Climbing Cathedral Peak

(Click on any image to see the photo gallery)

As any climber knows, Yosemite is the USA's best rock climbing location, and I suppose some would say it's the world's premier rock face climbing location, too. So, I couldn't visit California for any length of time without climbing there. My colleague Volodymyr, who started on the same day as me, also wanted to go and also climbs (much better than me, in fact). To plan the trip, we bought a Yosemite guidebook (from Falcon, which turned out to be pretty useless - the SuperTopo guides are far better).

Many of the vertical-face routes in the Yosemite valley are very demanding and committing (for example, the most famous face, El Capitan). It wasn't a good idea to start there — not that I'm scared of commitment :) but those routes were mainly too hard to make them practical for me to climb and even if I could, many of them take several days, which makes them impractical choices given that I only had the weekend to work with. Besides, if nothing else would put me off multi-day Big Wall climbing, the poop tube would.

Yosemite is also very extensive and the weather starts to deteriorate in September/October. Therefore, bearing this in mind, we decided to climb one of the peaks in the highest area of Yosemite, which is called Tuolumne meadows. The rationale here is that we could come back later in the year and do some climbing in the lower area. We therefore selected Tuolumne's classic climb, Cathedral Peak. Cathedral Peak is 10,911 feet (compared to 4,408 feet for Ben Nevis and 29,035 for Everest). The actual face of Cathedral Peak is much, much shorter, only about 900 feet. However, the altitude of the mountain made it necessary to acclimatise first before trying to climb it. That meant that we had to acclimatise on the Saturday and climb on the Sunday. This was the plan in principle but since neither of us had climbed in Yosemite before, we left arrangements flexible to allow us to change our minds once we got there. Plan B was to climb Half Dome.

We slipped away from work early on the Friday and went to the gear shop in Saratoga, where we hired a tent (only $24!). This meant that we had to cross silicon valley on Friday afternoon in order to get to Yosemite. This wasn't the original plan, but the original plan was to borrow a tent, and that failed to work out at the last minute — the first of two unexpected disappearances of a Mountain Hardware Airjet 2 tent...  Anyway, setting off from the gear shop at about half past four, we drove back across Silicon Valley and took Highway 120 to Yosemite. This meant that we arrived in Yosemite at about half past eleven. We hadn't reserved a camping spot, because most of the campsites where you can do that were now closed for the winter. We camped at the site closest to the west entrance to Yosemite, Hodgdon Camp, where I got my introduction to the odd phenomenon of the Bear Locker.

Next morning we went into the Yosemite valley to finalise plans for the weekend. Although it was possible to climb Half Dome (even after the cables had been taken down) this would mean either a 19 mile round-trip on foot (excluding the actual climbing) or it would mean getting a wilderness permit and camping near the foot of Half Dome. We'd still have to climb with the camping gear in order to avoid a many-mile side trip to collect the stuff on the way back. Cathedral Peak had an easier walk in so we decided to do that. Next stop the gear shop. The climbing/camping goods shop in Yosemite is very good. For example, it's the only place I have found in California so far with a full range of Wild Country cams. They also had some Trango Bigbros. I would have no earthly use for such a thing in Ireland or the UK, and they're expensive. However they're shiny and have moving parts, so I bought one.

The Tuolumne Meadows campsite is the closest campsite to Cathedral Peak but had already been closed for the winter. Therefore we decided to camp at Tioga Lake, which is still pretty high up, at about 10,300 feet. Sleeping at altitude helps the acclimatisation process. By late afternoon I had started to get a headache which is a sign of non-acclimatisation. Anyway, we went off and pitched a tent at Tioga Lake. I knew it was going to be cold, but I had bought a four-season sleeping bag earlier in the week. It was rated down to -18C, so I expected to be warm enough, and I was. When the alarm clock went off at 06:00 the next morning I was still warm (in fact I started off with too many layers on). However, outside the sleeping bag, it was a different story. It was still dark outside (dawn wasn't until 07:30). There was ice on the outside of the tent. Not the inside, though, fortunately. Getting some water boiled for tea transformed me from an inarticulate zombie into an articulate one (Teeeea! Need Teea!). We breakfasted and packed up the tent (ow! ow! rolling up an icy tent actually hurts if you have no gloves). We set off to drive back into the park (Tioga Lake is outside Yosemite to the east) at about 08:00 and got to our parking spot by about 09:00. We got all the gear out of the car, split the food into stuff to take up the mountain and stuff to keep in the Bear Boxes. You mustn't leave food in your car at Yosemite because the bears have an amazingly keen sense of smell and will break into cars just to find your food (or even just your toothpaste).

We walked up the trail toward Cathedral Peak and the day got warmer as we went. I therefore ended up carrying a whole load of clothing I had originally been wearing. I stopped to take some photos, to rest a few times, and to eat a snack. We therefore didn't get to the foot of the mountain until about 10:00 or 10:30 perhaps. The view even from the foot of the mountain though was impressive.

