What Even is This?

For serious climbers all over the world, Yosemite National Park in California is a Mecca, where climbers make the pilgrimage to see arguably the most famous rocks anywhere. It's known as the birthplace of American rock climbing, and was hugely influential in rock climbing all over the world. Yosemite is where many climbing techniques were invented and honed and was the staging ground for pushing the difficulty ceiling of climbing for many years.
For any climber, a visit to Yosemite is a huge deal. After seeing countless pictures and videos of various routes, features, and cliff faces, seeing them in person was awe inspiring.
Beyond simply existing in the park and climbing in such a cool place, another big draw to the park is El Capitan, possibly the most well-known rock formation in all rock climbing. Having an ascent of El Capitan to one's climbing resume is a serious badge of honor and a testament to one's grit, perseverance, skill, and commitment.
So, naturally, when my friends Matt and Tom, super stokers that they are, floated the idea of a trip to Yosemite to climb El Capitan, I really had no other choice than to say yes!

Despite overwhelming amounts of stoke, we had several hurdles. While Matt had an abundance of free time, Tom and I had our guiding jobs and various other responsibilities that made it tough for us to align our schedules to train (and boy did we have a lot of training to do). Only Matt had ever aid climbed¹, and even then only a small amount, and none of us had ever big walled³ before.
We hatched our plan in mid Spring 2025 and planned our trip to Yosemite for mid September, so we only had a few months to prepare! We all book-learned the systems, did some token practice with hauling⁴ and climbed a few pitches of aid at Seneca that were just as difficult, if not more difficult than what we would encounter on The Captain. However, I felt that, while certainly beneficial, these experiences would pale in comparison with the intensity of what we would encounter on El Cap.

Our first true test would be climbing The Glass Menagerie in North Carolina, a two day, one night objective that would finally put our newfound skills to the test in a context much like what we could expect to encounter on El Capitan!

The Glass Menagerie

Time to Read: 10 Minutes

After carefully researching the route and what gear we would need and from whom all the various pieces of gear would come from, we were ready to go! The crew got together in Blacksburg, VA then we all headed down to Pisgah National Forest, in which nestles Looking Glass Rock, the location of The Glass Menagerie. We camped out near the trailhead, me in my luxurious van and Matt and Tom in my luxurious tent. We stayed up a little late packing and making sure we had all our ducks in a row to hit the ground running in the morning, but it was definitely worth it to stay up late rather than getting up early!
We made our way to the trailhead where we bumped into Forrest and Todd, two absolute units. They were there working on establishing a new aid line not far from the Glass Menagerie, but they were a little slower getting ready than we were. We chatted at the trailhead a bit, shared stoke, and told them about our plan to climb El Cap. They are both El Cap veterans and shared some sage advice, took a before photo for us, then we loaded up with our exceedingly heavy packs and headed off into the forest making for The Glass Menagerie.
Once we arrived at the base and were sufficiently awestruck by The Glass Menagerie looming over us, we got to work racking up and getting started. We swung leads with Matt taking the first, me taking the second, Tom third, so on and so forth.
The climbing for the day didn't really present any highly noteworthy challenges, just a traverse pitch with some rotten rock that I got to lead and a tricky, thin corner that Tom was excited to lead....
Until we got to the roof! We took a bunch of pictures of the roof pitch, which was mine to lead! It was getting to late afternoon by now, but we had planned to set camp below the roof so we were right on time. While Matt and Tom worked on setting up camp, I set off leading the roof pitch. This was a great move both because it made for one less body at the cramped hanging belay below the roof and because it meant that the next morning we wouldn't have to lead the roof pitch, only clean it and jug up to the next anchors!
It wasn't until I was over halfway through the roof that I realized I had forgotten to grab the tagline before I left.

D'oh.

Not the end of the world, but it did throw a wrench into our plan. The roof pitch both pulls a roof and traverses after the roof, so the plan had been for me to lower down when I was done leading and have Tom and/or Matt tow me in to the belay below the roof using the tagline, which was now impossible. Luckily I have a lot of experience rope soloing, and had even done a rope solo of a grade IV traversing free climb in Brazil a few months prior to this particular adventure! So I knew exactly what to do to get back and, while not nearly as convenient as using the tagline to tow me in, it would certainly work just fine.
I forged ahead. The roof turned out to be the least of my problems on that pitch! It was actually rather enjoyable climbing, swinging about maniacally while trying to place gear higher and higher until I reached a line of bolts that marked the end of the difficulties in the roof..... until the bolts ended.

I could see anchor bolts atop a ledge directly overhead from the last bolt, but only lichen above those, so they were unlikely to be for the Glass Menagerie, which is fairly popular. Even if those were our bolts, they would have been very exciting to reach as the bolts had run out and it was featureless slabby rock between me and the anchor. Before too long I was able to spy another pair of anchor bolts directly left and even a little lower than where I was, only reachable by traversing left along a super thin seam with some manky⁵ fixed gear. I had to do what I had to do!
I placed a great cam at the beginning of the traverse, then set off on the mank. There was one relatively large piton that flexed spookily when I clipped my ladders to it and stood on it, followed by two rusty rurps (one of the smallest pitons they make), one of which had the wire blown out... so I clipped the wire of the intact rurp and hoped for the best, knowing that if it blew as well I'd be in for quite a big ol' pendulum fall, but at least it would have been a safe one!

The rurp held, but that was where the fixed gear ran out, and the two bolt anchor was still several feet away and below me. I didn't have my climbing shoes on, since I was aid climbing all day, so I had to trust my approach shoes⁶ on a sloping, friction dependent foothold, and leave the relative security of the rurp. I worked in a nearly worthless piece of gear into a flaring crack near face level and used it for balance (more like something to death grip) to place a good piece in a vertical crack close to the anchor that I could then use to safely get myself down to the anchor. I'd made it!!

