After the storms, which we enjoyed from a portaledge on Middle Cathedral, the weather in the valley was much cooler. We'd already been up on Secret Passage, but had bailed in the sweltering conditions. After having put this time into the route, we were keen that another effort would give us a reasonable chance of success. So, before embarking on another big wall adventure, we heading to the top of El Cap to ab in and have a look at the top of the route, the second 13c in particular. We had a fun couple of days up there also with our friend Paolo who came along to take some photos. We tried the 13c, which seemed not that bad, and also the next 12c R, 13a traverse and 13a secret passage pitch. I had a really hard time on the Secret Passage pitch, basically getting shut down. It is a thin seam with no footholds and very basic. This was quite worrying, but overall it was a success and very motivating as the climbing higher on the route is really good.
Although the weather was now cooler, it was also less settled and there were regular storms. We spent some time having a go on the Heart Blast before getting a weather window and packing for SP again. We hiked our gear to the base and minutes later it stormed and we got to see horsetail falls in action, at just the place we'd stashed our gear! This meant another delay waiting for things to dry. We finally set off on the route on Friday morning, with more storms due to pass through on Sunday/Monday. After our Middle Cathedral experience we felt more relaxed about sitting these out on the wall. Although we almost blew it when we realised halfway up the zodiac talus that we'd forgotten the cards! Pete lost rock paper scissor and hiked back down to retrieve them.
By Sunday evening we'd made it about half way up the wall, mainly on ground we'd been on before, had done the 'Eagle's bone trap' pitch and scoped out the next 12c. The 'Eagle's bone trap' gets 12+ and turned out to be desperate! You go horizontal to a mediocre hand jam and cut loose and swing across the wall hoping the jam doesn't rip. Possibly the hardest move on the route we thought. Then we waited for the storms, and waited. The only other team on the wall we could see, our storm buddies, managed to top out and left us. We had a good bivi under a roof and we went to sleep without bothering to pull the fly over us. A few drips woke me up in the night and I woke Pete to start getting the fly over us. "What is that noise?" I hadn't noticed the roaring noise of running water, and with a head torch we could see horsetail falls in full flow about 15 metres away, and we hadn't even bothered with the fly!
Falcon dihedral
Bivi before the storm
Chilling in the storm on Monday
Happy Pete
Monday was a total washout, very heavy rain and falling as snow on and off. I was grateful Pete went to get the cards! And we had music and some educational reading material. Pete continued to thrash me at a card game I wish I'd never taught him. Tuesday was better weather but there was a massive amount of water coming off the wall so we weren't going anywhere. Horsetail was running down the way we'd come up and there was another fall we hadn't expected coming off the Devil's Brow, the way up. By Wednesday it was climbable but damp and we managed the next 12c and up to the 13c which we'd tried from the top.
The 'Guillotine Parrano' pitch has a hideously loose guillotine shaped flake above the belay that you have to undercut. Will Stanhope said Nico had told him: "Will, if this flake breaks, for you, it is the end..." Great. Nico and Sean must have been high as kites on the flute music when they did this pitch. Fortunately I'd kicked half of this flake off when we'd abbed in the other week. It had gone with terrifying ease. There was half still there that I couldn't get off and Pete had to delicately and boldly climb past it, I belayed with my eyes closed. This pitch, 13c, has a boulder problem crux using a bad hold, this was the only hold on the pitch that was wet. We dogged to the next bivi not sure whether we'd be able to climb this pitch in its condition.
Guillotine
Wet crux hold on the second 13c
On Thursday, day 7 on the wall, most of the upper wall was wet. The crux pitch had a wet hold and the weather had turned horribly cold, down to -17 degrees C on the top of El Cap according to the forecast. We had both all but given up any hope of freeing the route. We descended to the Guillotine pitch for a last effort, chalking, taping and drying the crux hold on the way. Despite the conditions and to our surprise an hour or two later we'd done the pitch. I then lead the 12c R and the next 13a 'wild rise traverse' finishing with a fun dyno. There was now a glimmer of hope that it still might go free, the Secret Passage pitch was still wet however...
