Trip Report:  The Nose

Background

Types of Climbing 

On a typical Yosemite big wall, there are inevitably stretches of rock with cracks too thin for your fingers or toes and too blank to find any edges to pull down on.  This is the domain of aid climbing, where progress is won by placing small pieces of brass, camming devices, or iron hooks on tiny rock features.  To test the gear, the climber or leader attaches a webbing ladder, and stomps on it to test the strength of the placement.  If the gear holds, the leader then goes up to the highest step of the ladder and repeats the process until the rock becomes less blank. 

There are also usually stretches of rock with larger cracks that might accept fingers, hands, fist, or the whole body (or more!).  These sections can be free climbed, meaning that the leader doesn’t weight the gear or use webbing ladders.  Climbing with hands and feet, the leader protects themself by placing gear in the rock where available, clipping the rope into it (no rope would be free soloing), and then climbing above until another good placement is reached.  

Being more skilled at free climbing means having to aid climb less, which is more secure but considerably slower. 

Specialized Gear 

A big climb is broken up into segments or pitches because climbing ropes are typically only between 200-230 feet long.  An average pitch length is ~100-150 feet where 10 pieces of gear might be placed every 10 feet or so.  In that case, the partner below or belayer would only need to catch a maximum fall of 20 feet plus the stretch of the dynamical lead rope.  Because cracks vary in size, a range of gear is required—adding up to around 5-10 lbs. on a harness.  

Additionally, a separate thick haul rope is attached to the back of the leader’s climbing harness.  This rope is reserved for hoisting up the 40-100+ lbs. haul bag at the end of the pitch via a progress-capture pulley.  It’s like doing 100 half-squats while hanging in space.  The haul bag holds all the wall amenities—food, water (heavy!), storm and sleeping gear, a portable sleeping ledge or portaledge, and accumulated waste.  Haul bags are big, burley cylindrical fabric tubes that resist the repeated abuse of the elements and rock.  As the leader climbs higher, more of the haul rope hangs below, adding up to 10 lbs. by the end.  

Once the leader has completed a pitch, they make a very strong anchor, and the belayer ascends the rope to join them.  This is done via specialized ascenders that are progress-capturing devices that clamp onto the rope with teeth.  

Rockcraft 

Because big climbs are big, there is more time for something to go wrong.  This can be something that is out of your control--bad weather, rockfall, illness.  Or it can be of your own doing—a bad fall, running out of supplies, getting off route.  Also, because there is so much gear, ropes, and bags it’s also easy to create the dreaded rat’s nest.  Any one of these can result in an epic because retreating up or down can be very slow and holds its own risks.  Epics are common on the first few walls.  They force you to dial in your techniques and develop a blend of creativity and a tolerance for suffering.  

Calories

A typical day on the wall may entail 12 or more hours of continual low-intensity activity interrupted by brief intense periods.  It’s hard to drink enough to both stay hydrated in the sun and strong winds that blow up the face of the wall in the afternoons.  And it’s impossible to eat enough to replace everything that’s been consumed as well as beginning recovery for the following days.   

Individual rations are typically 3-4 liters of water a day, which adds up to ~50 lbs of water for 3.5 days.  Breakfasts and dinners are big while lunch consists of snacking throughout the day when possible.  We ate muesli with powdered milk for breakfasts, an assortment of nuts/dried fruits/cliff bars for snacks, and canned soup/Indian food packets and tuna/tortillas for dinner.  This adds up to 10 lbs or so in the haul bag.  

The Nose

Lead Up

Climbing El Cap had been on my radar seriously as early as 2016, when the idea began to hatch near the end of my doctorate.  The year prior, I had caught the big-wall bug after climbing the east face of the Diamond on Longs peak.  However, following my involvement in a rescue in 2015, a slew of overuse and otherwise unfortunate injuries kept me sidelined most of 2016 and into early spring 2017.  So with a month free before starting a postdoc in the Netherlands, I showed up in Yosemite in the spring of 2017 with little fitness and no expectations.  

By posting notes on the corkboard of the climber’s camp, I went through a carousel of climbing partners, slowly feeling more comfortable and stronger on the flaring granite cracks.  On slow days, I would practice aid climbing on thin seams near the ground, and by the end of my stay a mutual friend Mike came to the Valley, and I felt ready to give my first Yosemite big wall a shot.   

