My Big Weekend as a Top rope Prima donna

 

With the right rope gun, the possibilities are amazing.

 

It began last fall, at a sunny crag in Utah.  His partners hesitated; I precociously volunteered and got to follow Jim Herson up the 3 pitch classic, Pistol-Whipped, in Indian Creek. I flailed on the third pitch.  ‘You would’ve done better without tape,” was his laconic assessment.  Undaunted, after Indian Creek I got myself onto his trip report email list and from there did not relent.  Somehow, I shamelessly finagled a day climbing with him.

 

‘You pick the route,’ he said.  What to do?  Something long, with cracks. Something I couldn’t do on my own seemed only logical, but also, perhaps, presumptuous.  I daydreamed about clean pitches on perfect granite.  A day to get good and tired.  I thought about linkups, long classics:  Moratorium + East Buttress—still wet; DNB- do not bother? Ho Chi Minh? Steck-Salathe? (Done that one).  What about a Kor-bek + Braille book link-up, I proposed? 

 

‘Those are ok, but how about a real classic?’ he countered in our email exchange. West Face or Astroman.  At the bottom of the email there was a PS:

“Or you could just go for it and do NiaD.”

 

NiaD?  North indirect arête of  . . .what?  I didn’t know that one.

 

Could he mean . . .

 

Nose….

….in a day?

 

The next 4 days were spent in a mix of giddy anticipation / dread.  I wasn’t in the best climbing shape of my life.  Could I handle it?  But he’d offered. How could turn down such an awesome opportunity? I wondered what it was like up there.  How could I say, ‘Sorry, that’d be awesome, but I’m not in good enough shape,’ especially since, with a new demanding job starting soon, my fitness was likely to decline steadily in the coming future.

 

The Nose, 5/12/08

I would spend the weekend before our Monday NiaD attempt in the Valley, and Jim Herson had given me a homework assignment when he dropped off the jumars earlier in the week.  “It‘d be good if you could get to Dolt ledge on Saturday,” he said. He didn’t say much for starters, and so if the man who was willing to rope gun me up the Nose had a request, I wanted to comply.  However, when we arrived to the base of El Capitan on Saturday morning, on the late side, granted, after sleeping in after Astroman, it was swarming with parties embarking on the big wall—i.e., not just people climbing, but haul bags, fixed lines, crowded anchors.  We satisfied ourselves with fixing a line on Pine Line and practicing jugging.  We got that near vertical steepness dialed; little did I know that that particular incline would do me little good on the steep pitches at the top of the nose.  I’m told the mind is a powerful thing, and so while waiting in line on Pine Line, I visualized being very tired and keeping going.  Preparation is so important for these sorts of things.

 

Sunday I awoke and went to the Curry Village office to reserve a campsite.  According to plan, I called Jim to report our place of rendezvous.  I confessed that I had not done my homework. 

Silence. 

“Does Clint think this is a good idea?” he asked.  Oh no.  He’s having doubts.  I already had doubts aplenty, but took comfort in my rope gun’s confidence.  Yet, I had been the one to say, ‘Let’s not be afraid to backpedal,’ at the outset of this adventure.

“No worse of an idea than Astroman,” I responded meekly. At that moment, I caught sight of Clint’s blue down jacket making it’s way across the Curry Village parking lot.  I had an idea. I told Jim I would try to practice jumaring and got off the phone. 

 

Sure enough, Clint to the rescue.  I sabotaged his climbing day without even asking.  I just told him that Jim had questioned if Clint thought this was a good idea and asked if I could borrow a rope to sling a tree somewhere and practice jumaring.  Needless to say, Clint, his partner Tim, now with me in tow, headed up to Reed’s Pinnacle where we set up some jumaring practice and then Clint set up a drill to learn to follow a pendulum. I made a mental note to be sure and rename the route after him once I had successfully top roped the whole thing.  Clint is always a gracious teacher, and thankfully, his partner Tim seemed happy to be learning these skills as well. Best, they both got in some climbing after all.  I hung out at the crag with them, but as evening approached, I realized I’d better get back to camp to be packed and organized when Jim arrived.  I hitched back to the valley with some Australian tourists in a funked out van, hopped a bus to Upper Pines campground, grabbed my things to shower (aahh!), and got in line to order a pizza at Curry Village. While waiting, I heard a Russian couple talking behind me.  They were from Moscow and knew my good friends Timur and Lastochkin.  After talking to them, I hurried back to Upper Pines with the pizza, berating my tardiness, to find Jim’s VW van with the cap already up, readying for sleep.  I asked him to talk me through the Supertopo printout I’d brought (I wonder if he’d ever seen one of those before) and then he offered me the lower bunk and climbed up to the top one.  Jim had just done a long day on Half Dome Thursday and hadn’t slept much in 3 days.  I packed up all my stuff.  For me, it was one of those nights where you’re not really sure you’re sleeping at all until the alarm goes off at 4:30 and lets you know that, yes, you were.  I think it was similar for Jim.  “Guess I did too good a job of hydrating on the drive up,” he commented in the morning.