Pete thought the Secret Passage pitch would dry enough to climb during the middle of the day, but I was doubtful. At 11am, under the power of the sun as it reached its zenith, the pitch was indeed climbable. Pete got it done in about an hour, I got on it with a feeling of dread knowing how hard I'd found it previously. Using a boot I'd modified with a knife to give a sharper heel this pitch was so much easier and I was so incredibly chuffed when I did it second attempt. I had to climb through the water at the end of the pitch because the waterfall had already returned and within 20 minutes the pitch was unclimbable again!
With only an 11R and a 5.10 left we made a sprint for the top, but the next pitch was pouring with water, and we were dismayed when we realised we were going to have to spend another night on the wall. Water wasn't a problem because we could collect the runoff, but we only had a cereal bar for dinner. Our hope for the next day was that, like the Secret Passage pitch, the upper pitches would dry enough during the middle of the next day for us the climb them. If not, then we'd already been in touch with James Lucas about a possible rescue! We went up again at about ten am on Saturday, day nine on the wall. We still thought the route might not happen for us, everything had gone against us it seemed, but for a few hours again during the day the rock was dry enough to climb and we made it out.
It has been another amazing trip to Yosemite. I'm grateful to Pete for being a super solid easygoing climbing partner and unflappable zen master. We had traveled out with a long list of objectives, the first being the Secret Passage. But we had underestimated just how tough this route would be, combined with the tricky weather and conditions, I feel very lucky to have succeeded on this route. Nine days on a route is also a new record for us both. The climbing isn't very hard, but it's bold, loose, sometimes dirty, and logistically difficult to work some pitches, making it feel like a serious undertaking overall. Thanks a lot to Voltaic Systems for solar chargers and Ocun for jamming gloves.
It was sweltering in the valley and we'd just retreated from El Capitan after having a go at Secret Passage. I knew about a route called Father Time on Middle Cathedral from both James Lucas, who'd been on it, and Tobias Wolf, who'd made the third ascent. It was meant to be a great option for hot weather as it gets almost no sun. It's also relatively convenient to try since you only need to haul to half height, set up a portaledge, and spend a few days working the crux pitches which are just above. The descent is by abseiling the route.
The hard climbing involves three 13b pitches in a row; the 'boulder problem', 'the athletic 12c' and the 'index 11d'. Just in case these pitches turned out to be really tough, we decided to give ourselves a lot of time to try them. So we planned for one day to half height and then three full days on the top half of the route. The forecast on the board at camp 4 wasn't perfect, one day there was a 40% chance of showers, maybe thundery, and another a 50% chance. What does this mean, that it might rain at some point? Or, that you can expect it to rain half of the time? I still don't know.
The first half of the route was great, perfect rock, much better than Secret Passage, and some really good slab climbing. It rained a few times during the day and we hid under the fly before pushing on. Just as we arrived at the portaledge bivi it pissed it down and we scrabbled around trying to get the portaledge out. This was a shambles and Sean Warren would have been appalled, we ended up damp, lying on a damp slanting ledge under a damp fly. Thankfully it stopped and we managed to relocate our bivi to a more convenient setup on the other side of the ledge. The weather cleared, we ate Top Ramen and had a good sleep.
First day rain showers
Setting up between showers
The next day started well, we climbed some easy slabs, an awesome 5.12 and arrived at the 'boulder problem'. Pete kindly developed some very reach dependant beta on the boulder problem that meant I could flash it. After doing the boulder faster than we expected, I went for a look at the athletic 12c. I had good on-sight go on this getting to a bolt half way up the layback flake. On the way down it started to thunder and started to rain. Fixing our two ropes we got back to the portaledge very fast and just in time as the rain became very heavy. We hid under the fly on Friday afternoon and didn't emerge until Monday morning....
Not the best weekend ever, but surprisingly not that bad either. We passed the time chatting, playing a lot of cards and I read while Pete, who didn't have a book, pondered the great mysteries of life. It stopped raining a few times long enough for us to get out and stretch our legs on the sloping ledge we were next to. Because of the cold and lack of activity, we had plenty of water, but were a bit low on food. Things started to get serious when we ran out of peanut butter and so only had jam to put on out bagels.
The view!
