6/29  Arrive at Ryan's house in the evening.  First shower and shave in 11 days.

6/30  Quick trip to REI for essentials.  Rest and gear repair day.

7/1  Meet Ryan's friend Other Ryan.  Borrow a bunch of aid gear from him -- Yates butt bag, Petzl Traxion, #5 cam, supertopo book, etc.  Ryan's grandparents take us out for dinner.

7/2  Ryan's mom re-patched my pants.  The sewing hadn't held.  So far this trip I've read Harry Potter IV (my favorite Harry Potter so far) and James Michener's Space.  Also watched the movie The Aristocrats, which was pretty horrid.

7/3  Jess arrives in California.  We completely overload the Subaru, buy a ton of food, and drive to Yosemite.  Spend the night in Yosemite West, on the porch of a cottage owned by an acquaintance of Ryan's.

7/4  We climb Nutcracker (5.8) on Manure Pile Buttress.  Ryan leads pitches 1, 3 and 5; I lead pitches 2 and 4.  Jess comes up in the middle of each pitch.  The climb is fun and the three of us cruise right through it.  Next we climb Moby Dick (5.10a) at the base of El Capitan.  Ryan leads the first pitch which is long and hard.  It is a crack which starts as tips and expands to offwidth by the top.  I lead the second pitch which is fun 5.8.

After a quick splash in the Merced, Ryan and Jess head off to climb The Grack (5.6) and watch the sun set.  I rest and end up meeting a hiker from Korea.  There are many Koreans in the park and all are surprised to hear that I have been to Korea twice and even can mangle a few Korean phrases.

7/5  Rest day in preparation for Lost Arrow Spire.  We explore all the tourist stuff in the valley.  Not much of interest to climbers.  Except the free showers in Curry Village.  They even have soap!  The library (in the old Girl's Club building) has free internet, but it is closed because the librarian is sick.  The amazing thing is that there are pay internet terminals about 100 yards away which charge an outrageous $15/hour.  But it turns out those terminals are free if you just press ctrl-alt-delete instead of inserting a credit card... ummm... or at least that is what some shifty character told me.  I'm far to honest to have tried it myself.

We eat our delicious cantaloupe surrounded by very fat, very loud people who are watching a soccer game on the television.  That's why I go to Yosemite National Park, to watch TV.  I'm sure some of them complained that they had to sit outside because there was no indoor lounge with a TV.  Some stupid kid guesses we are from Europe because Americans would never eat a mellon.  He then offends two women who scamper to the other side of the deck to avoid him.  I need a whole new hiker strata for National Park gift shops and restaurants.  The touron strata.  Yeah, we should have eaten our cantaloupe elsewhere.  But the table was so convenient.

We escape the valley and drive to the north rim.  Random exploration rewards us with a fantastic bivy site about 1 mile east of  Porcupine Creek (where we stash all our food in the bear lockers).  A short hike leads to a beautiful site, complete with a view of Half Dome.  The mosquitoes are voracious and I relax in my bug bivy for a bit before falling asleep as early as possible.

7/6  Awake at 5am for Lost Arrow Spire.  The hike from route 120 is longer than the hike up Yosemite Falls from the valley, but there isn't as much elevation change.  First thing we meet Damian and Jeffy who had been playing on a slackline on the tower earlier in the week.  They share an amazing video.  If you think some of the stuff I do is crazy...

We hike 7 miles to the spire.  The path is absolutely infested with mosquitoes.  Worse than I saw in Alaska.  Worst ever.  We walk and swat, walk and swat, walk and swat... pausing only to watch a bear who is roaming just off the trail.  It looks at us, then shows us some bear butt as it makes a quick departure.  We also see some deer and beautiful views of the valley when we reach the rim.

By 9am we have reached the spire and are rappelling down to the notch.  We join two 200' static ropes, and tie one end to a tree.  We rappel down these ropes 275' (passing the knot along the way) and anchor ourselves at the notch where the spire separates from the main cliff.  We are nearly 3000' above the valley floor.  Leading on the third rope, Ryan starts up the first pitch.  He makes short work of the moderate aid and free climbing to the belay.  Jess and I follow, trailing the two rappel ropes which are still tied to the tree above.

