I am awake and I have no idea what time it is. It sounds like the rain and wind has stopped, that is good at least. I am starting to get the chills and I don’t know how to get warmer. It is not helping that everything is wet or at least damp, that is for sure. I also think the rainfly on the portaledge is leaking. Sh#t, how do we get down tomorrow? There is no easy option that I feel totally comfortable with. How bad could it get if we get stuck on this thing when the heady rain and snow comes in? I am sure everything will be just fine. I do worry way to much. But it is good; it makes me analyze the sh#t out of things. I guess if that is what my worrying does then I should get up and take down the fixed lines so we can get off this thing sooner tomorrow morning. I sure as hell am not doing anything productive just laying here thinking.

Background

I don’t quite remember why, but for some reason in January I go it in my head that doing a big wall route in winter would be a really fun idea. I think I had mental images of poking my head out of a portaledge’s rain fly to see snow and somehow wall climbing while it is snowing. I really did not know how well this idea would work. I guess I mostly just wanted to see how climbing in winter conditions would go.

When looking for a partner for this trip I figured it better be someone I know and get along with well and could spend a day or two stuck on a portaledge with. This person also needed to be a motivated climber who can push through momentary discomfort. Given this I could think of few people other than one of my best climbing friends, Kristie. We met each other a number of years back while ice climbing in North Conway, New Hampshire. We were both living in Boston at the time and as it turned out we were both very involved in the Boston climbing community. Over the next couple of years we had gotten to share some fun and exciting climbing trips together. She was the one who caught me on my one and only ice climbing fall, so far. We also have the inside joke that I named a first assent I bolted in Rumney, New Hampshire after my impression of an old boy friend of hers, Mentally Disturbed. When I quit my job back in Boston to pursue the unemployed climbers life, she was the first person to offer me a place to crash. Fortunately for me, when I decided to get a job again and relocate to the SF Bay Area she too moved out to the Bay Area for a job.

While Kristie is solid with the basics of leading moderate trad and ice, she knows nothing about big wall aid climbing, she just thought sleeping on a portaledge looks like fun. I myself cannot claim to be any sort of expert either. I had only done three wall routes before, so I am still figuring this type of climbing out to a degree.

The Approach

Our trip really started at about 3:30 AM when we drove into Yosemite. I wanted to get an early start as I knew getting all our gear to the base of Washington’s Column was going to take a long time. We must have packed close to 200 lb. and Kristie weighs in only around 100 lb. so we were going to have to make multiple trips. To cut down on the time this was going to take us I decided to use an old pushcart I had in the garage to move the haul bag and portaledge the first couple of miles, until the trail gets steep. I had the cart originally made during a trip I did in Fiji. About 9 years ago I spent 11 days walking around the largest island in Fiji, Viti Levu, as a way to really explore the country and people. After two days of walking the weight of my backpack was getting to me so I went to a welding/machine shop and had them build a push cart for my backpack, similar to one I had read about in my favorite book, The Longest Walk by George Meegan. At the end of that trip I mailed the pushcart home as a souvenir, but never found a use for it until this trip.

On Belay

It was about 7am when we finally got to the climbing. Knowing that Kristie had never done anything like this before I would be leading every pitch and I would have to keep a close eye on her. As I stood up in my aider to place my second piece she short roped me and was really slow to get me the slack I needed. It happened again when I was going for the third gear placement so I turned around to see what was going on. It was abundantly clear that she had never lead belayed with a Grigri before as she stood there with her head down, one hand on the break end of the rope and one on the leaders end, jerking the rope back and forth not understanding why it is not feeding out. I honestly don’t know how she managed to never learn how to lead belay with a Grigri before, but there I was, hanging on my fifi hook on my third piece about 15 feet up an 1,100ft route giving a how to lead belay with a Grigri lesson. Fortunately she took to it quickly and I was off again.

Once reaching the first belay I hustled to make an anchor, fix the lead line and start the hauling. Unfortunately, Kristie was a little slow setting up her ascenders and getting up to the first piece of gear. I figured this was to be expected, even thought we had spent a day practicing by ascending a fixed line a few weeks back. Fortunately, despite it technically being winter, the weather felt like spring. Once I got the haul bag up and moored into the anchor I found a comfortable spot on the ledge sat back and enjoyed the warmth of the sun while Kristie worked on cleaning.