It was a huge relief when we woke on Monday morning to clear skies and the early morning sun creeping down the Dawn Wall. This was the day we had planned to descend but it was now the only day we had to finish the route. Our fixed lines took us back to the athletic 12c. I got back on to warm up and work out some beta, hoping for a quick redpoint. I found this pitch tricky but linked the hard layback section a few times and decided to go for it. My first go was disappointing, slipping off at the same place I reached on the on-sight. We switched and Pete worked it and then, impressively, did it first redpoint. My first go seconding I also messed up my sequence and slipped off. Knowing we had a lot more climbing ahead I took a very short rest before going again and falling again. I had one more go, actually my best, but I was too tired by now to do the pitch.
Between the showers
It clears!
Moving on, we were both able to make short work of the index 11d which I think suited us both. This was a cool pitch with bouldery and technical groove climbing. A pitch later it was dark and also the rock quality took a turn for the worse. Pete led an unpleasant bouldery 5.12 with some loose boulders on it. We descended from this point as the climbing didn't seem as good, and we had planned to descend from a pitch higher in any case. We were both really pleased with the day, it had been a brilliant day of climbing.
Five days, two and a half climbing and two and a half sheltering under the portaledge fly. The climbing was excellent and using the fly in anger for the first time was exciting, especially since our options for descending were very limited by only having one 50m rope not tied to the cliff above us! It was worrying at the time, especially the night of nearly non-stop thunder and lightning when there were flashes more than once a second at some points. A great adventure in retrospect which, for better or for worse, makes us feel much more relaxed about getting back on the wall with rain forecast.
Nico Favresse and Sean Villanueva climbed a new El Cap free route in 2006 on the far East side of El Capitan around the line of two existing aid routes, The Eagle’s Way and Bad To The Bone. A photo of Nico pulling the crux moves of the route made it onto the cover of the big walls guide, but in nearly ten years the route hasn't been repeated and has received very little attention as far as we know. This being another free route on El Cap, so it's likely to have some spectacular climbing, the fact that it's unrepeated and that it isn't prohibitively difficult meant it was something both me and Pete were keen to try. On getting back to the valley we were straight up there to have a look at the initial pitches. The topo shows the first pitch being a 5.10R, not a bad warm up in our minds. Pete set off for a look, but it turned out to be a baffling slab and with poor gear above some ledges! I went up for a look and made a tricky rock over move by holding onto my foot and lifting it onto an edge. It was pretty scary and seemed an ominous sign for what the rest of the route might entail. Looking at the topo for the Prophet later on, which also climbs this pitch, the pitch is given 12b R! We also heard that another climber from the UK had been badly hurt falling off this pitch - bit of a sandbag at 5.10! It's mellow after that for a few pitches, until we reached a groove line given 12R. Pete set off on this and on-sighted it, but it also looked really scary and run out. Seconding I thought that it was a brilliant effort on-sighting it, I would have been terrified. Most of the gear are in-situ copper heads. After this pitch we were starting to run out of time and to aid the next pitch, 13c R to free climb, was going to take longer that we had.
We had another two day hits after that first recce, one in which we aided the next pitch and another when we finally got the chance to try the 13c R pitch. It was really tricky to work out what was going on here, where the pitch went and whether Nico had linked two pitches together (we now assume he did). We decided not to link them since this seemed like more hassle than it was worth. We worked the first pitch out pretty quick, not bothering to look at the starting ramp line because it looked easy. It's a very wandery pitch, with a few cruxes, hard face climbing and a wild snatch for an edge. Time ran out again before we had the chance to work the next one, getting to our high point and descending in the light left very little time for making progress with the route... it was time to go big wall style.
We were back a few days later, ensconced on a brilliant portaledge bivi in the middle of the blank face. Temperatures had been gradually climbing through the week and by now it was in the mid thirties and our wall was baked by the sun almost the entire day. We were struggling to climb in the heat, even lying on the ledge felt unbearable at times. The conditions afforded about two hours of warm climbing in the mornings before we considered it impossible to do hard climbing. In this time we did manage to do the lower crux pitch, falling from the slap move a few times. The initial ramp at the beginning of the pitch we hadn’t bothered to scope out before turned out to be very serious indeed! It's about 20 metres of climbing to the first bolt, also the first good bit of gear, and involved some insecure climbing and bad rock. To fall from high would be unthinkable, resulting in a big pendulum across the broken lower wall while the ropes would whip dangerously along the ramp line. We decided the only way we’d lead this, without investing a lot more time in working it, was to have the first bolt pre-clipped. Most of our days were spent with t-shirts on our heads playing shithead and eating bagels. After just two days our water was disappearing at an alarming rate and our progress was slow. We had a look at the next pitch that evening and failing to stay motivated in the awful heat we admitted that the route wasn’t going to happen for us, in these conditions at least. We did a bit more work on the next pitch the following morning before stashing our water and abbing off... For the fourth time!! Despite blaming the temperatures for our retreat, we had the impression that this route was a lot more serious an undertaking than we had thought. Back in the valley we are both really keen to get back on and have another go, but we also need to rethink our strategy and wait for some cooler weather...
