The Nose,
VI, 5.9, C2
June 1997 Yee-Haw it finally went!
Who hasn’t heard of the Nose? It is probably the most famous rock climb
in the world, up one of the most distinctive and challenging pieces of
granite anywhere. Climbing El Cap has been a goal of mine since I really got
into climbing about two years ago. I started by building a solid base of
crack and aid skills, then cut my teeth on a desert
wall. I wasn’t quite ready to go for the assault, preferring to hone my
skills on a couple other Valley classics, but the opportunity presented
itself and I took it. We planned the climb for
the second week in June, thinking that the weather that time of year would be
good -- not too hot, but hopefully late enough in the year to avoid the rains
(not a rin-din-din!). I arrived in the Valley from Day 0: Rope Fixing After getting our gear
up the “third class” that preceded the start of the climb, the
first four pitches went smoothly. I found out then (and later) that
“third class” in We fixed the first rope
and off Craig went on rappel. Martin followed while I waited on top so that
we could space the party out to avoid all sitting at hanging belays. About
five minutes into our descent, the skies opened up. I was still on top,
fortunately in my rain gear, and I settled down to wait and resolved myself
to being wet. El Cap in the rain is pretty amazing. The rain collects on top
and pours down the side, kind of the way beer does when you overfill the
glass. My four rappels were literally down vertical rivers, of water,
splashing over my boots and causing me to slip and slide the whole way down.
We made it successfully and headed off to Curry for dry clothes, pizza, beer,
and a weather report. Day 1: Launch, slowly
The sixth pitch was mine
-- 30 feet of 5.3 followed by 30 or so feet of 5.9 hand crack.
One of my greatest worries going into the climb was that I would grip out
high up and have to aid climbing that I knew I could free. This pitch was a testpiece and I found myself passing with flying colors.
The 5.9 crack was great -- beautiful jams, good footholds, nice
features, really fun. I even went a little high because I was enjoying myself
so much. At the end of the day, the things I would come to struggle with on
the climb weren’t what I expected, like forcing myself to free climb or
dealing with lots exposure. I wrestled a lot more with random panic attacks
where I was convinced we were never going to get off this bloody rock, one of
my partners’ frequent, uncalled for temper tantrums, and simple rope
and anchor management. Earlier in the climb,
Craig had announced his intention of taking the hard aid pitches in exchange
for Martin and I doing the harder free stuff. I would rather free than aid
any day, so we sort of agreed to the plan. That gave Martin the next two
pitches -- both pendulums as we struggled to get over to the Stovelegs cracks. The both of them went relatively
smoothly. I admired Martin throughout the climb for his ability to stay cool
under pressure. He never seemed to grip out as we got high up -- he even took
a 50 footer later in the climb without seeming to get phased (although he
admitted later that the 50 footer phased him a bit. . .), In any event, the
pendulum pitches got dispatched rather quickly and off I went on jumar to take the next couple pitches. It was here that the
only real sketchy part of the climb occurred. The wall hauler that we were
using had been attached to a locking carabiner, as
always. As it turned out, the biner was relatively manky and didn’t like the heavy loads of our haul
bags and ledges. As I got about halfway up the eight pitch,
Craig called down to me: “Ed, we’ve got a problem.” Not
words you want to hear with 800 or so feet of exposure beneath you. As it
turned out, the biner was starting to open up
as Craig and Martin were hauling. “Ed, you’ve got to get as much
weight out of the bags as fast as possible!” A little panic in his
voice. I started down-jumaring as fast as I could
to the haul bags, and managed to dig into one and start pulling water out.
