Sierra Journal

Matthes Crest - South to North Traverse

Wow man, Matthew Crest is one seriously fun climb. The standard south-to-north traverse starts out with a couple of 5.6-ish pitches followed by a long sustained knife-edge ridge, then ends with 5.7 pitch up a tower on the north end. Most people call this the end of the climb, though some parties continue past the north tower to finish off the whole crest. 

The approach is a real bear, though. My climbing partner, Patrick, and I did the whole thing in an exhausting  12 hour day. The trail begins at the Cathedral Lakes trailhead, goes past Cathedral Peak, up and over Cathedral Pass, then angles off-trail to the west where you head for an obvious notch in the south end of the crest - the start of the climb. 

Patrick led the first pitch. There were three other parties starting at the same time, so we moved climber's left to a non-standard starting spot. This proved to make route finding a little more difficult than it should be. We eventually got back on route and swung the second lead. This leads to the top of the ridge where the traverse begins.

We un-roped at this point and free-soloed the rest of the ridge, making a brief side-trip up to the South Tower, an unnecessary but very cool spot for a breather. We then descended to the notch below the North Tower, where we roped up. Patrick took the lead. this pitch begins with a tricky hand-traverse, then eases up for another 100 feet or so to the top of the tower. 

I left this part for the end of the post so hopefully nobody's reading this far. I got stuck at the hand traverse - a mere 15 feet of foothold-less climbing - with two parties looking on. How embarrassing. I gotta get back in the gym I guess. Sheesh. Anyway, Patrick rappelled off the North Tower and we descended from the notch and hiked out the 5 miles back to the truck.

Awesome day - but aaargghh, I now have to make the return trip just to knock down that 15 feet.

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Death on Half Dome "Cables Route" in Yosemite

The Cables Route is the standard day hike up Half Dome. It's an all-day affair and is no joke - particularly in inclement weather conditions. Yet another reminder to be careful out there - even on seemingly easy terrain. Weather can turn even the tamest of routes into a nightmarish epic.

From LA Times:

Late Saturday afternoon, when Manoj Kumar fell to his death while attempting a descent of Half Dome within Yosemite National Park, there prevailed what a park spokesman described as a "perfect storm" of circumstances.

Saturday is the busiest day of the week on a cabled ladder system that enables climbers to negotiate the 425-foot sheer granite dome to and from its summit.

But by early afternoon it had become cold and blustery, with rain and fog and sporadic hail. Many hikers had aborted their climbs but some had not. The granite and the cables had become slippery. Some hikers froze in fear. Others tried scurrying around on the outside edges of the cables.

An investigation continues to determine exactly what caused Kumar, 40, a Northern California software engineer, to let go and plummet nearly 200 feet, but he might have been on the outside edge of one of the cables.

After Kumar fell, 41 climbers were assisted in what the park called a "controlled evacuation" that lasted until dark.

Scott Gediman, a park spokesman, said Saturdays can be tricky even in good weather because it gets so crowded. It's not atypical to have 70 hikers on the three-foot-wide cable system by early afternoon. There's no scripted order within the cables, although most hikers ascend on one side and descend on the other. 

Tenaya Peak's Northwest Buttress

Two thoughts on Tenaya Peak's Northwest Buttress:

1. GREAT climb for beginners out there who are looking to learn the ropes on multi-pitch alpine rock.

2. GREAT early-season climb for working out the winter bugs.

I met up with my climbing partner in the parking lot on the northeast side of Tenaya Lake at about 7:00am or so. We got to know each other a bit (having met and made plans online via a climbing club), sorted gear and headed up around 7:30.

The weather was looking awfully sketchy. It even started snowing on us at one point just below the crux pitches of the climb, which gave us pause. We contemplated a bit, then said, "Eh, screw it, let's go." So we did.

We simul-climbed (used a running belay) for the first several pitches, then swung the last three leads. The terrain down low is very tame, but a ton of fun. The whole climb is mostly clean, slabby granite. There was some snow to negotiate, but it wasn't too bad. We had to move to climber's right onto slightly more difficult terrain. It never got stiffer than 5.6, though.

The top two pitches are solid 5.5 with some fun lie-backs and stemming moves. There's a ton of room up there, though, so you could go any of a million ways.

The bummer? I forgot my camera in the car, so no pictures (except the one above, which I took from the car after the climb). This is a double-bummer, because I just bought a new SLR and was eager to try it out. Oh well. I have some good pictures in my head, I guess.

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Tenaya Peak's NW Buttress this Weekend

I'm finally at a point where I can feel okay about the fast-approaching end of backcountry ski season. It's not here just yet - there's still a ton of snow out there. I might even try to get some in this weekend, but what I'm really excited about is a long summer of alpine rock climbing.

What's up first? Tenaya Peak's Northwest Buttress (12 pitches, 5.5). It's a nice, moderate, long route to work out the bugs and kickoff the summer. I'm a little worried about snow on the route (anyone have any beta on that?), and the weather is looking a little sketchy too, but you never know if you don't go, so...   away we go.

Trip report to come!

The non-trip report

I had a hard time deciding on a title for this post. Runners up were (the last being my favorite):

- I Feel Like an Idiot
- Two Days of Scree Scrambling at 12,000 feet
- Summitpost approach descriptions suck

My climbing partner and I met in Bishop around 1:00 (he coming from LA, me from SF) and headed up to South Lake to tackle the North Couloir on Mt Gilbert. This is a classic Sierra alpine ice route (5.6, WI3) that's on most climbers' tick lists. We met at Starbucks, drove up to the trailhead, sorted gear and were on our way.

Now, the Summitpost page has this:

The approach is a fairly short (3 miles ?) hike from South lake via the Bishop Pass trail, the Treasure Lakes trail and cross country hiking up slabs and scree to campsites at the base on Mt. Gilbert. This can also be easily done as a day trip from South Lake.

So I kinda thought this would be a no-brainer. We were hiking along, having a good old time, and accidentally went all the way to Treasure Lakes. Found out later that we should have turned east off the trail shortly after the junction with the Treasure Lakes trail. By this time we were far to the south of where we should have been, but we keyed in on a couloir off in the distance that looked vaguely like our objective.

"That must be it," we both thought. Nope. We got up closer and found this (which is most definitely not the north couloir on Gilbert).

It was getting on in the evening, so we decided to bed down where we were. Over dinner we decided to hike the north the next day along a 9 or 10k contour. This turned out to be, as would be expected, a pain-in-the-ass scree scrambling adventure that took most of the morning. I finally said "Screw it, lets head back and chalk it up to a learning experience."  My partner wasn't so easily placated, so he  climbed another hour to crest the next ridge and (Eureka!) there it was - at least another hour away.

It was too late to get to the route, climb it, descend and get back to the car by a reasonable time. And since I had a 6 hour drive back to SF, and I was dead tired, we turned around and headed back to the trailhead. Here's a shot above South Lake on the way back...

It was a moonless, cloudless night the night before, so I saw a ton of shooting stars at least. That's something.