Thanks to McHaffie’s forthcoming
wedding I’ve had the chance to pay a visit to Lundy Island again this year.
I’ve had a few great trips here over the years, that have included watching
Neil ‘Youth’ climb the unjustifiable and being blamed for bad weather by
Bullock. This trip was organised by Wez, Caff’s best man, as Caff’s stag do. It
was strong team of dubious character, and we were lucky to have a week of
almost perfect climbing conditions.
My arms were feeling ‘pruned’ to
begin with after having spent three days trying to keep up with Caff in
Pemmers. Things had started badly after I made the appalling decision to warm
up on Woeful, an E5 with a bit of a reputation, which was absolutely soaking
for the first ten meters. This gave me a bit of a spanking that my arms,
body and ego never quite recovered from. We did a load of good routes, especially in
the area around the Cauldron which I had never visited before. The best
being Dreaming Again (unrepeated until then, I think?) which is one of the best
routes I’ve done at Pembroke. It has a good E5 pitch followed by a very
physical E6 pitch on immaculate rock.
There was a lot of talk about
climbing Freemasonry which climbs a crazy line around the corner form the
Cauldron. It does a lot of traversing, down climbing, is 4 pitches long and is
given E6. Caff had done it before and was droning on about how good it was and
not too bad and we’d be fine. We being me, Pete and Maddy, as we were thinking
of doing it as a four. This sounded like a great idea initially until some
facts began to slip from Caff’s mouth… the first pitch is only a wet E5,
Crispin Waddy had to abseil into the sea twice before making the first ascent
and Charlie Woodburn and Neil Mawson got lost and had to reverse aid to escape.
We decided to leave this one for the time being..
Monday night we had our first
night off drinking for a few days, but we also spent it lying in a ditch next
to the motorway and so I still felt fairly awful when we arrived on Lundy. I
did the Cullinan again to get going, which felt harder than I remember, and
Caff, not wasting any time, dispatched the Flying Dutchman. Whoa, what a route.
Wez kindly seconded as I had it in my mind that I might give it a try later on
in the week. Caff told me I’d be fine, off course, and that “the only way you
could fall off is if all the holds broke”. I did get on it, the holds didn’t break and I
got a spanking - I put this down to a combination of low mojo and chronically
pruned arms.
I was most pleased to do probably
the second ascent of the Dogs Bollocks in Two-Legged Zawn, an E6 first climbed
by Nick White and Dave Thomas. I think this route is probably rarely dry but we
found it perfect condition and very clean. I was expecting a huge fight, but it
turned out to be fairly steady and good gear. Caff declared it to be E4 and
Adam Long, who did it a few days later, suggested it might be E4, 5 of them,
stacked, with poor rests in between making it about E6.
The stripper cancelled last
minute, Wez left the mankini at home and we couldn’t find any lampposts on
Lundy, so we had a few beers on the last night instead. We drank some rum too
and we bought Caff a few shots of absinthe after he’d been talking about how
much he liked it earlier. He got very rowdy and started laying into us all, for
about five minutes and then disappeared. Being good friends we chased him
around for a while until he passed out in his tent and we thought we better
call it a night. I think Ryan filmed it all and is planning on making a short
film out of it.
I’m back in the office now after
nearly 13 months of voluntary unemployment spent travelling and climbing from
Thailand to California to the Lleyn Peninsula. The desire to take a break from
work such as this had been brewing for such a long time that to think it’s now
been and gone is bizarre.