A few minutes after getting comfortable I hear Kristie shouting something about gear being stuck so I stood up and looked over the ledge to see what was going on. I felt a bit of a sinking feeling when I saw that she was still on the first piece, a nut. I instructed here to go down and get a rock seeing how she was just 15 feet off the ground. Reluctantly she did, but ended up dropping the rock, once back at the nut. After reluctantly taking another trip back down to the ground to get the rock and dropping it once again I called my losses and told her to move on. It felt like we wasted 30 minutes or more just on the first 15 feet of the climb. I sat back down on the ledge and enjoyed the sun some more, convinced that she would be up there in no time and then we would really pick up the pace. I was wrong, about 10 minutes later I hear here shouting about something else being stuck. It was another nut she could not get out. It was the second piece of gear. I told here to leave it and that I would go down and try to get them out. I pulled the haul line out of the rope bag and rappelled down there with a good sized rock I picked up from the ledge and was able to get both nuts out with a few good taps. I don’t think I had done much of a bounce test on either of the nuts, but for the rest of the climb I tried hard to be gentle while aiding on nuts so they would not be so hard to clean.

Once getting all the ropes back in order and re-racking the gear, I timidly started up the second pitch. The start of this pitch was rated C2+ which is not that bad, I guess, but the fact that it starts right off of a good sized ledge after a 15 foot traverse had me worried about rope stretch, hitting the ledge and breaking my ankles if the piece I was on came out. Being to timid to use cam hooks, I pulled through the thin parts on ball nuts. I honestly don’t know which one is more secure, but the fact that you can let go of a ball nut and it does not just fall out like a cam hook often does puts me more at ease. I made sure to clean all my ball nuts myself. Not just because they would not hold a fall, but because I was pretty sure if I was lazy and left them in for Kristie to clean, I would find myself having to repel down and help her get them out.

The Learning Curve and Ledge Life

Cleaning the second pitch went much faster than the first, but things slowed down again on the third and the fourth. On the third pitch she had difficulty passing her ascender over the rounded off edge to the belay ledge. And on the fourth pitch she jammed one of her ascenders into a quickdraw and it took her a long time to figure out how to release it. But, in all honesty, she was actually doing really well, especially considering that this was her first time doing most of this stuff. She had been getting faster with cleaning each pitch and working through her problems with only a little guidance from me for the most part. The exposure did not scare or slow her down and she was willing to push the climbing into the night to make up for our slower parts of the day, despite having been up since 3am. Not even peeing her pants phased her much. She had a slip with the funnel at one of the belay stations while trying to relieve herself. I am actually glad she made that mistake, as I don’t feel so bad after having literally sh#t my pants climbing with her once a few years back. I learned never to eat an unusually large amount of fiber in the morning before setting off on lead.
The bodily functions continued that evening when I had bad aim and peed on my side of the portaledge. Meanwhile, Kristie had to manage her tampon situation, which made me feel a little better abut laying my head on a surface where I peed.

Before settling in for the night we checked the weather forecast on Kristie’s phone. When I envisioned this trip I really did not think we would make it to the top. I figured the weather would be cold, maybe snowing or raining. I thought we would get up one, maybe two pitches and set the portaledge up, freeze our assess off for one night before deciding to come back down. Much to my surprise however, the weather has been quite the opposite and it looked like we actually had a good chance of completing the route. The week before, we saw the forecast had been predicting some rain and potential for thunderstorms part way through our trip. The forecast was constantly changing and that night when Kristie looked at it, it showed we had a good chance of rain in the middle of the next day, but that it would clear up for the night. The rain was predicted to return the following day with colder temperatures and then turn to snow.

A New Day and the Big Push

The following morning when we woke I told Kristie the plan. We were a little short of halfway to the top. If we could pick up the pace a little and the afternoon rain does not slow us down we could make it to the top and hopefully even start our descent down by that night. Kristie pushed back a little bit on my angst to get moving fast and early that morning, but in the end she went along with it and really did not cost us any time.