Now though, I had to get back to the bottom of the roof. I tied off the rope to the anchors, then had to reverse the entire process, once again trusting my weight to the manky gear on the traverse, swinging my way through the roof, and finally alighting back at the belay just after Tom and Matt had finished setting up the portaledge⁷! Time to relax at long last.
We made ourselves comfortable on the portaledge, joking and laughing, then once we had ourselves put together enough we started whipping up dinner. We had all brought dehydrated Mountain House meals where cooking is a simple as pouring boiling water into the bag of food, sealing it up, and waiting a few minutes. I had been unable to track down my spoon in time before my water was boiling, so I poured it in, sealed it up, and massaged the bag to mix it up when disaster struck.
Yup, I spilled a good amount of my food all over the portaledge and some on my feet *facepalm*. Luckily I still had enough food left, so I sealed it up nice and tight again and set about scooping the spilled food off the portaledge with a borrowed spoon. Rough way to start the night :(
I was able to find my spoon though, and the portaledge cleaned up fairly well all things considered!

Our original plan was to have Matt and Tom in the portaledge with me in a hammock hung from the bottom of the portaledge, but we were so tired we didn't bother with the hammock. That night we slept like sardines, packed three people into a two person portaledge. We were certainly plenty warm enough!

The next morning we had a somewhat slow start, staying in our sleeping bags but sitting up against the rock wall behind us and enjoying the sunrise. Eventually, though, it was time to start moving.
I had the disconcerting experience of jostling my belongings when first working on taking out my morning items and seeing three or four cockroaches scatter. It turns out when I spilled my food the night before some of it got on one of my bags and they were after the tasty snacks! I figured they'd run off and just moved on with the morning.
After Matt and I did our first ever ledge poops and Tom somehow avoided the ordeal, we packed up and got moving! Tom cast off climbing the rope through the roof that I had set up the day before while Matt and I put away the portaledge and packed up the haulbag to be ready to keep on truckin'.
Tom had a bit of an interesting time navigating the spooky traverse, as it was no less spooky or dangerous for him than it was for me, but he pulled it off, set up the ropes, and it was time for me to do my first ever lower-out!
Because the next anchors were offset to the left from where we'd camped, I needed to lower out from our camp spot until I was directly below the next anchors, at which time I'd be good to start climbing the rope to get up there. Clipped to the haul bags, I slowly lowered myself into empty space below the roof. It was pretty nerve wracking, but I had some tunes going in my pocket and focusing on my breathing got me through no problem!
However, midway through the lowerout, a sneaky little cockroach started running around under my pants leg!!! I did a wild little dance hanging in mid-air and when I was sure I'd sent him airborne and peace was restored, I finished the lowerout. Todd or Forrest got a sick photo of me climbing the rope above the haul bags, check out the album!
After I got to the anchors and was helping Tom organize the belay, THE COCKROACH RETURNED. This time it was under my shirt running around like a maniac and I absolutely flipped out. This time neither of us were quite so lucky, as he got crushed and I got guts on my shirt, but thankfully that was the last cockroach related encounter for the rest of the trip. Wowee.

The pitch above those anchors was Tom's lead, so once Matt arrived and we got the ropes and haul bags situated, he cast off! This was another doozy of a pitch, known as the meat grinder, but he killed it. At the belay, Matt and I noticed an interesting dissonance. We knew that Tom was up there cruxing out, having a wild time, but figuring it out because the rope continued to move upwards. Meanwhile, Matt and I were stuck shuffling around at an uncomfortable, purely hanging belay. Matt was belaying so he had to pay attention to the rope and I had absolutely nothing to do, so we were both fairly lethargic and bored. Before too long though, Tom shouted down to us that he was tied off at the anchor, and Matt and I burst into action!
Leaving behind the haul bags at the anchor, as we wouldn't need them anymore, I climbed a freehanging rope while Matt followed Tom's path to collect the gear. Tom had made a heroic effort in the meat grinder, especially given that he didn't have the right gear! He only had one or two pieces of gear that would fit a crack of that size, so he just kept moving them up higher and higher with him as he climbed, moving his weight from one to the other in between moving them up. He had the unenviable position of knowing that if one of them broke free from the rock while he was moving the other, he'd be in for a monstrous fall of 100 feet or more!
But that didn't happen, so all's well that ends well.

The next and final pitch was Matt's turn, and this one didn't require aid climbing, so he strapped on his rock shoes and went for it! When he reached the anchors and put Tom on belay, Tom followed suit. I elected to climb the rope only, as I wanted more practice with those techniques, and soon all three of us sat on the rock at the top of the cliff!
We basked in the glory of our accomplishment for a few minutes, then started making our way's down. We had to do two rappels to get down to the haul bags, then one looooong free hanging rappel to get all the way back to the ground. We each burdened ourselves with one or two items from our haul bag train (we needed to link together a big haul bag, a smaller haul bag, the portaledge, and the poop tube in a little train), then one by one we rappelled down.
We put away our gear, took a short break to walk the cliff line and scope out some of the other routes in the vacinity, then started hauling the heavy bags out.

I was the first one back to the trailhead where I met Todd and Forrest at their cars. They had put up one or two more pitches of their new route and were now setting up to head home. They gave some welcome sage advice for El Cap, shared a beer and some tasty liqueur, then we headed our separate ways!

All in all, climbing The Glass Menagerie was huge. We learned a TON about big walling that we never would have been able to learn training the systems and techniques at Seneca. There really is no substitute for just getting out there and doing the thing!
We had a ton of fun, and even though it was all about training for another objective, this climb was a proud accomplishment in its own right!

