Trip Journal: Yosemite

Plaid will be heading to Yosemite in less than a week. This will be a 3 week time frame to see how many Big Wall routes I can climb. I have the partners lined up and the wall routes picked out. I may be able to do as many as 6 Big Walls. The list includes The Shield, on El Capitan, with a climber that has been doing speed ascents of classic routes in mere hours. Next up will be an ascent with two guys that have never done a Big Wall. They may have not successfully summited one, but they have the skills you need for the job. We will be climbing Skull Queen on Washington Column. After that I have a few options. One option is to climb the Lurking Fear route in 20 hours with a rope gun. Just aim him in the right direction and up he goes with the rope. Another option is to climb The Prow on Washington Column or Leaning Tower's West Face route. Hey why not both? We will have to see.

I plan on doing a recon of The Nose route on El Capitan where we will climb to Dolt Tower in one day. This is the most technical and logistically challenging section on The Nose. If you get there the rest is easy. Just go up! Sounds good in theory, but we will have to wait and see. I have one classic free climbing route in mind. It is the Steck-Salathe that has haunted me for years. I'd love to scratch that one off the list. I plan on making daily reports on route. Most of these routes will take 2 to 3 days to complete. So stay tuned. I need a solar powered USB charger to keep my iPhone up and running as it will be my camera and connection to send the updates.

The ambitious attempt at climbing The Shield route on El Capitan got nixed by a forecast for snow, so unfortunately a bail was required. My partner, who I have not climbed with before, performed the bail flawlessly. We got all the heavy bags down six rappels in 2 hours. Then came the walk of shame. No shame here since we made the right choice. It's raining on The Valley floor now and probably snowing up top. Now on to the Next Adventure. I will climb Skull Queen on Washington Column with 2 awesome partners, and after that I am climbing The Prow on the same formation. Keeping it fun!!!!