tioga Pass wasn't supposed to open until July. So it came as a big surprise when a few days earlier, the national park service declared it'll open the road on June 18, at 8am. Sweet!

After a beautiful drive in, we started up South Crack on Stately Pleasure Dome just after 1pm in gorgeous weather. The first two pitches are stellar and as it is typical for granitic domes, get easier the higher you go. I thought I bootied my first alien ever (green) from the first pitch (after a 5 minute struggle to free it), although we found its owners later and it was a happy reunion (someone from supertopo?) I like tcu's anyway :) The 5.7 friction pitch gave me pause - I spent a while on the ledge mid-way before committing to the initial moves off it.
Afterwards, we drove to Daff Dome, where there was another car parked. As we pulled up and started getting our gear together, Peter Croft walked by, back to that car! Melissa and I were both way too excited and took the opportunity to shake the hand of a legend (amazing, I just noticed from wikipedia that we share a birthday, as well as the name! Unfortunately that's where the similarities end :)). He was super friendly, we chatted about climbing and his upcoming summer plans - and we continued to Daff Dome, now completely ecstatic from this unexpected encounter. Since it was almost 5:30pm, we debated whether to do the first pitch of Bombs over Tokyo or climb West Crack, but we decided we have enough time to get to the top and climb the uber classic West Crack. The views were mind blowing and we enjoyed the soft evening light on top, with 360 views of one of the most gorgeous places on earth. After getting a good look at Fairview Dome, we got down and drove to the Whoa Nellie Deli for dinner, witnessing a beautiful sunset over Mono Lake - what a way to end the day!
Sunday saw us back at Whoa Nellie for breakfast - we were in no rush, since our route (Fairview Dome's regular route) was going to be in the shade in the morning, and we didn't expect competition. It was a bit tricky to find a place to leave the car, as the usual pullout was a big snowbank - but we found a spot just a 1/4 mile up the road, and bee lined through the snow from there. We had to step up on the snow bank right off the road, and were on snow the whole rest of the way - it actually made for a faster than usual approach! Since it can be sketchy climbing the steep snow cone to get to the rock of such routes early in the season, we brought lightweight crampons - which were a great piece of mind (although maybe not strictly necessary).

Getting established on the rock was the crux, I ended up climbing the first 15 feet with one rock shoe and one running shoe (to keep my other rock shoe dry). There was a lot of sand covering the footholds, for extra excitement. Of course, the 5.9 crux was wet as expected, as was part of the 2nd pitch - nothing like snot-lined handjams to get your attention! The rest of the route was completely dry and a total blast... and did I mention we were in tshirts and in the sun the whole time? Actually, Melissa put on her windbreaker higher up, but I enjoyed the pleasant breeze. At the top, there was no wind, and the views were so amazing we ended up lounging around for quite a while. What an amazing end to the weekend!

Peter

PS. More photos on my website here