 

Parked near El Cap meadow, we consumed a hearty breakfast of eggs and toast, lots of butter, strong black coffee (makes life more predukable).  We chatted and ate leisurely—it didn’t feel like we were about to start up El Cap.  Sure enough, it hit him too that this was not NiaD pace.  “This van is a time sink,” he muttered as we gathered the gear and headed for the base.  “It’s ok, there won’t be much time for talking once we’re going,” he reasoned.

 

We 4th classed it up to the start.  Just before taking off, Jim instructed, “I’ll link the first 2 pitches and there won’t be enough rope so you’ll have to scramble up. You might have to do a 5.9 move or so. Don’t fall because I won’t have any gear in.”  What was I in for?

 

There were 3 parties on the route ahead of us, all in the lower 10 pitches.  The first pitch, (which I had intended to lead on Saturday), 10d, was slick, thin, and awkward. I jugged the 2nd pitch (3rd) to get us past 2 parties—total shit sow; I half suspected that Jim would suggest we rap down post haste.  But he didn’t, and we were at Sickle ledge.

“I’ll link the next two, but the rope won’t quite reach so you’ll have to move up the ledge here.”

“You mean simul climbing?”  I clarified, trying to vanquish any ‘are you sure that’s ok?’ in my tone.

 

Happily, the simul climbing was totally mellow and we traversed over to the Stove Leg pitches.  Sweet cracks!!!  There we met the party of Logan and Jeff.  Logan, with bright eyes, rosy cheeks, a button nose, and shiny red beard, may be closest thing to a real Leprechaun I’ve ever encountered.  Their joyous woops rose up towards us as we climbed away.

 

We reached Dolt ledge, the 10th pitch and I realized I had not yet eaten or drank anything. I’d been too busy belaying as fast as I could and following. There were Bob and Moo, the team from Oregon who had jugged our (Dan’s and my) fixed line on Pine Line on Saturday to get started, just hanging out on the ledge.  “We saw this dude coming super fast and figured it’d be easiest for you to pass us here,” they explained. 

 

I asked them to reach in the pack and grab the little bottle of 5 hr energy.  5-Hr. Energy.  It was one of those products that had appeared at the checkout of gas stations that lined the highways from the bay area to the valley, since I’d left, next to condoms and breath mints.  I’d known I’d need hours of energy, so I’d bought it. 

“I knew a kid who took that and got totally sick,” warned Bob, as I unscrewed the cap of the 2 oz. bottle.  Hearing this I decided to just drink ½. I’m glad I did.  Although I didn’t make the connection immediately, I—who generally pride myself on a reticent constitution to the point of hubris—almost immediately began to feel anxious, out of breath, jittery, and nauseous. 

 

When I arrive to the top of Texas Flake I was yuck.  “Can we rest?” I looked at Jim, pathetically, I’m sure, as I handed back the one or two pieces he’d placed on that pitch.  He gave a small smile, that looked sympathetic, but not happy, and suggested I eat some food.  I took a bite of energy bar, let out a sigh, and heard him say, “All set?”  Some rest.  Off he went, through the bolt ladder.

 

We came to the top of the King Swing.  He offered it to me:  It’s fun!  But …I passed.  My trepidation surprised him.

“Weren’t you planning on doing a wall this trip?” he asked. 