There was a party already climbing on the north end of the face we were climbing (the South-East Buttress). We started to climb a little to the left of them, with me leading the first pitch. The mountain at this point was not very steep and the route went up a shallow V-shaped groove about 5cm deep. I'd brought the Bigbro in the hope of using it (unlike a ballnut #2 I'd bought a year or so ago, which I still have not managed to use). There were no gear placements in the groove at all, as it flared out too much. However, above this was a hanging flake which seemed ideal for a placement. Unfortunately it didn't cooperate. The underside of the flake wasn't flat enough to take the Bigbro, and was uneven enough that although I had cams of the right size, none of them would seat securely on even as few as three cams. I couldn't place a wallnut either. Although the climbing at this point was easy, I was not willing to climb any further without placing protection (I was about 15m up at this point). Therefore I climbed down and we moved along the face a bit. Volodymyr led this time and we made much better progress. We were using a 60m rope and so were climbing pitches of roughly 30m. By the third pitch my non-acclimatisation headache was really bothering me, and I was a bit dehydrated. Volodymyr asked if I wanted to abandon the climb (at this particular point there was an escape out to the North ridge). We discussed how many pitches remained and thought there were about 3 or perhaps 4. On that basis I decided to drink some more water at the next belay, and continue to the summit.

A couple of pitches later I discovered that my headache was in fact caused by a buckle in my climbing helmet that had been turned around. Fixing that made me feel a whole lot better, quickly. We continued up the mountain, making easy progress (the climbing was technically not hard, there was just a lot of it). Between about 16:30 and 17:00 I realised that time had become a factor. Local sunset was about 18:30 that day, and we needed to be off the mountain by then. In order to go faster we started to climb double-length pitches. On a 60m rope one normally only climbs 30m pitches, so that it's possible to lower back down to where you started if there is a problem. However, much of the slowness of climbing is to do with switching over at the end of each pitch. In this case, the potential problem wasn't the need to lower back down, but was instead the time factor itself. We therefore climbed faster with longer pitches, and made more rapid progress. However, the progress wasn't rapid enough. Shortly before sunset, we reached a point we believed was probably one pitch below the summit. We weren't certain about that, since once you are on the mountain it is very hard to know how many pitches remain unless you know the face well. If you look up, you just see a large wall of rock that gently curves back until you can't see it. You can't tell what's above that.

The sunset made for some lovely pictures, but as I took the photos I realised that we were not going to be able to get off the mountain before full darkness fell. This was an extremely worrying prospect (the occurrence is known as being benighted). Looking down at the summits of neighbouring mountains, I could see tiny white patches of ice. I really didn't want to get stuck overnight at the summit of a mountain above the snow line. It'd get very cold up there (1000 feet above the spot where we'd camped, and the tent had iced up even there) and in any case there's not much shelter at the summit of a mountain. Besides, I didn't have my nice warm sleeping bag.

The topo stated that the descent from the summit was from the north side and was quite easy. For this reason we had decided to proceed, rather than turn back and abseil back down to ground level. Abseiling is relatively dangerous, compared to climbing. Volodymyr asked how much rope was left and on hearing that there was quite a lot, continued up and made an anchor higher up. Sadly though, not actually at the summit. I climbed after him and we began the next pitch. This was, fortunately, the top pitch. Volodymyr completed it and got to the summit. While it normally takes only five minutes or so to set up an anchor system, Volodymyr took quite a while longer than this. I radioed to him to ask if there was a problem but he just indicated that he was looking for an anchor, which is normal. I did start to worry though after about fifteen minutes, because night had fallen during this time. He radioed down to say that in fact there was no anchor at all at the summit.

At this point I really started to worry. Our ability to retreat safely from the summit relied on our being able to find a place to abseil down from the summit down to a point on the North Ridge from where it would be possible to walk off. About five minutes later he radioed again, telling me to proceed. Turning my head torch on, I stopped worrying about what sort of anchor he had found and started to think more about the actual climbing. Climbing in the dark is somewhat harder than climbing during the daytime, and this last pitch was really quite long. The last few pitches contained the steepest parts of the route up the mountain, including some really breathtaking climbing out on exposed faces. Some of this had been while it was still light enough for me to look down and enjoy the sensation of height and exposure, but the later parts of the face were just steep bits of rock in a sea of blackness. However, I knew that at the top of the pitch was the summit and so was very motivated to get it finished. Not that I any longer wanted to get to the summit, I just wanted to get down the mountain. When I got to the stance, I saw that Volodymyr had managed to secure the anchor as a sling around an extraordinarily solid-looking wedged block. Respectable enough for an anchor, though there was only one of it. It wasn't at the summit though. We were immediately below the summit block, but the descent could be reached by going around and under rather than up to the summit, so I didn't need to climb the last twenty feet.