Pitch 6 and 7, the first two of the day were very slow for me. The C2+ sections took me longer to figure out than I would have liked. Worst of all was that I forgot to take the haul line with me when I started up pitch 6. Having to make an anchor so I could get lowered back down to retrieve the haul line and then head back up cost us a lot of time. Kristie was moving at a fairly even pace through out the day except for pitch 9 where I had clipped a bolt during a traverse, while standing on a ledge, which was out of her reach. It took her a long time to sort that situation out. As I was hauling, stacking the haul line and waiting for Kristie to finish cleaning each pitch I was watching the sky. The day started out perfectly clear, but as the day went on the haze would build up and then dissipate. Each time it built up, it built up a little thicker and eventually started forming clouds. My anxiety for moving quickly and efficiently peaked each time I saw the clouds building.

I think most people who know me would say I have an even-tempered and relaxed personality. There are some people I have climbed with, however, that for one reason or another get under my skin and it does not take much for me to get frustrated and agitated with them. Thankfully Kristie is not one of those people. This only just occurred to me while I sat on a ledge that afternoon nervously watching the clouds building, feeling the periodic gusts of wind getting stronger, looking over the topo for the 8th time and asking myself why don’t I feel the urge to shout “hurry the hell up Kristie!.” I suppose this is why I feel like we are such great climbing partners. I just have an unquestionable faith in me that whatever the hell it is that she is doing down there must be 95% awesome and I probably can’t help out much with that last 5% from the belay.

That evening, a good while after dark, we made it to the top of pitch 9. Hauling was quite slow and difficult. Kristie had to unstick the haul bag 5 or 6 times. Communication was not that easy too as it was a 170 foot wandering pitch. Just as Kristie reached the top it started to sprinkle. We had been very lucky that it did not rain on us during the day.

A New Strategy

We had only two pitches left and the last one, pitch 11, looked to be the shortest and easiest of them all, 70 feet of C1 and 4th class. I decided I would lead the next pitch, pitch 10, and tie off the lead and haul lines to the anchor as well as leave the rack up there over night. We would set up the portaledge on the top of pitch 9. In the morning we could get up early, jug up the fixed lines, lead the last pitch and then start our descent by rappelling the route. We would pick up the haul bag and portaledge at pitch 9 on our way down.

The only problem was that I was very nervous about our descent. I have never had to rappel more than 2 pitches with a fully loaded haul bag and never to a hanging rappel anchor. I had little concern about the actual transitions at the anchors. I figured I would just moor the bag like I do going up so I could get the weight off of me while getting on and off rappel. What I was most concerned about was that the route has a good number of pitches that traverse. There might be a better, more direct, rappel route below us, but I don’t know about it. Therefor, our best known option is to figure out how to down aid the 5 or so traversing pitches with heavy haul bags and potentially on wet rock in the rain. I have never done anything like this. I was particularly stressed know that a stuck rope, missing the anchor or just not being able to get to the anchor could potently leave us stranded in the middle of an 1,100 foot wall with a rain and snow storm moving in on us. Our other options for getting down consisted of the North Dome Gully decent or hiking up and around North Dome itself to get on Indian Ridge and then hike down and around Snow Creek to Tanaya Creek. I felt that both alternate options were bad. Both of them would require us to make multiple trips as the two of us can not carry all the gear in one go. The North Dome descent looks steep and if it were guaranteed to be dry we could probably do it, but if it starts raining I think the likelihood of slipping with a heavy load is just to high, but I could be wrong. As for hiking up and around, that is the safest option, but it would be 6 or 8 miles long and there is going to be a lot of snow up there. Sadly, we forgot to pack our snowshoes and gaiters in the bottom of the haul bag, along with the kitchen sink incase we run out of water, so that option is out too.

After having fixed the ropes and stashed the rack at the top of pitch 10, I got down to Kristie and helped her set up the portaledge. By this time it was lightly raining with moderate to light wind and everything was getting wet. We got the rain fly up and Kristie hopped on the ledge with all our food and sleeping bags. I had brought some plastic construction trash bags so I spent a few minutes trying to get the extra rope and gear covered up with the plastic bags before climbing in the ledge. We checked the weather one more time and it looked like we had the real rain moving in on us tomorrow morning at 10am. I was so exhausted I only ate a few bites before sleeping. I just bundled myself up as best as I could and went to sleep while Kristie debated weather or not she should get out of her wet cloths and into her dry clothes potentially getting them wet too. I had only brought the clothes I was wearing so that was an easy decision for me to make.

