Luckily I was wrong to think I would have only one opportunity to climb in California. This time we had our sites set high and a little experience to back it up. We also had high stoke...nothing new there.
So you wanna climb the Nose? Yeah we do!
I wish this could be a re-telling of how we successfully climbed the Nose of El Capitan. Unfortunately things didn't pan out that way and as I have come to realize several times over my years as a climber, climbing is f***ing hard. BUT I did have a killer time and I did learn a ton over the course of my second Yosemite trip.
El Capitan
We did try the Nose. We just didn't make it very far. Gavin and I had been practicing aid climbing for a bit, we had done the first part of the Glass Menagerie at Looking Glass Rock in North Carolina, and we had trained on various other cracks. We had also trained a bit with Ben Kolb who is stoked, strong, stoked, and motivated. But El Cap turned out to be another beast which we sort of anticipated.
After Gavin and I attempted to go to Sickle Ledge a few days before Ben arrived, we knew that this year was not the year to climb El Cap. We quickly got off route and ended up climbing three pitches while only doing two pitches of the actual route. So when Ben arrived, we made it our new goal to get to Sickle Ledge essentially completing the first day of the Nose.
On the day, we started relatively early and had a full day getting to Sickle, a mere four pitches into the Nose. Rather than be discouraged, I took a lot from the experience. I realized that taking an aid climbing mindset, especially with my lacking skill in that realm was always going to be very slow. It finally made sense to me why mixing free and aid is so important and why being solid on 5.10/5.11 trad makes a huge mental and physical difference. We needed repetition. We needed to get better.
So El Cap is still undone for us. But fast forward to present day and I am training. We are getting strong, stoked, and stoked. Since then Gavin has climbed a few walls and made Yosemite his home. Things are looking ripe for another effort.
But what about the rest of the trip?
Not El Capitan
We did a ton of other climbing in 2017. I didn't do anything super bold, I felt like I was in a bit of a funk. But there was still much fun to be had and over the rest of the trip we got on a bunch of rad stuff:
LeConte Boulder Aid Training
Public Sanitation Wall sport climbing
Swan Slab Gully (Colin did first gear lead)
5 and Dime Area
Sunnyside Bench (with Joey and Colin)
After Six (with Gavin really fast)
Finger Cracks (Church Bowl Tree, Derelict's Delight, Circuit Breaker)
Liberty Cap Scramble (with Colin, 1 hr 20 min to top of Nevada Falls)
Monday Morning Slab (with Kyle)
Aside from these specifics, there are a ton of intangibles in Yosemite that make it really cool and a great place to hangout even when, like me, you aren't crushing it.
There is something about people there that can't be explained. A crush everything attitude that is pretty contagious. Good pizza. Beer and tequila. Friends that'll raise your stoke.
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