We traversed around the summit block to get to the descent, Volodymyr going first. Once he was safely on a ledge, I undid the anchor and then climbed down to where he was holding the other end of the rope. This bothered me a bit since this was essentially lead climbing in the dark with a factor-two fall if I made a bad mistake (i.e. I would fall the N metres to where Volodymyr was, then then another N metres until the rope went tight and stopped me). When I got to where Volodymyr was, he suggested that I go first, as this was safer. We swapped head-torches, as his had a better spotlight, which was useful for route finding. By this stage I was a whole lot less scared than I had been. This was partly because I was on the way down from the summit, partly because the topo guide indicated that this bit was easier, but mostly because I now had a good idea in what way we would be able to get down the mountain.

The guidebook was somewhat terse as to how to get down, indicating that we should descend on ledges twenty feet to the right, then 150 feet to the left, and then descend right again until we could get to the North ridge. These directions were almost certainly sufficient, at least for someone trying to do this during the daytime. Unfortunately, although I could use the head torch to see the ledges underfoot perfectly well, the torch was not powerful enough to show things far enough away for me to tell if this was the right direction. In particular, I could normally see only this ledge and the next, and certainly not the ridge we were supposed to be hunting for. However, after some shuffling left and right on the way down I found an anchor, secured the rope and belayed Volodymyr as he down-led the part I'd just descended. We repeated this process, but this time I actually found a belay anchor. This was especially good news, as it meant that we were on the correct route down. We then abseiled down from this anchor. While abseiling is more dangerous in general than climbing, it's less dangerous than climbing in the dark, as long as you are careful and methodical (and you're using secure anchors). We abseiled down two pitches (about 60m or 180 feet). At the bottom of the second abseil, the face of the mountain was much less steep; it was possible to stand on the rock in climbing shoes without needing to use a handhold. We packed the rope away and began to shuffle/walk/climb down like this. Rather than walk directly down, we zig-zagged from side to side because of the steepness of the rock, keeping an eye out for the North Ridge each time we trended right.

We did find the north ridge but it wasn't possible to walk down it, and it became clear that the part of the mountain that we were supposed to be gaining by coming down the ridge was in fact the part we were already on; this was a benefit of the two abseils. Hence we continued walking. I wasn't keeping good track of time; it was about 18:30 before I started the last pitch of climbing, but I didn't look at my watch again until after I had reached the tree line. At that point I had changed out of my climbing shoes and into walking boots. Walking boots cope much better with mixed terrain (sandy soil, for example) than climbing shoes do. By the time we reached the forest proper, it was past midnight. On the way down the shallower part of the face, we had noticed moving lights below us, but we couldn't tell for sure if this was a track relatively nearby or a road in the distance.

Volodymyr suggested that we head directly downhill towards a lake, suggesting that we could find it by heading downhill until we found a stream and then following the stream until we got to the lake. I was less keen on this idea since I didn't want to end up struggling through boggy ground in the pitch darkness, but it was the shortest way back to the road and we would be able to walk faster on the road than through the tree-infested forest. However, before we crossed the stream we found a sandy trail. This turned out later to be the John Muir trail, part of which we had taken on the way up to the mountain. By this time I had begun to have trouble with my foot placement. When my legs get tired my feet don't seem to be as agile as they would be normally, making me more prone to stumbling. Knowing this, I trod with more care and deliberation, which made me very slow indeed. The walk along the trail toward the car seemed enormously long, and yet can't have been more than a couple of miles. We eventually got back to the car at 02:30 on the Monday morning, and I just collected the food from the bear boxes, dumped my sack in the back and sat down with the heater on. We discussed what we'd do next and how we'd get back to work; whether we'd just drive to the nearest motel or try to sleep in the car. Sleeping in the car where we were was not an option, as overnight roadside parking is not allowed in that part of Yosemite. I opted to drive back to the west side of the park to the gas station 36 miles away, in the hope of getting some coffee. The gas station 36 miles away was unsurprisingly closed but we did find a vending machine selling gummy bears and a restroom (as the Americans so delicately put it) where I finally took my contact lenses out (they were by this time really starting to bother me).

Bumbling around trying to feed a dollar bill to a vending machine in the cold air had now woken me up so I decided to drive out of the park, while Volodymyr slept, so that he could drive while I slept later. I drove west for a couple of hours and stopped at a roadside viewpoint (view of what? I have no idea, it was pitch black) and snoozed. Volodymyr still wasn't feeling up to driving when I woke up again about 90 minutes later, so I just kept driving west until 07:30, at which point we found an open Burger King in Oakdale that sold coffee (well, they called it coffee and I was too tired to argue). At that point I realised that the remaining distance could in theory be covered in the remaining time before my 10:00 meeting, but since this meant getting through the morning rush-hour traffic, it wasn't really practical. Dublin is 8 hours ahead of California, so I 'phoned a colleague there to ask her to make my apologies for the meeting I suspected that I would miss. I continued west, marvelling at the continued battery life of my portable music player, which had lasted the whole weekend, and being kept awake by Debbie Harry. We arrived back in Mountain View at about 10 am, where my American colleagues duly asked about my being prodded with a sword by the Queen. Evidently the word benighted isn't as much in common usage as I'd thought.

So, in summary, Yosemite is a fantastic place to go to see, to hike or to climb in. But try to do it in the daytime, it's much more fun and warmer too.