Cathedral Summit, deux.

This past weekend, Zac and I successfully climbed and summited Cathedral Peak. This was the 4th time I’ve tried Cathedral, the 2nd time I’ve been successful, and the 1st time I’ve pulled it off without any disaster. (hmm..power of 2 pattern emerging there)

The trip went perfectly… Zac, Jaime, and I left SF @ noon, got up to Tuolumne and despite only having a reserved permit for 2 people for Saturday night, we were able to change it to a permit for both Friday & Saturday night for 3 people.

We hiked in along the climber’s trail, and ended up camping virtually at the base of the Southeast Buttress. It was warm enough that I decided to ditch the tent and save some weight by just bringing the sleeping bag and tarp. This would have worked out perfectly if there weren’t a million mosquitoes around… at 9700 feet, no less! After slathering on the Jungle Juice, we finished consuming our gigantic Safeway $5 sub for dinner, and went to sleep. My only thoughts for that night were that the moon is insanely bright at that high an elevation. I thought there was someone shining a flashlight in my face.

I woke up at 5am to the mosquitoes, and slathered on more Jungle Juice and started arranging the rack. Jaime & Zac made breakfast (bacon!!) and we racked up and got started. The plan was for Zac and I to climb, me leading the whole route up, Zac following and cleaning gear while Jaime hiked up the backside to meet us up top. We ended up doing the Supertopo C variation (mostly 5.6 with one section of 5.7), and according to our EXIF data, summited at 11:14am PDT.

Throughout the climb, we noticed clouds far off in the horizon. By the time we summited, they’d gotten significantly closer… from all 360 degrees. Given my last experience climbing Cathedral, I was wary of the famous Tuolumne afternoon showers, so we spent about 5-10 minutes on the summit debating between the sketchy downclimb descent versus leaving a nut and sling to rappel off of. I took one more look at the clouds, left a nut and sling and we rapped off the backside.

We met up with Jaime who led us down the backside scramble around the eastern side of Cathedral where we stopped for a quick one-pitch lead (for me) and top-rope (for Jaime) so she could get some climbing in, and then headed back to camp to pack up. We hiked out, noticing the overcast clouds the entire time, and about 10 minutes from our car thunder clapped and the storm broke. Hopefully that nut and sling I left up at the summit was useful for anyone up there needing to escape in a hurry.

Our climb victorious, we drove to the Evergreen Lodge for the most well-deserved blue cheese and pancetta burger before driving back home.

I’m psyched we climbed Cathedral without incident, I was really happy with Zac as a climbing partner - he kicked ass and climbed great. We’re looking to go to Castle Crags up by Shasta for July 4th weekend now where they have a ton of climbing - up to 6 pitch 1000′ climbs!

3 comments June 25th, 2008

best firefox 3 launch press article ever

seriously. i love firefox as much as the next guy… but this article cracked me up.

i love the accompanying photo - but is that really the best accompanying photo they found to run it with?

screenshot here in case the article changes:

5 comments June 18th, 2008

overstuffage

i’m packing for this weekend’s camping/climbing trip and my pack is exploding - and i’m not even bringing a tent. i’m trying to go light… minimal food, no tent (just a tarp + pad + sleeping bag). fortunately the weather looks good (all sun, no Tuolumne™ showers in store, and lows in the 40’s, possibly 30’s depending on elevation)… and yet my pack is stuffed.

it’s hard to go minimal when you’re packing climbing pro. i’m sitting here staring at a 2.5″ piece thinking “hrm, i can probably skip this” while the other voice in my head is picturing me pumped staring at a 2.5″ crack thinking “darn, that extra 2.5″ piece sure would be handy right about now”. i tend to err on the side of caution (okay okay fine, i probably don’t need 10 slings), but… well… it’s my life, right?

the “luxuries” i intend on packing: toothbrush and cards

cards are awesome. they’re fun… by yourself you’ve got solitaire, with groups you’ve got other games, they make a decent fire starter, and if worse comes to worse, you’ve got a place to scribble down your dying man’s last thoughts. (wonder what card i would choose to right on? probably ace of spades… how unimaginative)

Add comment June 18th, 2008

i’m a craigslist and climbing junkie

i’ve been craigslisting stuff like mad lately… old snowboards, old furniture, basically anything i can find in the basement that we’re not using i’ve put up on craigslist. it culminated this weekend with me selling my Audi A4 (which, mind you, was NOT in the basement)

i was hugely bummed when my A4 blew, but i’m glad i found a good home for it. the guy who bought it clearly knew cars, knew about VW/Audi’s, and is going to rebuild the engine himself and get it running again. that helped assuage my conscience a bit for selling my first car i ever loved (the ‘87 Thunderbird i totalled in high school doesn’t count)

zac, jaime, and i went to Castle Rock State Park on Saturday and climbed Castle Rock Falls. i’ve climbed it once before, but this was the first time i lead the main falls climb (100 feet of 5.8ish) up the face. i’d forgotten how beautiful and aesthetic a climb it was… we got out there early in the morning and soaked up the sun and had a great time. this was the first time i’d been belayed by zac on a lead climb, but it felt pretty good and pretty comfortable…. so hopefully we’re all good for next weekend’s climb up Cathedral Peak.

i’m really really psyched to go to Cathedral. i’m determined that this year will be the first year that doesn’t end in disaster of some kind. cross your fingers for me.

3 comments June 16th, 2008

200 days of uptime, yay!

grommit just passed 200 days of uptime! (please don’t take this as an invitation to attack my machine now. it’s been a fairly cruddy day otherwise, and i have no energy to fend off an attack at the moment)

Add comment June 12th, 2008

euro and beer

two of my favourite things in the world… and they go hand in hand.

for what it’s worth - my money is on portugal or the dutch. if i had to choose one, i’d say the portuguese. but, given that england ain’t in it (curse you steve mcclaren!), i’m rooting for the dutch. (how can you not root for a team willing to go out and duel it in oranje?)

the dutch proved themselves well today with a sweet 3-0 drubbing of italy.

i’m loving this weather we’ve been having the past few days. wendy and i just got the house re-landscaped, so we have a beautiful gorgeous house… which reeks of mulch/compost. especially nice with the heat wave… mmm… chicken manure anybody? i spent a good chunk of saturday fighting the good fight against our bamboo jungle in the backyard. we have a gorgeous bamboo grove, and i wanted to pull out some of the dead bamboo in the middle. i got whipped quite a few times by some harsh slaps of bamboo for my trouble, but managed to thin out the grove a bit.

saturday night we had dinner at a wonderful Chinese Muslim restaurant that had fantastic food, but served no beer. (name/location left out to save one of the few restaurants that’s gone above and beyond the call of duty and deserved their tip) i went and asked the manager if i could go next door to the Chinese supermarket and bring in some beer. without skipping a beat, he told me to bring in a 6 pack and he’d put it in teapots and bring it to our table. 7 minutes and $5 later (really! $5!!!) i had a frosty 6 pack of Tsingtao. 3 minutes after that, we were pouring ice cold beer from a Chinese teapot. we left a big tip for those guys.

on sunday, zac, jaime, and i did some climbing at the local gym in preparation for our attack on Cathedral Peak coming up in a couple of weeks. we’re planning to hit up Castle Rock for some leader belay review for zac to make sure everything goes smoothly this year. i’m hoping this will be the year i finally tackle Cathedral with enough time to also do Eichorn’s Pinnacle at the top.

3 comments June 9th, 2008