Awake in the Darkness of the Early Morning

It was when I woke up in the middle of the night with chills passing through my body and anxiety about what was going to happen the next day that I noticed the rain had stopped. I poked my head out of the portaledge to see a perfectly clear sky full of stars. The cool, but still air helped calm my nerves a little. I knew I was not going to be able to get back to sleep. My mind was too much awake for sleep and I figured I should do whatever I can to prepare for our retreat tomorrow. I crawled over Kristie to get out of the ledge and then I started jugging up pitch 10 to clean it, get my rack and the ropes off of it. On my way up I considered rope soloing the last pitch by myself in the stillness of the night, just to say I climbed the whole route, but realized I could not with Kristie asleep and tied in on the other end of the lead line and I had left the other end of the static haul line tied in at the portaledge so it would not blow away and get stuck on a tree or rock over night.

The Descent

After rappelling back down to the portaledge I was able to get a few more hours of sleep before our alarm went off at 5am. The sky that morning remained clear as it was during the night. It was so tempting to turn our sights back up to the top, but we had already seen how uncomfortable the rain made things and it was hardly even raining so we apprehensively started our descent.

For me, the main concern was to avoid any complications on the way down so I decided to split pitch 9 in to two rappels, because it was 170 feet, it wandered a little and in low angle terrain. I worried that if the knot got stuck pulling the rope I might not have enough free rope to lead back up to fix the problem. I found a good-sized flake half way down that I was able to thread some 8mm cord around to make an intermediate rappel anchor. The second rappel was the first of our traversing rappels that we would need to down aid. I took the lead which turned out being easy enough. I would just swing over, as I fought with the haul bag for a foot placement, shove a cam in the crack and quickly clip both ropes. When it was Kristie’s turn to come down we were not quite sure how things were going to work. I had tied off both ropes to the anchor where I was, so I could pull her over, but we still did not want her going for a great big pendulum out and around the corner to who knows where every time she pulled a cam out. It took us a few rappels to really figure it out, but what we ended up doing was having her pull up 30 or so feet of slack on one of the ropes she was repelling on. She then would tie a knot and clip it to her belay loop and I would clip my end of that rope into an HMS carabiner with a munter hitch. As she rappelled lower and cleaned each consecutive piece of gear I would pull her in and keep her from going for a swing. When she ran out of rope to rappel, because of the one strand being clipped into her belay loop, she would pull up 30 or so feet on the other rope, clip in and I would keep here tight on that one.

We spent something like 8 to 10 hours working our way down to the ground that day. I eat up a lot of time insisting that we coil the ropes up each time and rappel with them on us instead of letting them fly in the wind. I was afraid that they could get stuck off route and we would be unable to reach them. We had no major mishaps on the way down and not even a drop of rain until we got to the ground. Once on the ground and we were looking up at The Prow and visually retracing what we had just done we felt the wind picking up. Over the next two or three hours the light drizzle turned to a persistent rain.

Back on The Ground

Because I was totally beat, hadn’t really eaten in over a day I proposed we go get a spot in Camp 4. This would be quite luxurious in my book, compared to my norm of sleeping on a rock in a boulder field. Being able to put up a tent in the rain, even if the bottom of it gets swampy is way nice compared to hiding under a plastic tarp on a slippery wet rock. Kristie holds a slightly different idea of what comfort is when it comes to camping. She wanted to stay in a tent cabin in Curry Village (or Half Dome Village as it is now known, dam Delaware North). Kristie reminded me that it was my birthday while we were on the wall, I had actually forgotten. I guess I was so focused on the climbing. She said she wanted to treat me for my birthday by paying for the cabin as well as take me out to dinner at the Mountain Room Restaurant. I felt like I had entered a different dimension to the reality I know and love, or something like that. A dimension in which people who visit Yosemite have wheels on their suitcases and the sight of a dear in a parking lot sniffing at a Snickers bar wrapper left on the ground is a sight worthy of taking a picture. After thinking about it for a minute, I figured I did have wheels on my haul bag for part of this trip. I might as well go along with things so I washed up, in a shower, turn my underwear inside out and tried to enjoy eating dinner at a restaurant and sleeping in a bed in the Valley for the first time, ever.