Next, I get to enjoy the thrill of a long, hard aid pitch.  The final pitch of Lost Arrow Spire is certainly the hardest aid I've ever done.  Shortly after leaving the belay, I clip a manky piece of 4mm cord with the sheath missing, so it is just a 2mm core.  From that I get two lobes of the yellow alien.  Then two lobes of the red alien.  Standing on that, my knees are knocking like crazy and I'm desperately trying to reach high enough to clip the shiny new bolt which beckons me like a life preserver in heavy seas.  I get the bolt and just hang on my daisy for a few minutes to stop shaking.  Apparently there is a solid hook move among the lousy alien placements, but I'm an aid novice and never really looked.  My advice... offset aliens.  Definitely.

After that the pitch eases quite a bit.  It is basically A0 from there (I place maybe six pieces), but with plenty of top stepping.  I really don't know how short people lead this pitch.  I am in the top steps five or six times and at least two of those are absolutely mandatory.  One mandatory top step is off a nut threaded over an old rivet.  My rivet hangars don't always fit properly, so I am stuck using nuts for several of them.  Of course, this increases the distance I must reach to the next placement, but I'm tall so it isn't a problem.

Finally I am a few feet from the top.  Just one short bit of free climbing to go.  I don't even bother to change into climbing shoes.  Wearing 30 pounds of aid gear, I step out of the etriers (leaving one on the final bolt, no need to retrieve it) and try to move delicately up the final 5.6 slab... except... F#&@... F#&@ F#&@!!  My fifi hook is caught on the pull loop of my shoe.  I can't stand up.  I do the sensible thing and whimper for about 20 seconds.  When that fails to fix the problem, I scrunch back down, yank the dang hook, and scamper to the top of the tower.   Ahhhh.

Ahhhh!

Very happy now.

Nice view.

Ahhhh.

I fix the rope and hang out waiting for Jess and Ryan to join me.  They jug the pitch and the three of us are all on top of Lost Arrow Spire.  Cool!

Now we set up the tyrolean traverse back to the rim.  The tyrolean is about 55' across and has to gain 30' vertically... and it is 3000' above the valley floor.  We set the line nice and slack to reduce tension on the anchors.  So we have to rappel down a bit off the tower, then jug across and up to the rim.  Quite a thrill.  That 9mm static rope looks awfully thin.  For some reason hanging in space is much more terrifying than hanging against the rock.  Though in reality it isn't any more dangerous.

I cross first and take pictures of Jess and Ryan as they cross.  We also attract the attention of every single hiker in the area (all four of them) who also shoot pictures and video.  Even better, they give us some food.  Blasted chipmunks got me again.  We had hung our food, but not well enough.  Though we lost food, we scored some booty.  Two nuts, one locking biner and one non-locking biner for the climb.  I left a quick link (which I had bootied years earlier) to beef up the anchor for the tyro.  Overall we came out ahead.

Finally, we are all back on the rim.  We pull our ropes and hike the 7 miles back to the car.  Jess spots another bear in the distance.  I'm seriously overheating because I wear my jacket the whole way to ward off mosquitoes.  DEET is very high on our shopping list.

7/7  Very much a rest day after our adventure on Lost Arrow Spire.  We poach showers and swimming in Curry Village.  We poach some time on the internet.  We eat ice cream.  We go to sleep early so we can...

7/8  Wake at 4:20am to climb Snake Dike.  This is a classic route up the southwest face of Half Dome.  I first heard about this climb years ago and have wanted to climb it ever since.

We start on the standard hiking trail.  Pass gorgeous Vernal Falls and thundering Nevada Falls (where we treat enough water to get us to the top of Half Dome and back to this point).  A bit past Nevada Falls, Liberty Cap ends and we turn left on a hiker's trail heading directly north to Half Dome.  Pass through some swampy sections -- we have DEET this time -- and reach the south face of Half Dome.  Here we spend some time heading left and right looking for any safe scramble up the slabs.  Cairns lead everywhere and nowhere.  We settle on a route near the right side of the slabs.  This takes us up to a ledge and a path we can follow left to the southwest face and the start of Snake Dike.

Finally at the base of the climb.  It is pretty easy to find Snake Dike.  That would be the route that has at least one party on every single pitch.  Yikes!  We chill at the base while the crowds disperse.  Luckily it is nearly impossible to climb Snake Dike slowly, there is no gear.  Though at least one party manages to create a cluster.  Apparently the leader was on p4 and had left all his draws with a climber on p3.  These climbers are like the climbers on Petit Grepon who just shouldn't be there.  You don't try to learn how to climb on a mega-classic 1000' climb with a 6+ mile approach.  Take some lessons, spend a year cragging, try some easy two pitch climbs.  Don't go straight from the gym to Snake Dike.