The first six bottles or so I clipped to myself, then I started tossing them
(“Rock!” Long fall. Big splash. “Rock!”). I remember
at the time thinking that we would regret tossing those four bottles (total
of eight liters). Later in the climb we regretted it in a big way. Having jettisoned our
water, I finished jumaring. Martin and Craig had
stabilized the biner and brought the bags up,
carefully. The first thing that I did upon arriving at the belay was dig out
two of the three BD Superlockers that I brought on
the climb and insist that we use one on the wall hauler from now on. It was
actually a pretty good lesson -- for the most part I was lucky in that I had
partners with good judgment and sound skills. In climbing, however, you can
never rely too much on your partner -- I should have seen the manky biner and replaced it
with a bomber one. As the climb progressed I took more and more of the
responsibility on myself to ensure our safety. Interestingly enough, so did
my partners. By everyone taking greater than 50% of the mental and physical
load, we created a “matrix” so to speak of cross-checking one
another. Later in the climb when we were leading at night, cross checking each
other became an important part of staying safe. What turned out to be
the last lead of the day was mine. A great 5.10 hand crack -- I took off with
my free shoes on and cranked away. The stovelegs
contain some of the best free climbing on the route, IMHO, and in spite of
being tired I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The ninth pitch is short and I
quickly came to the belay. Nine pitches of jugging and hauling had taken
their toll on us and we were pooped. Plus, it was getting dark, I was
starting to have a bit of a panic attack, and none of us had the gas to lead
the last two pitches (one of them really long) to Normally parties
don’t haul portaledges on the Nose -- there
are plenty of natural ledges over the course of the climb and portaledges are just extra weight. We brought them
because we expected lots of crowds, and ledges would have given us the
freedom to move at our own pace. In this case, they gave us the freedom to
crash in the middle of the Stovelegs. Setting up
was a bit of a drawn out process, but we finally got our ledges set up and
our ravioli-o’s out. As bitched out as I was
for not having gotten more climbing done, the feeling of digging into my cold
chef B and pudding while sitting 1000 feet up and admiring the stars is one I
will remember for a lifetime. We could see the Milky Way, the night was cool
and crisp, and the ledge was comfortable. I had no trouble sleeping as I
drifted off, feeling content and happy. Day 2: Long way to go Since there was still
some light left that day, we decided to fix the Texas Flake. I had been
dreading this pitch as long as I had been planning the Nose, and I convinced
Martin to lead it. Lead it he did with flying colors and we fixed for the
next day. While Martin and I were fixing, Craig took the opportunity to make
the first contribution to the poop tube. Taking a big wall dump is an interesting
experience that we three all partook in on El Cap Towers. Open the bag, aim,
and shoot. Hole in one! We had our dinner and leisurely watched the sun set.
Yee-haw, one third of the way up. What I didn’t know was that sunset
was to be our last moment of leisure until dawn two days later. Martin and I were
worried about our water situation (Craig was relatively confident that we
would find water higher up on the route) -- we only had 12 liters of water
left. We decided that we needed to get off in two days, and set our sights on
Camp 5 the next day -- 9 pitches, a couple of them aid. We figured, though,
that if we didn’t make Camp 5 the next day we wouldn’t make the
summit on the following, and if we didn’t summit Monday we were in trouble.
Off we went. Over the course of the day a couple of lucky events would speed
our progress. Day 3: The
all-nighter, El Cap style Pitch 20 was actually
the scariest part of the climb. After some easy aid Craig had to lower out
and traverse 70 feet or so left on “questionable” class four rock. Following was a nightmare. I cleaned, and had to
follow the traverse mostly on belay. Martin followed the bags and ended up
swinging 40 of the 70 feet because his lower out line wasn’t long
enough. We made it safe and sound to the belay ledge, barely, and gathered
our wits. Two 5.9 pitches followed, which I led (also pretty nice and
actually maybe 5.9 -- a lot of sandbagging goes on on
the Nose). Great fun, we hauled them as one and managed to make our way to
the Great Roof. The formation, which looks pretty cool from the ground, is
actually amazing -- perfectly smooth, it juts out maybe 50 feet from the main
wall. Martin had asked to lead it and off he went, aiding up to and around
the monolith. While the lead was fun to watch, it also took a long time and
we made it to the belay with the bags at around dusk. Now we faced an
interesting choice -- we could set up the ledges (or rap down to Camp 4) and
spend the night, knowing that we wouldn’t top out until Tuesday. Or we
could push on into the night and climb by headlamp. Craig was the most fired
up about getting off on time, so he volunteered to lead the next two pitches
to Camp 5. The first pitch (the Pancake Flake) was short and difficult, the
second pitch longer and a tad easier. Since the second pitch (25) involved
some free climbing at the end, Craig brought me up and I finished it off.