From there, I returned to Seneca for another couple weeks of work before we all jetted off for Yosemite...

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West Face of the Leaning Tower

Time to Read: 15 Minutes

The long awaited day of flying out to Yosemite finally arrived! The plan was for me and Matt to fly out together several days before Tom arrived, climb the West Face of the Leaning Tower as a group of two, then meet Tom in the valley and prepare for El Capitan.
I left my van with Matt's family in Baltimore and we flew out to Sacramento with the intention of taking a series of buses and overnighting in Merced to get into Yosemite.

Notice my use of the word "intention" there...

Yeah, our final leg flight from Charlotte to Sacramento was delayed due to a mechanical issue on the plane and they just kept pushing back our departure time in 30 minute increments because they really had no idea when we'd be leaving. While our margin for catching our bus from Sacramento to Merced grew shorter and shorter, I called a car rental place in Sacramento with the intention of reserving a car due to be returned in Merced the following day.

Notice my use of the word "intention" there...

So, I make this reservation and we rest easy knowing that if we can make our bus out of Sacramento we can just cancel the reservation, but if we miss the bus we can simply pick up our rental car and get to our hotel in Merced without having to book another expensive hotel in Sacramento.
Eventually we fly outta there! The flight went by quickly partly thanks to a kind stranger with whom I worked out a deal where she would watch The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time and I would watch Twilight (whichever one is the first one) for the first time. What a deal!
We arrive in Sacramento pretty late at around 10:30 or 11pm and I immediately head off for the rental cars. Aaaaand they can't find our reservation. Apparently the woman on the phone never finalized the reservation after taking all my information and we were absolutely dead in the water. There were no available cars from ANY of the rental agencies. I returned to the arrivals terminal empty handed.
We next tried Uber, a two hour one way journey starting at 11:30pm. Yikes. We had one or two drivers cancel immediately, but then one guy accepted and called Matt! He informed us that, while we would pay ~$200 for the ride, he would only receive about $75 of that money, but he would do it for $150 cash. We gratefully accepted and he came by to pick us up!
After hopping into his souped up, one year old Honda Civic, our man Himat took about 3 minutes to say some racist stuff about black people... oh boy. He had quite an interesting backstory, being an Afghan who worked for US Special Forces during the war and is now a political exile living in the US with his wife and child. The military hung him out to dry and gave him no help after fleeing to the US and he's been struggling to make ends meet for a while. Also driving for Uber is "women's work" and he hopes to find something else soon. I was somewhat regretting my choice to sit in the passenger seat.
Eventually though, he could tell that we were exhausted from our day of traveling and silence fell, allowing me and Matt to take a quick nap before our arrival in Merced. We thanked Himat profusely, Matt gave him a handful of cigarettes as a bonus and we collapsed in our room for the night.

The next day, we had the entire morning and most of the afternoon on our hands to prepare for Yosemite. All our climbing gear took up so much space and weight that we barely had the room for it, let alone food and other miscellaneous items we'd need, so we had some gearing up to do!
We stashed our gear with the hotel front desk after checking out, then walked over to Walmart to buy a couple hundred dollars worth of food and water for Yosemite. I also stopped in on a barbershop on a whim to cut my hair as I did not like the prospect of big walling with SO. MUCH. HAIR. I went full Pigeotto and shaved both sides and left the top long, which made a world of difference, but unfortunately neither Matt nor anybody in the barbershop got my Pigeotto reference, which was a bummer.
Before long though, we had gathered all the food and water we'd need with all our gear at the bus station, and our bus arrived to whisk us away into Yosemite Valley!!

We arrived in the valley after dark, and the knowledge that we were driving past these granite giants I have seen so many photos of and read so many epic tales was such a tease! After making a loop through the valley, we hopped off at our stop, lugged our things into Camp 4, found our site and settled in.

The next morning dawned bright and clear, and we set about prepping for The Leaning Tower! Over breakfast, we organized our gear for the coming climb and eventually found ourselves all kitted up with a whole afternoon before us. Stoked climbers that we are, we decided to head up to The Leaning Tower to climb a couple hundred feet, leave our ropes there to climb back up in the morning, then come back down to Camp 4 for the night and return with our overnight gear and food for the big push to the summit!
We took the valley shuttle as far as it would take us before it turned around to continue its loop, then hung around El Capitan Valley attempting to hitchhike to the trailhead for The Leaning Tower. It took longer than we expected, but eventually we were scooped up and before we knew it we were hoofing our gear up the famously steep, gruelling, boulder field approach!
Loaded up as we were with so much climbing gear, the strenuous approach was a little more than we were expecting, but we made it up without too much hassle. (The climbers message board at Camp 4 had an old note from a guy offering $500 to carry ~50 pounds worth of gear up there!) We even found a cam marked with orange and white tape lying on the ground under the route! Score!

The West Face route actually starts about 500ft off the ground. We picked up the cam under the route proper, then continued hiking uphill contouring the base of the cliff before arriving at a long ledge that traverses back in the direction we'd come but without losing height, which would deliver us to the base of our climb at an exposed, ~3ft wide ledge 500ft off the deck. Another score! We get to summit a ~1,500ft face via a 1,000ft route!

We wasted no time getting started with the first two pitches, both of which were just bolt ladders⁸. I took the first lead and zoomed up 200ft to the top of the pitch, then Matt climbed up to me and took off on the next 200ft bolt ladder pitch. Once he reached the anchors he was jonesin' to bring me up so I could do the 3rd pitch as well before heading down, but it was starting to get late and we still had to rappel down to the base, hike back to the trailhead, try our luck hitchhiking back to camp, then prepare dinner! After a bit of convincing, Matt rappelled down to me and we left our ropes and gear waiting for us at the anchors for the next morning.
We tumbled our way down the steep approach and boulder field before finally making it back to the trailhead, then took our time moseying along the road attempting to hitchhike. Once again, it took us longer than I might have thought to get picked up, but eventually somebody in a sweet rental Tesla picked us up! It was my first time riding in a Tesla and it legit took me a second to work out how to open the door.
Before we knew it though, we were at Camp 4 whipping up some dinner and I was vindicated in my insistence at calling it at the top of pitch 2 because we had just enough time for dinner before heading to sleep at a reasonable hour given our 5:30am wakeup time the next morning!

