In 2008, at the end of summer I flew out to the States to meet my mate Trull. He’s a proper climbing dirtbag, fully commited for life. He had been working his way from Canada down the West Coast of America. We met up in San Fran to go to Yosemite and see what Big Wall climbing was all about, and with any luck climb the Nose on El Capitan.
Neither of us had climbed a Big Wall before. We had both taken our first steps together Winter and Alpine climbing, when we had no experience. We had made mistakes and learnt from them, often by the skin of our teeth. We were sure we could do the same on the 3000ft granite faces in Yosemite National Park. What was there to loose!
The mighty El Capitan, Yosemite
We had done plenty of aid in the UK and the Alps, but nothing on this scale, so we spent a month getting used to the style of climbing out there and getting our aid systems sorted on some of the smaller big walls. We had some great adventures on some of the ‘smaller’ faces in the Valley, but that’s another story for now…
For anyone that doesn’t know what big wall aiding is, basically its climbing a very big piece of rock using gear you have placed in the rock to get you past sections that you cannot free climb. Depending on how good a climber you are and what style you climb in a wall like El Cap will take anywhere between 1 day and 2 weeks (the current speed record for El Capitan is around 3 3/4hours…!).
When we felt all our preperation and experience meant we were ready to take on the big one we walked upto the base of the nose. It’s as perfect looking line as your ever likely to see in the mountains. It rises from the very toe of the cliff in an almost straight line to the very top. It’s widely considered one of the very best routes in the world, and we felt the Nose was our best chance of experiencing El Capitan. Now, due to this worldwide reputation, and being one of the easier ways up the cliff, meant unfortunately every over climber had the same dream as us. The route was so crowded we would have had to wait a week to even start the route. I was due to fly back to the UK in a 7 days and Chris was heading to Australia to continue his round the world climbing trip. We didn’t have time! Hugely dissapointed we headed back down to the meadow to swim, collect our thoughts, discuss options and have some beers.
Looking at Half Dome from the bivvy ledge on Washington Column
Later that evening back in camp we were sat around a fire, drinking beer and playing music (very badly) chatting to mates. Everyone had big plans. Shaun and Nico were heading up to try and climb a new route on the east side of El Capitan and a couple of the guys were going to try and free Half Dome in a day. Everyone was off doing stuff and we couldn’t do what we had planned. Trull and I were a bit dispondent. We had achieved more than we had hoped in Yosemite, but we just still really wanted to climb the Cap.
We were settling on the idea of spending the last week doing day long free climbs, but in the back of our minds we were hugely dissapointed. A bit later in the evening I helped a American lad to get some more firewood. His name was Masson, it was the first time we had met him that evening, so we didn’t know him at all but we had heard he was strong, real strong. At only 18 he had already climbed 5.14 and had done the Nose in 6 hours. We got on pretty well and decided to go climbing the next day – if our hangovers wernt too bad! However around midnight, after a few too many stong cheap American beers, Masson said he hadnt climbed Salathe wall, and that tomorrow we should have a look at it. Being slightly drunk and not knowing any better we both agreed…………
More on Salathe to follow…..