Mike and I chose The Prow on Washington Column, a 1200 foot Royal Robbins route from the late 60s.  The route started off friendly enough with some great crack climbing off the ground but then became steep, exposed, and very thin for 8 sustained pitches.  Linking the thin seams were little bits of copper (copperheads) hammered into dents in the rock by previous parties that could be counted on to hold only body weight and no more.  To overcome the truly blank, most exposed sections, Robbins went against his own staunch ethics and drilled lines of bolts to force the path.  

On our first day, after a series of mentally taxing leads we found no natural ledges midway up the route and pushed late into the night, settling eventually for a cramped bivy on my uneven portaledge. While Mike slept, I lay awake through the night, processing both my first day big-walling and the exposure of our hanging perch.  Early on our second day, two pitches above our bivy I began to feel the tell-tale signs of not fueling myself properly from the previous day.  Mid-way through my next lead I hit a wall in terms of fatigue (bonked) and had to follow Mike up the remainder of the route.  Topping out in the dark, we bivied near the edge of the cliff and descended in the morning back to the valley floor.  A week later, my time in the valley was up and I drove back to Colorado for my upcoming move to the Netherlands.  

More than anything, The Prow had exposed how far my fitness had deteriorated from a year and half of nursing injuries.  Big walls required a blue-collar burl-factor that I either had lost or never had—like doing a physical construction job in the sun for 12 hours a day.  It also exposed how little I knew about multi-day efforts as I’d always been able scrimp by every other long day climb with just a Cliff Bar and the occasional sip of water.  In essence:  I had a ways to go before trying something bigger on El Cap.  

So in the evenings after starting work in the Netherlands, I looked around for other sources of training material.  Unsurprisingly, in the world of mountaineering and alpinism, preparing for sustained multi-day challenges is central.  And so I started training like an alpinist--not the more gymnastic-style training I had done for many years for shorter, harder climbs.  Alpinism requires above all a huge, well-rounded base of fitness to carry you through long days of varying intensity.  This translates to long slow runs, non-specific general fitness type strength training in the gym, and walking up lots of hills (or stairwells in my case) with gallons of water in a pack--and the days must be stacked upon one other so that the body learns to recover.  When outside climbing in nearby areas in Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg, I focused on mileage at typical difficulties that I expected to be free climbing on a big wall.  This climbing was usually below my absolute limit, but hard enough that by the late afternoon a whole-body fatigue was noticeable.  And during the summers I went into the alpine to do long routes of up to 1600 ft—to the Alps in Switzerland, France, and Austria, and into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.  As the training progressed, I could feel many of my previous injuries healing and fading into the background.  

By the Spring of 2019, with my long-time climbing partner Scott lined up, I was confident enough in my fitness level and refined multi-day tactics to return to Yosemite in the beginning of June that year.  After arriving in Yosemite Valley overcrowded with summer tourists, we spent a few days low to the ground, dialing in our big-wall techniques and rope work, and getting reacquainted with the particular style of free climbing unique to the valley.  With the opening of a stable but hot weather window, we climbed the South Face of the Washington Column in a (mostly) relaxed two days, and then turned our focus towards the Big Stone.  

The Climb

The Nose was the first established route on El Cap and was completed between 1957-58 by Warren Harding, Wayne Merry, and George Whitmore, using fixed ropes for the entire ~3,000 feet. It is the mega classic on the wall (and perhaps the world), with flawless climbing and iconic features such as the Great Roof, Changing Corners, Pancake Flake, Stove Legs, and King Swing .  This reputation is reflected in the crowd of suitors that can be found starting up the climb at any given time—especially in the cooler Fall months—although the average success rate hovers around 50% or less.  Parties well versed in the climb often complete it in under 24 hours (the record is 2 hours!) by climbing light (no haul bag) and fast (more risk.)  The other option, especially for the first time, is to climb it "wall-style” with a haul bag and more gear.  This takes anywhere from 3.5-5.5 days or more—the longer it is expected to take, the heavier the haul bag, and the slower everything will go.  Even though it has been done in 2 hours, the route is not easy to free climb, and of the hundreds who have gone up it, less than 10 have free climbed every inch without aiding.  

The majority of parties retreat in the lower 1/3 (~1000 feet) of the climb, where the terrain is traversing and can go extremely slowly if aiding sections that go free at a moderate grade.  And so Scott and I chose to first practice this section by climbing it light and fast in a day.  During that week in early June the daily averages were between 85-93 F, and so we started early around 6 a.m. to avoid being caught baking in the intense midday sun on the southeast facing wall.  We also lead in blocks, where one person stayed on lead through several pitches in a row.  This allowed the follower to relax and stay in more comfortable shoes, which generally speeds things up.  With a mix of free and french-free (pulling on gear while still climbing) we went through the first four very polished and devious pitches to gain Sickle Ledge—a long, arching ledge no more than 3-4 feet wide that goes for ~200 ft.  