The next morning dawned beautifully, we wolfed down our breakfasts, then got truckin' back to the leaning tower with all our bivy⁹ gear, water, and food for a day and a half. This would be our big day on the wall; we planned to climb all the way to a nice, comfortable bivy ledge 30 feet shy of the summit! After the now familiar somewhat time consuming process of hitching a ride to the trailhead, we laboriously made our way up the now familiar steep boulder field to the base of the climb, somewhat lamenting our decision to set things up such that we had to do it twice.
However, before too long we had made it back to our ropes! We had decided that we would lead in blocks of three pitches each and I volunteered for the first block. This meant that, after reaching the top of our fixed ropes, I would be leading the next 600 feet of climbing in three pitches of 200 feet each. The first two pitches I would be leading were also the technical cruxes of the entire route, but that's really all I knew before getting into it!
After jugging our fixed lines to our high point and getting situated, I cast off on the first lead and boy it did not disappoint! Much of it is a blur, but notable memories from this pitch include standing on my first ever sky hook¹⁰ after calling down to Matt "Watch me here, it's getting dicey!", actually using the meat hook¹¹ we had been advised to bring, and the very last 10 feet of the pitch. I also found an alpine draw (two carabiners and a nylon sling, all with orange and white tape...) inexplicably left on a bolt. Free gear! At the top of the pitch was a welcome bolt ladder that I scampered up until I reached the last bolt under a sloping ledge up to the anchors. Getting on this ledge would require me to leave my trustworthy aid ladders and any other direct means of pulling myself up and rely on my hands and feet to get to the anchors. After hauling myself up with my aid ladders and whatnot all day, this was a spooky change in direction! I waffled about longer than I probably should have before committing to the moves, but in moments I was clipped in safe and sound to the anchors without the worry of slipping off the ledge and taking what would likely have been at least a 20 foot fall!

The next pitch was known to be the real crux: A traversing crack system that led to a shorter vertical section to the anchors at the top of the pitch. It started off interesting from the get go: From the belay scooted along to the edge of the ledge, stretched up high to clip a bolt, then coordinated with Matt to do a tension traverse to reach the bottom of the traversing crack system. I essentially weighted the rope, then had Matt slowly lower me as I strained against the rope to the right to stay balanced to get past a section of very blank rock. Soon, however, I was in the crack and aiding along happy as a clam!
As is the case with many challenging pitches, I found this one to be the most fun. I made good use of many fixed pitons, and even rescued a stuck cam from the crack wiiiith... you guessed it! Orange and white tape! The party who climbed this before us must have had a hell of a time up there...
The vertical section turned out to be the most heads up for me, mostly due to one move. The crack I was following slimmed up such that I couldn't get any cams or nuts in, and I was forced to use a hand placed beak¹² to keep going! Holy snoot!

Regrettably, I remember absolutely nothing about the third pitch I led that day. Actually, as I write this I'm getting vague memories of a relaxed bolt ladder quite reminiscent of the first two pitches from the day prior, so the excitement of the two pitches I had just led that day made the last one of the three look like a total walk in the park! At the top of that pitch I gladly handed the reins over to Matt to take us up the last three pitches to our bivy ledge.

Similarly to my final lead of the day, Matt later noted that he could hardly remember anything about his first lead of the day, for reasons that will soon become apparent! By looking at some of our photos, we deduced that his first pitch was mostly a bolt ladder up to a small roof or two that were easy to overcome. Notably, one of them had the lip of the roof duct taped in an effort to prevent the rope from getting damaged on a presumably sharp edge! After that pitch is where things really started getting interesting.
During Matt's second lead the evening got on in earnest. We were basking in the golden evening light, me somewhat bored at the belay and Matt questing ever upward. During this pitch we were treated to a beautiful sun shower! This is where the leaning nature of the leaning tower really played in our favor, as we never felt as much as a drop from the rain falling mere feet away behind us. I got treated to quite a show at the belay, I got to watch the sun slowly set, casting long shadows in the valley ~2000ft below as light sheets of rain glowed in the air above it all.

Soon, however, darkness had overcome us. We turned on our headlamps and kept on truckin'! Matt had some seriously steep pitches coming his way. The last two pitches contained these absolutely huge roofs! At one point, I could hardly see him in the darkness, I saw him hanging from two pieces under a roof; One foot in each ladder, one hand holding on to each piece and no part of him touching the rock as he worked to transition to the highest piece to overcome the roof! He also back cleaned¹³ quite a few pieces of gear, just in case he might need them later on in the pitch. While great for him, for me that meant that there were some serious gaps between pieces of gear through these huge roofs! The best way for me to follow after him and get all the gear was to climb the rope up to the nearest piece of gear, find a rock hand hold to hang from to get my weight off the piece of gear, take it out of the rock, then let go of the rock and swing out into the empty, black abyss, then continue climbing up the rope to the next piece!
Knowing there was ~2000ft of air beneath me for these numerous swings, I was super thankful night had fallen because I couldn't see a thing except for the rock nearest to me! I had a lot of fun working out how to get all that gear out and climb up to Matt's belay. Only about 20 or 30 feet from the belay, we found another abandoned cam! This one was at the top of a steep corner right before a ~15 foot traverse. It was as easy as anything to take out, so I suspect that whoever left it there had unclipped the rope from it, swung away, and just decided to say "screw it, we're outta here!!" I'm sure it was from the same party we had already found so many pieces of gear from; They must have really been having a time up there!!