“That was still in the purely hypothetical realm,” I clarified and he was off.  Maybe it was that awful 5–Hr. energy, but maybe I was also responding to one rational fear:  that I might mess it up and we’d spend much time futzing around.  In any case, watching Jim do the King Swing--scampering across the granite with a background of treetops below him--was actually quite fun, and then I rapped down on the haul line as he pulled me across.  I got to do a couple of fun moves to get across the flake.  I think it was about here that my quiet rope gun let out something about it being good to be on the Big Stone—gotta love it when hard men gush.  It was a rare deviation, from the “All Set?   . . .  Off!” that I mostly heard from him throughout the climb.

 

After that damn 5-Hr. energy poison wore off, I felt relaxed and happy at the belays, and even felt confident enough to blame it for my unconscionable request to rest and cowardice above the King Swing.  “Probably wasn’t such a good idea to try something new like that today,” he commented. I was settling in a groove, even if things were not quite going as smoothly as they should.  Despite Jim’s impeccable rope management, I often had to holler for him to wait while I freed tangles I’d been too slow to anticipate.  He climbed so fast!  The wind picked up.  I added a layer.  We had a rope snag on a traverse that Jim went back to get.  Then I dropped one of his aiders following up a crack.  The clinking that accompanies cleaning as pieces join each other on the sling persisted a bit longer.  I looked down to see the aider and hook dancing down the rock below.  Oops.  When I reported this at the belay, Jim was still for as long as he’d been so far on the climb. 

“Do you know where you dropped it?”  What did he have in mind?  A reconnaissance? I wasn’t sure I liked that idea.

Silence. 

“Are you debating going up or down?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I felt my heart sink a bit.  Such a generous rope gun--I knew he’d been turned back on NiaD attempts already this year--and here I was, sucking, a disappointment.  But perhaps my heart mostly sank because I dreaded the idea of rapping down 18 pitches.  Of course, easier to say you’d rather go up when you’re a towrope prima donna—and it didn’t stop me. 

I told myself that I had to get it together, keep it together. My part here was so easy—no bold leading, no decisions to make.  All I had to do was follow and be efficient.  “You’re fine.  Why don’t you act like it?  Keep it together.  It’s time to do better than this. Don’t be the brakes,” I scolded myself. 

 

Jim, now with just one aider, dispatched the Great Roof expertly and then talked me through cleaning it.  Again, a semi-shit show, but I tried. When I looked over horizontal from him, he smiled—and this time he did look kind of happy.  When I reached the belay, he said that part was the hardest cleaning on the route and didn’t say anything about going down.  At the next belay, I think—they all run together—he said it’d be good to get to Camp VI by dark, but it’d be hard.  I had transitioned into jug mode at the Great Roof, and now, in an effort to keep us moving, even declined to follow a sweet pitch that Jim offered—now I think I regret it a bit; in retrospect, with my jugging style, it may not actually be faster, and climbing is way more fun than jugging. 

 

The next two pitches brought that mode of hurrying—you’re fighting against darkness; every minute counts.  But then, the darkness wins and the rush is over. Now is the time to be safe and keep moving.

 

At Camp VI, we pulled out our headlamps. The Changing corners pitch was the longest belay of the climb.  Jim deemed a critical bolt too sketchy to use, which made the aiding more difficult.  He actually even apologized, and I thought how, surely, if I had been leading the Nose, most pitches would have taken longer than that.  It was cooler, but I felt grateful that the afternoon wind had died down; it was a calm night.  I even took it as a sign that God was looking out for us, which made me wonder what to make of the fierce winds we’d encounter later.  At the top of the Changing corners pitch I kicked myself for forgetting entirely about sussing out the moves for next time!

 

After the Great Roof, Jim had suggested that if I wore the backpack, he could belay me up on the haul line, thus eliminating the need for me to tie backup knots (read: go faster so he wouldn’t freeze at the belay)—I loved this idea; it was just one of the many ways in which Jim rolled a red carpet right up the Nose for me.  Still, the jugging was cumbersome. I had a cluster-muck around my harness the daisy chain on a single biner went to each jumar while the belay line got pulled upward, and everything always seemed so convoluted. I didn’t help matters by leaving the gri gri on the belay loop, but I figured that each time I took it on or off was an opportunity to drop a critical piece of gear.  Of course, when I started to wonder if all that weight on my belay loop might shorten its life, I removed the gri gri each time. 

