that’s whacked

Cathedral Summit, deux.

Wednesday, Jun 25. 2008  –  Category: Outdoors

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!

i’m a craigslist and climbing junkie

Monday, Jun 16. 2008  –  Category: Musings

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.

death at Cathedral

Friday, Jan 4. 2008  –  Category: Outdoors

Oakland climber dies descending Cathedral Peak

A bit late, but I only just found out about this from the SuperTopo monthly email. A bummer to hear about, to be sure – especially with them having already ascended, and descended and only being a mile and a half from 120.

I have my own love-hate-hate relationship with Cathedral Peak having tried to climb it 3 times and only been successful once. Indeed, two summers ago we got stuck in our own late-afternoon Tuolumne-special storm, though early August is considerably more forgiving than mid-November.

Jesse and I have planned to tackle Cathedral Peak again this summer. I’m hoping to bump my success rate from 33% to 50%; but we’ll see… I know I’m bringing a barometer and will be pushing for an early morning, early summer start.

Sigh. It’s always a little unnerving to hear about someone dying on a route you’ve climbed… worse yet when it’s a route you’re planning to climb in the near future. My sympathies go out to Noble’s family and friends. At least he died doing something he loved.