Once at the belay with Matt, we only had to scramble along this spacious ledge about 30 feet to get to our bivy ledge and get our heavy haul bag over there as well. Matt devised a smart method where he scrambled over to our camp spot, anchored in the bags and set up to haul them over, then I lowered them from my anchor while he hauled them towards his, such that they scraped along as little as possible and we didn't have to just set them free to swing over to below his anchor.
The best part about the whole climb? We never forgot the tagline once.

Before long, though, we were finally settling in to camp on the ledge! We whipped up dinner at about midnight *zzz*. This ledge had a funny feature where it was geeently angled towards the outside edge of the ledge, such that as the night wore on we would both slide slowly towards the 2,500ft drop (we did sleep in our harnesses, but still!). Somebody had gotten a ~3x1x1 foot rock and bolted it to the ledge as a slide stopper! I found it hilariously ironic that climbers get into bolt wards on the regular, with some folks placing bolts (many of which are super nice to have) and other folks chopping them with extreme prejudice in the name of ethics, then you have this monstrosity that nobody seems to care about.
Anywayyy, we slept like babies and didn't set alarms, as all we had to do in the morning was get down and celebrate!

It was another beautiful morning in the valley when we awoke on Dano ledge over 2,000ft from the valley floor and about 1,470ft from the bottom of the leaning tower with only 30 feet to go to the summit! We both took our second ledge poops ever, had some breakfast and watched as the valley awoke far below. Soon though, it was time for the day's work.
Matt led to the summit, then we got the bags on their way to him while I came up behind with my backpack loaded up with gear and supplies. We had summited! We had a wild view of El Capitan, somehow still looming over us, from between the cathedral spires. We stood there for a few moments to take in the views, then the work had to continue.
We were perched at the top of the leaning tower with an incredible 1,500ft drop on the side from which we'd come and a ~300ft sloping, 5th class¹⁴ slab that would take us to the descent gully. We rappelled down in two rappels, then scrambled into this chilly, dark corridor of rock to the South. We'd heard tales of how sketchy this descent route was due to multitudes of loose rocks in the gully, but we were pleasantly surprised at how chill it was! I pre-rigged the first rappel while Matt took down the previous one and joined me in the gully, and we set off down the gully.
It turns out we were a little premature in being pleasantly surprised at how chill this gully was. All-in-all it took us about 6 or 7 rappels to make it to sweet, sweet terra firma. Around the midway point we reached a particularly sketchy succession of two rappels. There were a ton of loose rocks resting in the bottom of the gully, and the anchor at the bottom of the first rappel would have left me very exposed to any falling rocks that might be disturbed by Matt rappelling after me! I elected to use our second rope to rappel down to the next anchor that thankfully kept me sheltered from any falling rocks. Matt drew the short end of the stick in that situation, as he had to pull the rope from the first rappell, which could have disturbed some rocks and sent them his way! Luckily that didn't happen and we ultimately reached the ground with bodies and helmets intact.
We did a little repacking to stow away the ropes and make sure we were carrying roughly equal loads, then started hoofing our way down the approach trail once more. I got a lesson in knees, as one of mine started getting fatigued on this steep, rocky trail, laden as I was. I was able to coddle the little guy by leading with the sad, tired knee and bending the strong one on each step, and before long we were lying about at the trailhead while tourists buzzed around us making their way to view Bridalveil Falls!

We spent the rest of our day resting up, showering, catching up with loved ones, and generally lying about. In a day or two Tom would join us and we would begin preparations for climbing El Capitan in earnest!!

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Climbing The Freeblast on El Capitan

Time to Read: 8 Minutes

After a rest day or two, Tom was finally set to join us! He was to arrive by bus in the evening. As the hour grew closer, I kept a close eye on the time so I could go to the bus stop to show him to camp. With about 20 minutes to go, just when I was getting ready to go get him, none other than Tom Cronin himself walked right into our camp! The bus must have arrived early, and he'd been able to find his way to us no problem!
The next day we took to prepare for El Cap. The plan was to climb the entire Freeblast, which would take us to Mammoth Terraces, about 1,100ft up the 3,000ft face of El Cap! Once reaching the top, we would stash all the extra water we brought and all our climbing gear, then rappel down and rest for a day before heading up again to make a summit bid over 3 or 4 days.

On day one, we were all packed up and ready to go the night before, so we only had to wake up at about 5:45 to get some breakfast in us before catching the first shuttle to El Cap Meadow at 7am. It had begun!!
We were first to the base that morning and never saw a soul on the route all day, although we did hear some folks on The Nose route a few hundred feet to our right here and there throughout the day. I took the first 500ft of climbing in 3 pitches, linking what's normally pitches 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 into two long, 200ft pitches. The first two pitches were fun, the climbing just challenging enough to be interesting, but the real crux to them was gear management.
On the first 200ft pitch, I started to run super low on slings. I had left too many pieces behind in the rock as fall protection, so towards the end of the pitch I was running super low on gear I needed to clip my pieces! Luckily I was far off the ground by then, so I simply left longer spaces between gear left behind for fall protection, opening me up to longer falls, but ensuring I'd have the gear to leave pieces behind when I really needed it.
Once at the top, I set everything up so Matt could climb up to me, put me on belay again, and cast off on the next 200 footer while Tom climbed up to Matt to start hauling our haul bag with all our supplies. On this next pitch, I did a much better job managing my gear and I made it to the belay with just the right amount of gear left for the anchor! I arranged the anchor and called down to Matt that the rope was fixed and he was good to climb. I got a muffled shout back: "Hang on!"