These two pitches literally took hours. They were some of the harder
aid on the route and it was all in the dark. By the time we got to Camp 5 and
settled into our bags it was starting to get light again. We agreed to crash
for a few hours and set off again early for the summit. A second stroke of
luck hit us on Camp 5, where we found a big jug of water that was most of the
way full. We were down to four liters among the three of us and the jug
literally saved our asses. As it was, we would finish the climb incredibly
dehydrated, but that find of water allowed us to basically be uncomfortable
instead of downright dangerous. By the middle of day
tempers had started to flare. It is amazing the amount of mental stress that
one undergoes over the course of a wall, and we were taking it out on each
other in big ways. We all kind of knew that we were stressed out and slights
were as quickly forgotten as doled out. Day 4: Topping out,
Warren Harding style By now we had reached
the top of the 30th pitch. Four pitches to go and we could smell the summit
with a vengeance. Martin took 31 and 32 and decided to try to run them
together. This used to be where the death block was (apparently someone
trundled the death block while the park was closed in January and February),
and there is a small “mini-death block” on pitch 32 (which turned
out to be overrated). Anyway, Martin took the biggest fall of the climb here
-- he had made his way up to and past the midpoint (the belay for 31) and was
almost to the belay for 32 when a TCU he was yarding
on -- not even standing or aiding -- popped. He had been back cleaning the
pitch to save gear and took a 50 footer for his
troubles. I was belaying and was yanked up five or six feet by the force of
the fall. Martin collected his wits, hopped back on the climb, and made his
way to the alcove (at the top of the 32nd pitch). Craig-O and I jugged up,
both having to do a free-hanging jug over 3000 feet of exposure. That would
turn out to be the theme of the last two pitches -- lots of exposure. Several times over the
course of the climb I felt myself turning off a fear reflex, and this was one
of those times. I knew rationally that the jug was safe -- as safe as any
other jug, and despite the fact that I could see the bottom of the first
pitch, if the rope broke I wouldn’t die any
worse that any other jug. Perhaps the thing that scared me most was that I
was pretty successful at turning off the reflex. I hopped on jumar and zipped up the pitch. It scared me because by
doing so, I was abandoning some last refuge of sanity -- when a situation
like that doesn’t scare you, you have to wonder. . . The other notable thing
about the alcove was that I started seeing blood in my urine. We were so
dehydrated by this time that I didn’t think too much of it, but in
retrospect I think that was a really bad sign. We were lucky to have gotten
off El Cap when we did. By the time we got the
bags into the alcove it was again getting dark. What was the chance that we
were going to wait out the last two pitches? Not a rin-din-din.
Craig took off on the 33rd pitch -- short and mostly free, which he aided in
the dark. The belay on this pitch is a hanging belay from a couple of bolts
-- you can look down between your legs and see the bottom of the climb.
Yee-haw, upping the ante. I zipped up to take the sharp end on the last pitch
of the climb at about 11pm. The final pitch is supposed to be an easy bolt
ladder over a couple of roofs to some 5.3 climbing. It turned out to be a reachy nightmare that had me swinging in my aiders all
over the place (maybe it’s a good thing that I couldn’t see all
the exposure beneath me). When I finally got to the 5.3 meander it looked
more like 5.7 slab to me (remember it’s pitch
black by this time). I popped on the free climbing shoes and delicately
executed the last section to the belay. If you slip, you go tumbling over the
roof into the expanse below. None of that on my sandwich,
thank you very much. I managed to make it to the belay without incident. The
rest of the night was spent getting the bags and my partners up to me and
over the crest to the flat, woody section beyond. My headlamp decided to call
it quits shortly after Craig made it to the top, the bags got stuck, we were
all dehydrated and tired, and we couldn’t hear one another at all. But
we muddled through and topped out shortly before dawn. Last day: The seminal moment for
me turned out to be sunrise after we topped out. I have watched the sun rise
from all sorts of bizarre places across the third world, and the sunrise atop
El Cap was one of the most powerful. We had killed ourselves for four days
(literally for 48 hours straight) and the freedom from effort and the beauty
and solitude of the sunrise was enough to stop the heart. Once in a while I
am strongly convinced of God’s presence, and this was one of those
times -- we made it safe and sound. Thoreau said something like: “Life
is not what happens to you but what you make of what happens to you. Everyone
dies, but not everyone fully lives. Too many people are having
‘near-life’ experiences.” The orange glow was enough
confirm that I was alive, at least for another day. |