Anyhow, the crowds do clear and we start climbing around noon.  Ryan and I are swinging leads with Jess in the middle again.  Ryan leads p1, 3, 5, 7 and I lead p 2, 4, 6, 8.  The first two pitches are supposedly 5.7, but feel more like 5.5 or 5.6.  Protection is decent.  After that the climbing is easy, and the protection is widely spaced.  We are climbing very fast.  The three of us consistently climb faster than the party of two ahead of us, and we catch them at each belay.  At the start of the fourth pitch I grab one draw off Ryan's harness and start my lead.  No, I wasn't making a bumblie mistake, that is the rack for p4 -- climb 70' and clip a bolt then climb 70' to the anchor.  P6 is 100' to the first bolt and then 20' to the anchors.  The final two pitches are basically just walking.  Ryan and I don't place any gear.  The rack for Snake Dike is ultralight.  If I were to climb it again, I'd bring three aliens (green, yellow, red) and four draws.  That's it.

Rain starts just as I establish the final belay.  Ryan and Jess sprint up the pitch.  We collect all our gear and continue up Half Dome.  There is about 1000' of third class slabs from here.  Luckily the rain stops.  I'd hate to be climbing exposed third class friction slabs in the rain.  We reach the summit of Half Dome at 3:30pm.  It is very crowded with people who have hiked up the cable route.

The view is spectacular and the weather has cleared.  We hang out for a bit.  Munch some food, take some pictures.  We climb down the cable route outside the cables where the rock is less polished.  I imagine the cables are pretty intimidating to non-climbers (since they are pretty intimidating to me).  Ryan puts on his climbing shoes to free solo out to a jacket which had blown away and lodged in a crack.  He is pretty happy with the jacket and considers it his favorite booty of the trip.

The hike out is one of the most pleasant hikes of the entire summer.  Temperatures are perfect and we are in the shade the entire time.  I'm hiking slowly as usual and enjoying myself immensely.  Near the end of the hike Jess starts to stumble as her body runs out of sugar, but she makes it to the trailhead.  By 9:45pm we are back at the car.  15 miles of hiking, 1000' of climbing, 1500' of scrambling.  Excellent day!

7/9  Jess departs this morning on a bus out of the village.  Ryan and I move out of Yosemite West to a great site in camp 4.  Going from free camping to $5/person/night should be a bummer, but I have such a fun time in camp 4.  Worth every penny to spend a week in the heart and soul of United States rock climbing.  We meet Brad and Janet from Moab, and I refrain from making Rocky Horror Picture Show jokes.  I find the perfect trees for my hammock.  They provide shade all day long.  At night we hang out with our sitemate, Mi Sun.  Tyler and Anna are camping right next to us.  Only 17 years old, Tyler has completed a bunch of big walls in Yosemite and elsewhere.  He has some pretty funny (in retrospect) stories about climbing, cell phones, and dealing with Yosemite rangers.  I'm chatting with them late at night when someone says, "Is that Jeff Deutsch?"  It is Thea, whom I hadn't seen for over a year.  She is living in Oakland and was hanging out in the valley for a few days.  Two Ithacans having a random meeting in the middle of the night in Yosemite, California.  I ask Thea how on earth she spotted me in the dark.  She says, "I recognized your growl."  I take that as a compliment.  I think.

7/10  My Subaru has had a vibration for the last two days which is steadily growing worse.  I haven't had a free moment to look at it.  Rather than deal with the problem myself, I drive the car to the Yosemite Village garage.  On the way to the garage, the left front wheel falls off the car.  Darn.

The problem turns out to be a broken lug bolt.  Apparently, overloading the car and driving it over very rough roads isn't a great idea.  The vibration caused by the broken lug bolt caused the other lug nuts to loosen.  The remaining four lug bolts are damaged beyond repair.  I guess ignoring the vibration wasn't such a good idea.  I manage to get the wheel back on the car, attached to two lug bolts.  I drive 3 mph to the garage.  The garage I will come to know quite well over the next few days.