... Alright, I'll hang out.

This belay was a purely hanging belay with no ledge whatsoever to get my weight off my harness. I hung there from the anchor, 400ft from the ground, watching cars drive along the roads and tourists mill about far below in the meadow. I put on some tunes on my phone. Eventually I got a call from Matt and it turns out the haul bag was stuck about 15 feet off the ground! Nearly the entire time I was climbing the second pitch, they were struggling to get the haul bag moving past this overhang it had gotten hung up on. Matt told me they were on it and to hang tight.
I called Kim on the off chance she might pick up, even though she was at work, and she actually did! We chatted briefly, which provided a wonderful remedy for my boredom and was a great, novel experience to call someone while chilling out in a hanging belay a couple hundred feet off the ground. Soon though, she had to get back to work so I went back to gazing over the valley and listening to my tunes.
Before long though, whoops of joy from below announced they had gotten the haul bag free! Apparently Tom had to rappel all the way down to the bottom of the pitch to help the haul bag around from where it was stuck, then it was free to go. Matt positively zoomed up the pitch to come up to my anchor, smacked me on belay, and I was off on the next pitch. This pitch was half challenging aid and half slabby free climbing. I had hoped not to get this pitch, but oops I messed up and it was in my block. I climbed up a gradually thinning crack before doing a very friction dependent move left to reach another crack. This one also slowly petered out, forcing me to rely on several tenuous placements before finally ending completely at a bolt.
From here on out the pitch was entirely protected by bolts spaced too far apart to use as aid ladders. I'll admit, after climbing 450ft, shuffling about at a hanging belay for over an hour, then doing some spooky aid moves on the first half of the pitch, I was pretty spent. The prospect of putting on my rock shoes and free climbing up there was wildly unappealing. Luckily Matt is an amazing climbing partner and has never failed to rise to the occasion! I lowered down back to the belay, swapped ropes with Matt, and he scampered up to my high point.
Matt was able to reach the anchors of that pitch with a combination of free climbing (climbing with only the rock to move forwards but with a rope for fall protection), aid climbing, and a trekking pole to extend his reach to clip the spaced out bolts sooner. Once he reached the anchors, he brought up Tom first, then I brought up the rear. By the time I made it up there and started hauling up the haul bag, Matt was already gone up the next pitch with Tom at the belay.
After I finished up hauling, I opened up to Tom that I wasn't feeling so hot at the prospect of continuing above Mammoth. For now, I'll spare y'all the finer details of that topic because I'm devoting a section to that. If you're curious you can skip ahead to read it! For now though, it suffices to say that I was having serious doubts as to whether I wanted to continue for another 2,000ft after finishing our current goal of reaching Mammoth Terraces.
Matt led another two pitches higher. Around this time Matt started feeling pretty low as well and was beginning to have doubts on whether he could reach the summit as well, but for quite different reasons. He'd been battling a shoulder overuse injury for months and had been seriously dedicated to rehabbing it, but it was at this point that he had to admit it was not in the shape it needed to be to climb El Cap in the style Matt wanted. Unbeknownst to me, the day after we got down from the Leaning Tower, he could hardly lift the injured arm over his head!
It seemed that the dream may be fading, but now was not the time. We had to climb another 300ft, stash our gear, then get back to camp 4, and we were running low on time. By the time Tom was getting ready to start his block of pitches to take us to the finish, night was fast approaching. His headlamp was buried in the haul bag, so in the interest of time I gave him mine so he could get climbing as I had plenty of time at the anchor to dig around for his headlamp.
Tom took the glory pitches to the top! Much of what he had on his pitch was relatively easy free climbing, so he avoided much of the aid shenanigans that Matt and I were privy to. I was unfortunately unable to witness the spookiest pitch he led, as Matt followed him to clean the gear and I climbed a freehanging rope directly to the anchor which was very much off course from the line he had actually climbed to get there.
As Tom was leading, night officially fell and Matt and I realized there was NO way we would catch the last shuttle back to camp 4, which was at 10pm. We realized we'd have to walk all the way back, a distance of about 2.5 miles. Yikes.
We finally reached Mammoth Terraces just before midnight. It was at this point that I realized I hadn't yet done my Duolingo for the day and I only had about 5 minutes left! I knocked it out just in the nick of time, which was pretty neat given it was the middle of the night and I was 1,100ft up a cliff.

We took a quick break, drank a bunch of water, and had some snacks to re-energize before beginning the descent. We stashed our extra gear, then started making our way down. There are fixed ropes all the way down to the ground from this point, but we'd heard that they were in terrible condition. There were many knots tied to isolate unsafe parts of the rope, and the core and the sheath of several of them had separated somewhat, forcing the sheath to bunch up at the bottom of many of the ropes, which makes rappelling quite tough. Given all that, we decided to rappel on our own ropes, which took around 6 200ft rappels and probably around two hours.
But at last, we reached the ground!!

It was about 2am. We stashed our ropes and literally any and all gear we wouldn't need for our walk back to camp, then started walkin'. We walked in the middle of the road most of the two and a half miles back to Camp 4, chatting and laughing the whole way back. When we arrived at around 3am, I was ready to drop. Tom and Matt, being the amazing influences they are, made no ifs and buts about making some dinner. We boiled water and treated ourselves to a dehydrated Mountain House meal each, and thank god we did! We all wolfed them down and finally lay our heads to sleep by 4am.
It's a testament to how tired we were that we all slept well into the morning, given the tight quarters of camp 4 and especially considering that Tom was sleeping on the ground with no tent, just a pad, sleeping bag, and bivy sack!

And so marked the end of our upward progress on El Capitan.