At the top of the ledge, which is basically vertical at this point, the route traverses horizontally rightward for another 150 feet, connecting intermittent edges and cracks on the face via a series of pendulums that are performed by the leader off fixed pieces of gear.  At the end of a pendulum, the next feature may still be out of reach and so using the tension of the rope and the friction of the rock more distance can be gained at the risk of a larger swing.  The finish of this traversing section marks the beginning of a long and perfect 400 feet of fist to hand sized cracks running vertically to the summit of the Dolt Tower.  On the first ascent, this crack was too wide and parallel to be protected by the modern gear of the time.  Harding’s team famously took the iron legs of a wooden stove and pounded them into the crack, which gave this section the name “Stove Legs Cracks”.  Humming along, it’s here near the end of the Stove Legs that we found ourselves stuck behind a group of Spaniards that were laboring up the perfect cracks via aid.  The rat’s nest at the belay was enough convincing needed to call it a day and return back to the valley floor.   

Feeling more confident about the route after our practice run, we spent the following day at camp resting and gathering gear, supplies, and any tips from climbers who had been up the route recently.  We then woke up at 4:30 a.m. the next morning to get a head start on the blazing sun and repeated the beginning of the route up to Sickle Ledge.  From the anchors at Sickle, we fixed three of our climbing ropes 600 feet back to the ground and descended.  In the relative cool of the evening, we returned with our 80 lbs. haul bag loaded with supplies and began the process of hoisting it up our fixed lines.  Once the bag was secured on Sickle Ledge, we began descending and encountered a curious pair of Swiss climbers ascending their fixed lines.  As we passed them, our questions (in English) were mostly met with silence.  “Speak French to us!” said one of the pair finally, and so we worked out in broken French what time they were starting in the morning.    

Back at camp, I spent a restless night without my sleeping bag (back on the wall in the haul bag!), and curled up in an emergency bivy sac to gain a little warmth.  We started early again that morning and were soon up our fixed lines and retracing our steps from the practice run.  This time however we had the heavy haul bag, and suffered up the Stove Legs under the still solar noon.  Swapping leaders to rehydrate, we gained the top of Dolt Tower and waited for shade before making it up to El Cap tower by early evening for a relaxed dinner.  In the Stove Legs, the Swiss climbers had met up with us, and they were the only other parties we encountered on the remainder of the route as we rallied up together.  They favored a later approach, which fit well with our early-bird wakeups.     

That first night we bivied on El Cap Tower, a plush 4 ft by 15 ft flat ledge, reeking of urine from previous parties.  The comfort of the ledge was however very welcome, and we finished what remained of that day’s food and water.  Now fully committed to the route, we slept more soundly than previous nights down on the valley floor.

We woke early again the next morning and Scott was soon leading us up the infamous Texas Flake—a 90 foot tall exfoliating piece of granite that makes a wide, unprotected chimney in its back.  The following pitch took us to the top of the Boot Flake—another huge piece of detached granite.  Above the Boot Flake, the wall became totally smooth and blank.  With no logical line to follow, Harding choose on the first ascent to do a massive pendulum left into the nearest systems of cracks all the way on the southwest face of El Cap.  Retracing Harding’s steps, I lowered Scott to the bottom of the Boot Flake for this “King Swing.” The required pendulum is also famous for taking many tries, and so we had fished around for tips from climbers in the Valley.  In good style, Scott sprinted horizontally across the blank stretch of rock below the boot flake, edged around a corner onto the southwest face of El Cap, and then climbed the crack system until even with me and 60 feet left of where he started—all on the first try!  Since first researching the route in 2017 this was the part of the climb that had puzzled me:  how would I get both the haul bag and myself over to my partner at the end of this pitch?  With no gear between us, I did what seemed most logical, went slowly through the different systems, and was shortly joining Scott at the end of the pitch without incident.  