Ryan and I spend the rest of the day sneaking showers and internet.  We head back to camp 4 and Ryan spends some time working on Midnight Lightning (V8), a famous boulder problem right in the middle of camp.  I string up my hammock.  Chris, who climbs often at the Gunks, recognizes me and comes to say hi.  I meet Bridgette and Jenn who are on a similar three month road trip.  Our itineraries are nearly identical, even spending a week in Yosemite West before coming to camp 4.  And we are all continuing to Smith Rock and Squamish.  We both took the back seats out of our cars to cram in a similar pile of climbing and camping gear.  The only difference is that I have a can opener in my kitchen bin :-)

Bonnie and Julie move in next door.  At the same time, Tim moves in to our campsite.  Tim brings a load of firewood and builds a nice fire.  We all sit around the fire through the night until a ranger yells at Tim for collecting wood in the park.  Ummm... actually that's wood he collected outside the park and brought in his car.  Nice try.

7/11  Ryan and I climb Central Pillar of Frenzy (5.9).  With no car we have to hike from camp 4 to the base of the climb.  We can't hitch a ride and the stupid shuttle busses are only good for going to restaurants and gift shops.  The hike is only a few miles, but it isn't pleasant to walk along the road.  We are rushing because I want to be back to Yosemite Village before the garage closes at 5pm since they have promised my car will be ready today.

Central Pillar of Frenzy is a fun climb with fantastic views of El Capitan on the other side of the valley.  All of the pitches are very sustained.  I'm definitely not feeling strong today and my feet really hurt.  Luckily I have my rope gun with me.  Ryan leads all the 5.9 pitches, I take the 5.8 sections.  Like Prince of Darkness and Crimson Chrysalis, this climb requires two ropes to rappel.  Since we don't have double ropes, the lightest solution is to carry one of our 9mm static ropes in a backpack.  It isn't fun, but it works.

The dynamic rope manages to tie itself in a knot around a horn while we are rappelling.  Our static rope is rated for factor 1 falls, so we could use it to lead up to the stuck rope, but it would be moderately sketchy.  Luckily, we have enough of the dynamic rope that Ryan is able to use it to lead up to the stuck knot.  Even with that issue, we are back on the ground by 2:30pm.  Plenty of time to walk to the garage before they close.  Where I discover that they haven't even looked at my car.  Stupid garage.  Stupid shuttles.  At least the climb was fun.

Back at camp 4 we hang out around another fire.  A bear sneaks into camp and is just one site over from us when Tim spots it.  Ryan leads everyone in camp 4 yelling and banging to scare it off.  The bear eventually ambles away, but nothing we do particularly concerns it.  Julie has a serious bear phobia which she confronts this evening.  Beyond the initial shriek, she handles the situation admirably.

7/12 Yet another rest day.  I wake, eat breakfast, then fall asleep while reading in my hammock.  A bunch of us take Bonnie's huge pad and go bouldering around camp 4.  Late in the day my car is fixed, and I gladly pick it up.  Nice garage.  Thank you.

We all go for a swim in the Merced and play some frisbee.  We meet "Special 41" who is through hiking the PCT and hopes to spend a day or two climbing in Yosemite.  He hangs out in our campground for the night.  There is another bear (or the same bear) raiding camp 4 again tonight.  At some point in the middle of the night a bear breaks the window of a Jeep to get at the junk food foolishly left in the vehicle.

7/13  My body must be pretty worn out.  Even after yesterday's rest day, I am still able to get a great night's sleep -- 10 straight hours of deep sleep.  Ryan and I check out of camp 4 and prepare our gear for the South Face of Washington Column (5.8, C1, V).  This will be our first big wall, our first grade V climb.  We prepare food, sort climbing gear, and pack bags.

We park at the Ahwahnee Hotel and start walking to Washington Column.  A side note about the Ahwahnee... it is named after the Ahwahnee Indians, the original inhabitants of Yosemite Valley.  Europeans came to the area and killed most of the Ahwahnees.  Survivors were driven out, and eventually on to reservations.  Therefore it seems perfectly logical to build a luxury hotel and name it after the tribe.  The hotel is quite nice.  We would often go there to use the bathrooms in the lobby.  The cheapest room is $436/night.  No, that isn't a typo.  No, they don't have AAA discounts.  Why is there a luxury hotel in the middle of a National Park?  Does this really further the National Park Service mission of, "[preserving] unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the national park system for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations."  I got that off the NPS website.  I'd say a $436/night hotel named after the Native Americans from whom the land was stolen, does not further that mission.