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Free Climbing in Yosemite

Time to Read: 9 Minutes

Before I get into telling the story of my last days in Yosemite for this trip, I want to make it clear that I was not free soloing! Nor am I one who free solos in general. Free soloing is rock climbing using only the rock for upward progress and using no gear for fall safety. Free climbing, on the other hand, is using only the rock for upward progress BUT placing gear and using a rope only as fall protection. Up until now we had been focused on aid climbing, in which there are little to no rules, you do whatever you have to do to continue moving upward. Free climbing is a bit more of a contrived physical challenge, but undoubtedly easier to enjoy than aid climbing!
With that out of the way, on to the story!

The few days after coming down from El Cap were filled with much back and forth. I was pretty well committed to staying earthbound, but Matt was really struggling with whether to go for it or stay back. Meanwhile, Tom was inexplicably filled with more stoke than ever!
I was somewhat vindicated by the weather, as a storm blew through for a day or two, which would have made for a very small margin for success given when I had to leave. However, if I'm being totally honest, I probably wouldn't have gone for it even if the weather had been perfect.
After a few days of back and forth though, Matt eventually decided that, while he could push through and make it work, he wanted to climb El Cap for the first time in a healthy style with a healthy body. So, he was out as well, and climbing El Cap was officially out of the question for all of us. The trip was now officially converted to a free climbing trip!

From years of browsing Mountain Project, I had developed quite a long list of climbs on my To-Do list, many of which are in Yosemite! Most of those are well known classics steeped in history, so I was itching to get on some of those climbs that were climbed by some of my heroes!
I didn't even need to look hardly at all for climbing partners. Matt was out for the count due to his shoulder, but Tom was good to go, and Matt had also bumped into this guy Logan at the Camp 4 message board who was looking for people to rope up with! Logan came in seriously clutch the whole trip, like letting us stash some of our gear in his van when we weren't lucky enough to have a Camp 4 reservation here and there. Even beyond Tom and Logan, while the three of us were deliberating as to our plan and still figuring out if El Cap was possible for some of us, this random guy Ori pulled up to our camp to see about roping up mere minutes after I committed to bailing on El Cap!

Between Tom, Logan, and Ori, we were set to get plenty of climbing in during our last days in the valley!
Our first stop was to Cookie Cliff to climb Butterballs, a 5.11c route that, as a finger crack lover, I'd had my eye on for a long time. What I didn't know, though, was that it's pretty tough to get to! You have to climb a 5.10 climb to get over to the start of Butterballs, then belay from a 2 foot wide ledge.
Logan and I took Butterballs while Tom and Ori climbed some other crazy stuff around the corner.
I got totally thrashed, but I had an awesome time doing it! I tried my best to push through and get as high as I could before I fell, but eventually I had to take the whip on some really good gear. Given that it's a finger crack, falling on this puppy was a little exciting! The crack is so good that your fingerlocks are amazing, but there are very few good footholds. When you peel off a route like that, you have to whip your fingers out as soon as you know you're goin' down lest you lose some skin to the crack when you fall! As it was I still lost some skin here and there, and eventually threw in the towel and hauled on gear as much as necessary to get to the top. About mid-way up I found some bats roosting in the crack and they were so cute! It was good that I was struggling as much as I was, because they had pleeenty of time to get out of my way. While I didn't even come close to so much as doing all the moves, I had a ton of fun pushing myself on a tough climb and taking some wingers on bomber gear!

After Logan and I made it back to the ground we linked back up with Tom and Ori, and Tom had his eye on a hard sport climb. Also being into that kind of thing, Logan belayed him and Ori and I hung around for a minute watching the show until we noticed that the sun was getting ready to dip below the hillside. It was roasting hot all day, so we decided to dash down to the river and take a dip and told Tom and Logan to join us when they were done.
Those kinds of evenings are one of the reasons I absolutely love traveling. Ori and I found a sweet little swimming hole with a nice beach to chill out at near the road, then just swam, chatted, dried off in the sun, and in general chilled out! Eventually the sun got away from us and we abandoned the idea that Tom and Logan would make it, so we hiked back up to where they were climbing...... and they were still at it! They had been looking forward to taking a dip as well, but by the time they were finally wrapped up climbing, the idea of going for a cold, shady swim wasn't very appealing so we just split.

That night was one of the nights that we had no reservation at Camp 4. Matt had climbed the fixed ropes up to our high point on El Cap to bring down our supplies the next morning, so Tom and I were left to figure out where to sleep that night. We hung around and socialized at the cafe and Camp 4, then headed into the boulder field behind Camp 4 to find a place to cowboy camp in the woods for the night (we were also somewhat inebriated). We had scoped out some places we might be able to throw down a sleeping pad a day or two before, but in our state at the time I abandoned the idea of finding them and quested forth into the night by cellphone screen light (to stay a little lowkey, as what we were doing was technically against the rules). Lo and behold, we stumbled directly into a SWEET rock shelter! Complete with a wide front entrance, small back door/skylight, and a flat, comfortable, sandy floor. Score!! Never doubt me again, Tom! ;)

Next up I climbed an easy multipitch near Camp 4 with Ori at Sunnyside Bench, had some lunch in the cafe, then set off with Logan to climb my other big To-Do: Separate Reality, a totally wild 5.12a consisting of a 20ft completely overhung roof crack. Imagine putting a crack in your ceiling then climbing it horizontally for 20ft and that's what we've got! Logan and I had a total blast on this climb. I'd never climbed a crack so steeply overhung before, so just hanging there by hand jams and my feet twisted in the crack behind me was such a novel experience! I didn't make it very far as I had left my crack gloves 1,100ft up El Cap... Rookie move. Part of the key to making this climb go easy is to find your hand jams where there are little crystals in the crack between your hands and the lip of the crack, creating a constriction. This is all well and good when you have crack gloves protecting the backs of your hands from the crystals, but I had no such luxury. I made it as far as I could before I fell, and was able to stay close to the rock to keep the option of pulling back on. When I tried, however, I just felt those crystals digging into the backs of my hands exactly where they had been digging in before, and it was just too painful to commit to for another burn, so I came on down, totally pleased with my efforts!
(as I write this nearly a month later, the skin in those spots on my hands is still pink, shiny and new!)
Logan managed three burns before he started wearing out, which was perfect timing as we were racing the sun on our walk back to his van! Getting out of that climb was an adventure in and of itself, as the climb is such a huge roof, we had to resort to some fun shenanigans to get our gear out of the crack then climb our rope back out of the huge overhang. Luckily we were a scrappy pair and made it happen without too much hassle!