January
January was spend in Borneo/Malaysia
and arriving Thailand. This photo is from a fairly small, but possibly the
best, night market we found on our travels. It’s in the town of Kota Kinabalu,
mine and Cat’s first stop on our SE Asian tour. There were amazing avocado
shakes, loads of fresh fish and squid, and tasty buffets of unknown things for
not many ringits.
February
Most of this month was spent at
Tonsai, of which this photo was taken. I had a really great time in Tonsai,
even though I’m sure it has changed a lot over the last couple of decades of
popularity, I still found a really nice place to spend time and to climb. The
climbing is good, even though not likely to be world class, and then there’s
the sun, beaches, cocktails…
March
After Tonsai things got a bit more
hectic, Bangkok, Hanoi, Cat Ba, Saigon, Phnom Pehn… we were on the move a lot.
As we were travelling north through Loas, we rented motorbikes for a few days
to go and tour an area we’d heard of called the Bolaven Plateau. This ended up
being one of the highlights of my time in SE Asia.
April
After getting back from Asia I was
around the UK for most of this month, mainly resting after having spent a few
months away and getting ready to head out to Yosemite in May. I can remember a
few good little climbing hits, one especially good weekend in Pembroke
discovering the delights of Range West with Caff. And, Sam had a stag-do! So I
thought I’d use this photo of him downing an old speckled hen with snot running
down his face after doing a bike race in terrible lycra.
May
This was a totally awesome month in
Yosemite. We checked out a new line that proved to be way too hard then turned
our attention to Salathe Wall. We spent 3 days on the wall up to long ledge and
then 4 days camped near the top of El Cap trying the headwall. It was amazing
to try this pitch even though it proved too difficult in the end. It had
already been a good trip, but we had time for more and so went for a look at El
Nino. Doing the first three pitches in advance, which were some of the hardest
face climbing I’ve ever done, we freed the rest of the route in three days.
This photo is me and Caff just topping out on El Nino.
June
June was another month that was
mainly spent in the UK, catching up with friends, family, weddings, and a bit
of climbing. One great day was had with Reeve, Lindy and Cat up at the Cromlech
doing Cenotaph Corner, Lord of the Flies and the route in the photo, Atomic Hot
Rod.
July
I flew to the Chamonix to meet up
with the most ambitious climber ever, Musket, to try all of the hardest routes
in the Alps. Aguille du Fou might not have actually been too hard, but it was
too dangerous and unpleasant to access with bits of ice hitting us in the face.
The Fiz, however, was too hard, but also really amazing climbing. In the photo
Calum is flashing on second a particularly desperate 7c pitch. After getting a
beating and with the weather being crappy, we headed to the Gorge du Verdon to
try some more routes that were too hard for us :)
August
Me and Cat met in the Pyrenees to do
a really, really long bike ride in terrible weather that broke us both for a
while. After we’d recovered from that we went and climbed this really
stunning mountain called the Vignemale. This is the best shot I could get
because we approached and descended mainly in the dark! It was a great day out
on a stunning peak.
September
This was a month involving a bit of
time in the UK, Mallorca and, in the photo, kayaking in Sweden for 8 or 9 days.
We were really lucky with the weather, it looked like this the whole time. It
was good fun choosing amusingly described islands to paddle to, explore and
camp on.
October
All of October was spent in Yosemite
Valley and it was as good as always, except maybe a bit hotter. We started by
ignoring the heat and set off on Freerider anyway only to find that hours in
rock boots, climbing and hauling all day in blistering heat wasn’t fun or
conducive to success. Running out of water was also pretty rubbish. We decided
to wait for it to cool off it a bit before trying again. We were on it second
time around and this is a shot of me and Reeve the morning after topping out.
November
At some point, and in a frantic rush
before the storm, we left Yosemite. I’d been down from Freerider about an hour
and felt like shit, pretty grumpy too, but it was all good because we were off
to Bishop. Met a great bunch of folk camping at the pit and spent the next few
weeks getting beasted at the Buttermilks. Here’s Reeve about to tickle the
finishing jug on Stained Glass.
December
Finally back in the UK, no more
trips and totally broke. Job hunting was an urgent priority, but the weather
was pretty good back in Wales and it was great to be back and get out on Lleyn
with Calum and Caff. This is a photo from a day we tried a new line on Cilan
Head, I’m crawling along a rubbly ledge and have just pulled a peg out of the
cliff.
