Sam's Climbing Blog: "Yeah, Yosemite Sam - the roughest, toughest he-man stuffest hombré that's ever crossed the Rio Grande. An' I ain't no namby-pamby"

I'm delazied for the moment so time to write about our adventures. After Trout Creek we intended to visit Smith Rocks, only an hour or so further down the road. This is the place where American sportclimbing came into existence and was developed by JB Tribout amongst others. Unfortunately the canyon was burning hot like hell and most off the walls where south facing, only coming into shade after 5pm, and even then remaining a place like you would expect a hot air oven would feel like. We did one multipich and a few climbs. No cracks but pure spaced face climbing on magnificent basalt and tuff crimpers and pockets. Motivation was big, much less were the conditions, so we left, heading towards the High Sierras in California.

Smith Rock

Can you see the Monkey Face ?

Our intention was to go to the High Sierras to go and try the Incredible Hulk, but on a certain moment a light on the dashbaord indicating "Check Engine" started flickering. We checked everything from oil to air filter, all to little avail. We decided to turn off to Yosemite instead. The Hulk was a few hou'rs down to south and wanted to avoid the risk of ending up in the middle of nowhere, that is the arid mountainous desert of the Sierras. And so it happened that we're in Yosemite, the dirtbaggers paradise.

Despite the hot weather we could do some cool multipitches, among them the first one was the Rostrum, an amzing 8 pitches long route. We couldn't free climb everything, like the offwidth part, again - we're working on our technique - but that couldn't spoil the fun, aspecially for me, since after Trout Creek, my technique has become so much better. We also did the first ten pitches of Salathé Wall, called Freeblast. We did it in full sun, a bit stupid, especially when we ran short of water. The wall in the first pitches was a bit greasy due to the warmth, so I didn't feel really comfortable, but I nonetheless did something crazy according to my standards. A technical pitch with a small fingercrack and a lot of smearing, footwork in other words. Trouble came when I ran out of gear that would fit the widenings in the crack (pin scars) made by the pioneers in the good old days, resulting in some scary and mentally superhard climbing above two pieces of shitty gear before reaching a bolt indicaing the part of a crazy slab sectionAccording to Tim, he could pull out th pieces without effort. One even came out by itself. Almost dehydrated we could reach the ground by rapping down some fixed lines. I found my rugsack still in a good condition, after we saw two bears gathering at the base of the route when we were climbing the third pitch. Luckeily no food was in my sack, otherwise it would have completely been torn to shreds. Now there are some samll scars from bear claws and/or teeth., cool. Meanwhile we also have been trying Seperate Reality, an ultra classic 5.12a roof consisting of hand jamming. Tim came close to sending it, but slipped off just before the end. Again conditions make the route a lot harder. I just slipped out of the crack. But if it gets cooler, I'm sure were going to send it.

As many of the walls here in the valley are mainly south facing, we tried to find something in the shade. And Tim let his eye fall on a route on Half Dome, called the Regular Northwest. Consisting of 25 pitches, this would be my first real big wall route. We approached the evening before, and slept at the base off the wall to start early the next morning. Without much sleep - we didn't bring sleeping bags, and only with a short pants, I had to put my legs into my backpack to keep a bit warm - we started the route and everything went really smooth up to the some scramble pitches where we kind of lost our way. No clear topo and scrambling is never straightforward. I ended up fucked up on some garbage rock between some bushes, the last piece of pro down low to my left, with what you can call an anchor - if you've enough imagination - just above me, when all of a sudden the shitty rock broke off and I barely held on, just able to reach for the slings on the anchor. Man, adrenaline of the wrong kind, I can tell you that! Time continued the next shittty pitch, more aiding than climbing untill we reached the chimneys. I was a bit dubious about these pitches. After all I never did a real chimney, but It was my turn and I did the first one, which was not hard at all, it was even fun as you had to crawl trough a hole outside of the chimney and had to continue with a finger crack. The next one was not a real chimney, but climbing a hand and finger crack in a chimney. The next one was a real chimney and I had to face it. Looking how to begin, I started off with some stemming, using a crack to the right, before the real chimney began. It went well, way beyond my expectations. The chimney was just the right size for me, so the need for placing gear was small as I squeezed up pretty comfortably. At a certain point I had to go a bit to the right and the feet became less good and the chimney became more narrow. Looking for a place to put in some pro, I found a little crack, but no gear, no cams, no nuts would ever fit in there. With cramps burning my legs, plus the last cam pretty far below me - and you don't want to fall in a chimney, you'd break some legs or arms for sure - stress was building up pretty fast. Turning back was no option, we already lost enough time with the stupid scramble pitches and with only an hour of two left before dark (at 8pm iit gets dark, meaning dark as in the middle of the night) I continued, taking the loose flake and moving my feet up and to the right. When I reached the small ledge in the chimney, I screamed as never before in a route. I went wild, so much satisfaction of doing something I never thaught I would be able to do. We reached the Big Sandy Ledge before pith 20, where we tried to sleep on a 1m wide ledge, but with no sleeping bags and a wet backpack - one of our big bottles started leaking and the whole haulbag and its containments were wet, also including my jacket - you could hardly speak of sleeping. Staying awake all night, wrapping my thermarest around my legs for some isolation, I longed for dawn to come. Weary as I was, some aid climbers pressed us to continue before 7am - they wanted to start early to finish the 6 last pitches in time, these guys were already 4 days on the wall, no wonder they wanted to comence early. As an aid climber, you need tons of time. I would say: "LEARN TO FUCKING CLIMB AND GRAB HOLDS INSTEAD OF FUCKING LADDERS!!" -as I expected it didn't work out well. The last 6 pitches turned out to be the hardest as well and tired as I was I pulled myself trough 5.12b. To hard for breakfest. Also the next ptches kept offering hard sustained climbing. Our only purpose was to reach the top, so sometimes we became aid climbers ourselves. I also had to shot so urgently I couldn't think about anything else then the top. And the hauling also took much time, making me even more nervous. We finished with the Thank God Ledge traverse (you can see Alex Honnold doing this while he's soling the whole route) and some crazy technical slab climbing (how Alex did this is still a riddle to us, but to me it seems pure suicide despite the fact he survived it) before we could sat down before a load of tourist and open the sewers. WHAT A RELIEF! Tim shitted under the whole wall and my effort came close to it as well. After a grueling 3hours - 10miles march back in the sun to the bottom of the valley, we could shower and enjoy another free meal at the all -you-can-eat buffet and have a good nights rest in a warm sleeping bag. It seems that after all, dying and suffering pain, mentally as well as physically, is not so bad. You enjoy ordinary things as never before.

Hails from Yosemte Sam - chimney master in spe

Rostrum

Bird shit looking like a melted icecream of some sorts - Hmmm

On top of the Rostrum

The valley - El cap in front and Half Dome behind

Exercising offwidth and chimney technique at generator station - no succes

First pitch of Salathe Wall


Tim in Rostrum

Tim about to start the final pitch of Rostrum

El Cap - BIG

He who almost destroyed my bag

Tiùm climbing the technical slab after the terrifying part where the cams came out

Next slab pitch


Let's kill that offwidth beast

Due to the fact that I destroyed my camera in a chimney flare in Freeblast and our urge to press on on Half Dome, we didn't make a lot of pictures during our climb of the Regular Nortwest.