Linking the next pitch into the “Lynn Hill Traverse” brought us to the start of a huge band of dark tonalite running parallel across the face.  These “Gray Bands” as they are known climb very differently than the glacial smooth El Cap granite below. Full of features that make good hand and foot holds, the climbing was more reminiscent of alpine faces in Colorado Rockies and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and I felt at home weaving our way up to the band’s end.  Here we found ourselves underneath the looming “Great Roof”—already so clearly visible from the valley floor--that seemed much larger and much longer than I had imagined from pictures and trip reports.  Lynn Hill was the first to unlock and free this difficult section, making the iconic first ascent in 1993.  Aiding through the seepage and green algae, I made my way past the roof and into the beginning of a system of steep, perfect corners made of Taft granite that guarded the summit still some 800 feet above.  

Two more pitches of free and french-freeing took us to Camp V, where we set up our portaledge over the lip of a sloping 8 by 3 foot block.  Now more than 20 pitches up and onto the steepest portion of the route, the 2200 feet of exposure below was considerable, and the trees in the valley looked like heads of broccoli.  However, we had operated up to that point very efficiently in tandem, with no major snafus or rat’s nests.  Blanketed by the full moon, we felt in high spirits on our high perch at Camp V.  Our Swiss companions had fallen behind earlier in the day, and tucked into our portaledge, we could make out their headlamps as they set up their bivy in the dark 

Rising early the next day, we passed the sleeping Swiss and started up a series of three long pitches of aid.  The first pitch starts with thin intermittent seams above a menacing flat ledge (the site of many accidents), finishing in a depression in the rock known as the “Glowering Spot.”  Then a long nondescript section of aid leads to a wild band of dikes with huge protruding black knobs that can be easily free climbed.  The next pitch starts with moderate free climbing up parallel cracks until their end, and a blank corner begins just out of reach to the right, marking both the hardest free and aid climbing on the entire route through the “Changing Corners” section.  After getting off route, I lowered back onto the correct line and transitioned into the corner, optimistically placing a string of my smallest brass wires until the gear improved some 20-25 feet later.  Relieved, I hauled up the bag and Scott took us through two sections of airy but moderate free climbing to the “Wild Stance” below the final pitch.  Looking down, I could see as the Swiss team struggling and falling from the blank, devious section of aid on the Changing Corners pitch.  

Now with only some 130 feet to go, the features again run out and on the first ascent Harding forged a path by hand drilling a line of bolts through the steep roofs and traversing terrain guarding the summit.  As I followed this final pitch, the eastern horizon began to darken as predicted thunderstorm systems were building in the Sierras.  With the sky looking more and more menacing, we quickly topped out  around 4 pm, repacked the haul bag and ropes, and hoofed it off of the summit slabs and into the nearby forest.  We chose a more secure descent down the Yosemite Falls Trail (6-7 hours) rather than the quick and exposed descent down the East Ledges of El Cap (2-3 hours).  With chaffed hips and tired legs, we returned to the climber’s camp just before midnight for a celebratory beer and crawled into the tent.  

Epilogue

With our Yosemite camping allotment maxed out, we packed up the next day, seeking cooler temperatures and less crowds after two weeks in the Valley.  The Yosemite high country and Tuolumne remained closed due to larger than average snowpack in the Sierras, and so we drove south to the small town of North Fork, CA and rallied for an hour on fire-access dirt roads to Shuteye Ridge.  Here we spent a week bushwhacking and exploring, before the conclusion of my trip and return to the Netherlands.

Reflecting now almost two months after climbing the Nose, I remember that, as so often is the case with big climbs, there was no catharsis on the summit after years of training and anticipation.  It’s tempting to draw motivation from narratives founded in the pain of serious injury and rehabilitation. I found however that this lead to a wishing behavior—wishing that I did not have to relearn on climbs previously well within my limit.  In this mindset, many times I found myself wanting to fast-forward through the actual monotony of long, lesser climbs leading up to the Nose.  This lead to discomfort when in the moment I began to question putting myself in such exposed positions in the first place.  This strategy, while initially powerful during the acute phase of injury, was weak, distracting, and ultimately draining in the long run as tweaks inevitably crept up along the way.  In the final six months of my training, I tried instead to draw from a deeper source of motivation that dominated more my earlier years climbing:  from a place of curiosity and a desire to remain present while on the rock---to cultivate a flow mindset.  In the basalt quarries of Ettringen, Germany I refined my technique on awkward crack sizes that I had dreaded in the past and avoided drifting into a punishing mindset after failing on especially slick sections.  And on El Cap, with no parties or threats of rockfall above us, a sense of stillness followed finally committing to the Nose after two years of preparation and anticipation.  What remained was space to take in the full brilliance of moving through the line.  Ultimately this awareness and reflection has been a much more lasting reward in the end.