Back to climbing stories... Ryan and I reach the base of Washington Column and spend about an hour searching for the start of the route.  This is the first time that SuperTopo lets us down.  The description of the approach isn't clear even after we have found the base of the climb.  We are lucky that someone is soloing The Prow, a nearby route, and can shout directions.

I lead the first pitch, which is one of three free pitches on the climb.  Ryan leads the second pitch which is easy aid.  I lead the third pitch, which is the second of three free pitches.   I have an easy day!  We don't have a haul bag.  Instead the second brings a backpack with all our bivy gear.  Our plan is to fix ropes to the ground and spend the night on Dinner Ledge above pitch three.  In the morning we rap down to leave our bivy gear at the base of the climb, and jug back to finish the climb.  The backpack makes jugging really, really hard.  In retrospect we should have used a haul bag for those first three pitches.  Otherwise the plan works fine.  If I were to do the climb again, I would just bivy at the base and blast the whole thing in a day.  It would be quite easy.  The first three pitches go quickly, so spending the night on the ledge doesn't save much time.

The ledge is great.  Reid and Mike are there and have ropes fixed all the way to pitch 6.  There is also a water cache.  This saves Ryan and I.  We would have been really short on water without the 1.5 gallons we drank from the cache.  I rap down to fix the lines and jug back to the ledge to sleep.

It is a beautiful night.  Warm with no wind.  Still, I don't sleep well.  Something about sleeping on the cliff.  Also, there is sand raining down on us for several hours.  A party had started climbing at 2am that day and reached the summit at 9pm.  They couldn't find the walkoff, so they hung out until the full moon rose.  At that point they found a cached rope (what are the odds?).  With two ropes they were able to rappel the route (which is what caused sand to rain on us for hours).  They reached Reid and Mike's ropes which sped up their progress.  The walked past our ledge at 4am (where I heard their story) and took our ropes to the ground.  I'm sure they were happy to reach their car after a nearly 30 hour adventure.

7/14  We wake at 4:30am to start the day.  Ryan takes our bivy gear and extra rope down to the base, then jugs up.  With only one rope, we have no easy way to retreat off the climb.  Now the only way out is up.  This whole trip we have been saying, "we don't need bivy gear, we have headlamps."  Ryan makes a similar point about the second rope.  Ryan leads p4 and short fixes some of p5.  I have a very hard time following p4 (Kor's roof) because the shoulder length draws keep me too far from the bolts to properly clean.  With the extra weight of the backpack I can't use the crack above the roof effectively to unweight the gear.  To avoid leaving gear I hook my fifi into each bolt and then take a swing after cleaning the draw and popping the hook.  Swinging below the lip of the roof sucks big time.  Finally I reach the anchor and belay Ryan the rest of the way up p5.  There is a pendulum at the top of p5 which is easy to clean.

P6 is mine.  Ryan leads p7 and short fixes p8.  I lead p9 which starts with a tricky tension traverse to obtain a crack that takes two lobes of a green alien.  Stand up on this to get solid gear.  I lead beyond the p9 anchors and stretch the pitch a full rope length to get past the aid portion of p10.  The remaining climbing is easy free climbing with crappy gear.  Ryan finishes the last bit of p10 and continues up p11 to the summit.  I follow and suddenly we have completed our first big wall.

It is 4:30pm.  We finished easily with plenty of daylight to spare.  My climbing shoes and approach shoes have holes in them.  Aid climbing is hard on footwear.  My hips are bruised from all the hanging belays.  Aid climbing is hard on the body.  All of the belays smell like urine.  Aid climbing is hard on the senses.

Other Ryan and Justin are waiting for us at the top.  They had climbed Royal Arches and knew we would be finishing South Face around that time.  The four of us walk down together.  The hike out is pretty complicated, but SuperTopo is dead on with the description and we finish the hike in 3 hours with no problems.  We retrieve our bivy gear and walk out, finding ourselves behind the Ahwahnee.  It is Friday night and all the wealthy people in their expensive evening gowns mill about the lobby while their $200,000 cars are valet parked.  I take great pleasure in walking straight through the lobby with all my gear.  Including the used poop bag I have been carrying all day.  I deposit the poop bag in one of the hotel's trash cans.  I'm pretty sure this furthers the park service mission.  Though I'm not sure if it falls into the enjoyment, education or inspiration category.  Perhaps all three.

We make a quick stop at camp 4 to say goodbye to Bonnie and Julie.  Then we drive to Ryan's house, getting in at 2am.