We only had time for one more climb in the valley, so Tom and I roped up to climb another classic, but a more moderate one this time. I was stoked to get on something that wasn't redonkulously easy like what Ori and I climbed on Sunnyside Bench, but not so hard that I couldn't even free all the moves! We climbed Commitment, a classic, three pitch 5.9! That was exactly the kind of route I wanted to cap off the trip. It was hard enough that I had to think about the moves and worry about my gear, but easy enough that I was able to onsight it without much hassle :) Matt even hiked around to join us at the top of the climb! It was pretty funny, we shouted to each other a little bit from the bottom of pitch 2, then when I topped out pitch 3 there he was, leaning against a tree a few feet from the top of the climb!

But, with the end of that climb was the end of my climbing in Yosemite for this trip. I spent the rest of the day finalizing my packing, taking a shower so as not to stink out the entire bus and plane on my way home, and generally putting myself in order for travel.
I think the next time I go to Yosemite I'll shoot for an even longer stay to really dig in to the climbing there, it's such a paradise!! I couldn't have asked for a better crew to share my first taste of Yosemite with, both the crew I arrived with and the adopted crew mid-trip.
This trip was filled with so many firsts and so many amazing learning experiences! So, so much happened that I couldn't write about in this post, which is already lengthy. Honorable mentions go to the group of British climbers neighboring us in Camp 4 who we never got to rope up with, but with whom we shared many climbing stories and camaraderie, to Chris who shared supplies and stories with us at Camp 4, and to all the little jokes and moments shared with so many friends, old and new!

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Thoughts on Bailing

Time to Read: 4 Minutes

So, bailing on El Capitan had me feeling a lot of feelings and thinking a lot of thoughts. It was a really hard decision, partly because Matt, Tom and I had spent so much time this year preparing for it, partly because I felt like I was letting my friends down, and partly because I felt lame for bailing on this opportunity to do such a milestone climb.
However, ultimately it was the right call for me. In processing my feelings and reasons for bailing, I learned about myself as a climber and as a person, how to properly challenge myself, and the reasons we do hard things in the first place!

I learned that I challenge myself not in leaps and bounds, as I've personally seen some of my friends do, but in little steps. I made little steps by practicing aid climbing at Seneca and climbing the Glass Menagerie and the Leaning Tower before El Cap, but jumping from doing two Grade V climbs to a Grade VI climb in one season was just too much for me! In hindsight, I think I need to do more Grade V climbs before making the jump to Grade VI, and even then, it's possible that I'm just not an enjoyer of Grade VI climbing.
Part of what had me down bad was the necessity for speed and efficiency when climbing something that long. In Grade VI climbing, every second counts and every little inefficiency seriously adds up. That need for efficiency, paired with my one season of bigwall climbing experience meant that, if I were to get up El Cap, I'd have to be minding every ineficiency and constantly on the lookout for ways to dial in my system to be better. This would have left little room to relax and enjoy the experience, which is the main reason I do the adventures that I do! On the Leaning Tower and the Glass Menagerie, we had the margins to take extra time where we needed it, but on El Cap you have to be ON the entire time. Once I do more bigwalls that take 2 or 3 days, I'll have settled in enough to upgrade to something like El Cap that takes 4 to 6 days more comfortably and enjoyably, which is how I prefer to tackle my exciting new challenges!

It was hard to separate my internal motivations from my external motivations, but once I realized what each of those were, it made the decision easy.
Internally, I climb to enjoy myself and grow into the areas I'm interested in growing into at my own pace. I love using climbing as a medium to learn about myself and how I respond in stressful situations, and just as a way to play outside!
Externally, I'm absolutely susceptible to the admiration I receive from climbers and non-climbers alike for my climbing achievements. However, external motivators are weak and fleeting. When shit really hits the fan on an adventure, an internally motivated adventurer will rise to the occasion, whereas an externally motivated adventurer will usually bail.
I know this because I've been in both situations many times! I've found that, on my externally motivated adventures such as this attempt on El Cap, I'll think to myself: "How cool will it be to say I did this thing!" Thinking this way cheapens the effort required to actually do the thing and mentally time travels to the glory after the great effort.
Contrast that with an internally motivated adventurer, who looks forward to and is there specifically for the moments of great effort. They may have those moments of glory after the great effort is completed in the back of their mind, but in the adventure they are wholly present, excited, and enjoying the effort.

When it hits the fan, the internally motivated adventurer relishes the challenge and rises to the occasion. The externally motivated adventurer often finds that the challenge is greater than they had anticipated and not worth the imaginary glory at the end.

There are all kinds of different styles of adventuring and progressing. I've learned I'm most comfortable and most able to enjoy my adventures when I feel thoroughly prepared and competent in achieving my goal, no matter how much suffering it entails. This means I progress more slowly than some of my contemporaries, but at least I do so on my own terms.

At the end of the day, we only have ourselves to answer to. If we can give good answers to ourselves, we can give good answers to those pesky external motivators.