After driving 2,500 miles in ~41 hours with
quick stops through Lexington KY, Boulder and Carbondale CO to catch up with
friends, I finally made it to Yosemite. Over
the last month I’ve been able to achieve all of my goals. I was first able to free climb the full 1200ft line of Astroman 11c with Mike Rues who works at Yosemite National Park. Mike was VERY amped.
Yelling and screaming with excitement at 6:30am as we hiked up to the climb.
His energy continued all day as he was yelling "I'm LOVING THIS" as
he wiggled his way up the 40 foot off-width of the Harding slot. Good times. We
had to re-climb a few pitches by pulling the rope in order to do them free.
Ultimately we climbed all 12 pitches without falling. 10 pitches of 5.10+. Good
day.
Find more pictures here
My brother John made the trip from San Fran up to Tuolumne
Meadows (above Yosemite Valley) to hangout with me for the weekend. We had a
blast summiting the areas highest peak and many of the imposing granite domes.
Find more pictures here
The main objective for my trip was to climb
the 3,000ft tall El Capitan. I wanted to
climb it as “free” as possible, which meant using ropes and only my hands &
feet to ascend it versus pulling on gear.
I was lucky enough to meet Jack Ziegler who was also motivated for this
objective. He goes into great detail
about our trip on his blog, which you can read here. We free climbed about 2/3 of the Salathe route, which took us 3
days and 2 nights on the wall. It's been my dream to climb this wall since I
was young so it's exciting to see it become a reality.
Me belaying Jack on the Salathe headwall
Find more pictures here
I also put together a video which you can find here
After achieving my main objective, I honestly
was ready to relax a bit. Fortunately, John
Roark asked me to attempt to climb the Nose of El Capitan in a day. I laughed at idea at first. Neither of us had even attempted it
before. Nonetheless, John's optimism persevered and we started at 4am on
Thursday 6/28 and finished at ~2am Friday morning. It took us 21:48 hrs from
ground to top and 24 hours car to car and was a great day of climbing on a
classic route.
Find more pictures here
I was destroyed after climbing El Capitan twice in a week and
was therefore excited to leave Yosemite for San Francisco to spend time with my
brother John, Terry and my niece Sophy. We
had a grill marathon grilling chicken, pork, stuffed jalapenos and sausage
rapped eggs coined pterodactyl eggs.
My short apartment hunting trip back to Winston-Salem over July 4 was successful and I'm now all set to enjoy my last 3 weeks with 1 more week in Yosemite and stops in CO as I make my return trip east to start work 8/6. Let the road trip continue!