 

I could see as I arrived at each belay that Jim was cold.  I tried to ascend quickly, but I was always slow getting into the set-up.  It’s almost as if the urge to rush made me slow down even more, to make sure I had everything right.  He was so patient.  Knowing that he was up there cooling off each pitch made me just try to keep moving, as imperfectly as I might be ascending, rather than fiddling with the settings to improve my efficiency.  I figured I could fiddle without guarantee of improvement, but fiddling would certainly lose time.  Plus it was dark.  Not the best logic, perhaps, but better the devil you know . . . I’m sure Jim was appalled by my method of keeping one hand in the crack and moving both ascenders with one hand.  (In my only other jumaring experience—ascending a few pitches on Half Dome—I’d moved both ascenders with one hand the whole way because of a mutinous shoulder, so it seemed kind of normal.) 

 

The last belay was the coldest and the final pitch the most overhanging—challenging to clean, but I think I finally started to get this cleaning on jugs thing, too!  If before the focus was energy conservation and the goal was to figure out how to do things efficiently—a thoroughly unrealized goal, let’s be clear—by this point I figured I wouldn’t run out of energy; I just wanted to get the damn draws off the bolts as quickly as possible, and so several of the bolts ended up being a wrestling match.  Quite probably this was not quicker, but I was certainly trying harder (and swearing more).  Jim—as usual, rolling out the red carpet (during the day I often had the thought that I had no business being on this climb)—fixed the jumar line at the lip but continued to belay me up the 4th class (4th class my ass!) to the top.  I ran to the tree he indicated, called “Time!” (jokingly, of course—we didn’t keep time, but I think we were more than 6 times slower than his fastest NiaD) and collapsed on the rock, my chest heaving from the effort.  The wind was gusting strong now.  The sky was black, the stars bright.  It was cold, but I didn’t want to move.  We’d climbed the Nose!  Well, more accurately, I’d been rope gunned up the Nose!  It was never far from my thoughts that, as hard as it was for me, I had the easy part.

 

The winds grew stronger as we headed downward towards the fixed lines of the East Ledges descent.  Precipice. Darkness.  Water running over the slabs in places. We put our climbing shoes back on.  The strong winds reminded me of the 73 mph gust that had knocked me off my feet and sprained my ankle 2 months before. I recalled hearing the pasty, but friendly computer programmer-esque team that had had the portaledge up below Sickle ledge [‘How demoralizing,’ commented Jim] use the phrase “70 mph gusts on El Cap” and wondered if they’d been discussing a forecast, wondering if amongst these winds, which felt in the vicinity of perhaps 50 mph, there might suddenly barrel through a 70 mph, like the one that sprained my ankle, against which I could not stand, and if such a gust came along and I failed to maintain my footing on this slab with water coursing down it in the dark above a precipice, how that might all play out.  At one point the wind blasted sand into my eyes and I had to pause on the section we were down climbing while the dizziness passed.  Then Jim, who had ½ an hour earlier expertly made his way to old shoes he had stashed beneath an nondescript rock on a summit strewn with nondescript rocks, declared, “We’re lost,” at which point I did not want to move another inch.  I crouched between some rocks and asked if we could wait out the winds.  He reluctantly complied--‘I would’ve felt terrible if I made you keep going and you bit it,’ he explained later.  So we huddled between the rocks until daylight. We both caught a bit of sleep, I think.  Turns out we were 50 ft. from the fixed rap lines; we just needed to scramble down the very rocks we were huddled against.  The winds remained strong—Jim said he’d never seen anything like this in the Valley—and we hoped the parties on the wall had reached sheltered bivies. Four raps later we were on the valley floor.

 

The Valley in the early morning was gorgeous!  Even without sleep, the new day is so refreshing.  The winds subsided; the sun shone.  I took my obligatory dip in the mighty Merced—strange, considering how I’d been so cold just hours before.  But knowing that a warm van and my cozy sleeping bag were just footsteps away now, combined with not knowing when I would be back to the Valley next, made me embrace the frigid ice water.  We retrieved the leftover pizza from the bear box and had a happily slow-motion breakfast before starting the long drive back.

 

When we arrived to Palo Alto, Jim got out of the van, slung his rope from a nearby tree and gave me a jugging lesson on vertical terrain.  This gesture, in such a sleep deprived state, really hit home for me just how painful it must have been for him to watch my pathetic jumaring technique as I struggled up the line.