Yosemite - Royal Arches, Crest Jewel, Grack Marginal - 5/22-23/04  Chris Harvey

Our goal was to do the Royal Arches + Crest Jewel linkup, and
with a post to the SAC email list, we had managed to recruit 2
other teams to join in the fun (Dave and Jeff, Joe and Marshall).
This was great, as it allowed all of us to stash a single car at
the Porcupine Creek trailhead on 120, for the easiest descent option.
Chris and I left Palo Alto at 5pm and arrived at the campspot
at 9:25, with Joe and Jeff arriving shortly afterwards, and
Dave and Marshall at 10:30.  We realized Dave's car had
the best chance of holding all 6 of us, so Dave and I then drove up
to stash it.  A sign at the parking lot said "no overnight parking",
but we figured having the car there was worth the risk of a ticket.
By the time we had done the roundtrip, it was after midnight.

Up at 5am (first light), and we arrived down in the Ahwanhee parking lot
at about 6:30am.  A couple of parties were already starting the route.
Dave and Jeff were the first of our teams up the chimney, followed
by Marshall and Joe, then myself and Chris.  Chris and I mostly belayed
instead of simulclimbing, as I wanted to make sure it was fun (vs. scary)
and I figured there would be a backup at the pendulum pitch anyway.
Chris most recently been leading some 5.9 sport routes in Tahoe,
but she had not been getting out all that many weekends.
So I thought it would help overall endurance if we just
took one pack and I carried it.  We also used a 9mm x 50m rope, which
was nice and light, but plenty long/strong enough.  One bit of dead
weight we had was my camera - its batteries were too low to function.

The chimney was technical like I remembered, and the 5.4 crack move
above felt a little sketchy.  The 5.6 steep/diagonal hand crack on
the ramp section was not that easy, either.
When the route turned straight up, I looked for the
5.6 version on the far right, but only found a shallow seam in a
steep corner.  So I came back and went up a moderate face near the
arete.  Above this was the "bear hug" move, which had one short slick
stemming section with an old fixed nut and a cam that I backcleaned
after making one move.  When reaching this belay, I ran out of rope
and Chris started simulclimbing, but didn't have slack to reach
back and clean the anchor sling; fortunately another team was
overtaking us and cleaned it for her!  The next pitch had a low angle
wide crack/stem in a corner, then a beautiful white flake,
and ended on a big ledge below the pendulum.  When Chris was
following this pitch, she first tried going up a direct seam
which the previous climber had climbed on toprope, but quickly
realized it wasn't the "5.6 way".  I hadn't placed much pro, so
the path of the rope was not of much help, either.

On the big ledge, Jeff and Dave were waiting for another party to clear
the pendulum pitch.  A second party was waiting, too, and the leader
of a third party had arrived just ahead of me.  We took a breather
on the ledge, and had some food/water while the other parties did
the pendulum.  Once the pitch was clear, it was fairly easy to
start out on the right, then diagonal back left to the fixed rope
at the pendulum point.  I just clipped my harness into the rope and
tensioned across, finding quite a few holds.  I freed this thing
back in 1977; maybe I should try that again, but I didn't want to
spend any extra time.  I placed pro on the traverse and set up
a belay 30' left at a ledge with a fixed pin.  Chris followed smoothly,
and led the next section down a low angle corner and past some pools
to a tree belay.

Here the route goes up a flake, the current route instead of the
old rotten log, after it fell off in the early 80s.  I took a slightly
dirty corner on the left to start, instead of a short wide crack.
Then the flake lieback was fairly nice.  Higher in the corner I placed
a cam before reaching a tree branch, then backcleaned it and belayed
at the tree.  Next was the downward traverse left around the
corner.  Earlier we had seen people climbing this further right,
perhaps to pass other teams.  Soon I was at a belay ledge next
to Rick and looking for an anchor which would not get pitch onto
my rope.  We had a brief exchange on "pitch" vs. "sap", which
I guessed was one of those regional dialect things like "earthworm"
vs. "angleworm".  Soon Chris was up and I led the next pitch to
a big tree root anchor where I ran out of rope.

At this point there were 2 parties ahead of us, and we were running
very short on time for getting up to Crest Jewel before our latest
feasible starting time of 2-3pm.  So I started the next pitch
(a slab traverse then up) before Rick was done leading.  I made a
belay at a small tree and Chris came up quickly.  Then another somewhat
traversing pitch to a larger tree.  The final slab traverse was next.
I remembered this could be done somewhat high, with
fairly good protection.  At first I went too high, to the top
of the arch, which was a little damp and unprotected.  Back again,
then left in a somewhat lower arch, where the protection was good, but
the rock was a little dirty in spots.  I made the final moves, then
went up high to a tree, so Chris wouldn't face a swing on the last
part.  The other 2 teams were traversing lower, where there is a bolt.
We were essentially off, on the dirt by the spring.  But we belayed
one more pitch, traversing left and then up some blocky rock to
a tree.

It was about 2:30, so we figured we could not make it to
Crest Jewel in time, and we'd have to go to "Plan B",
which was to hike around the left side of North Dome.  But first
we hiked a few hundred feet west to the good stream and used the
filter pump to refill our 1 liter bottles.  We headed back to the main
North Dome trail, across one slab, then up the second slab to the
gully up to the base of Crest Jewel.  We figured we had plenty of
time to see if Jeff and Dave were on the route, and maybe do the
first pitch or two ourselves before hiking to the top.  Once at
the base, we did see Dave at the belay atop pitch 2.  He said
they had started about one hour earlier.  It was a little frustrating,
seeing that we were close to being able to do the route, but late
enough that it would be an uncomfortable risk of running out of
daylight on it.  I was also feeling tired, partly due to lack of
sleep (yes, that night I was somewhat worried about whether we were
ready for this many pitches), and partly because of my single pack idea.
And perhaps also partly due to my all-chocolate diet?  :-)
I realized it would have been better after all to have Chris bring a
second pack, even if only to lighten my load a bit on some of the
harder pitches on Crest Jewel.  Oh, well - live and learn, I guess.
We tried and came up only a little short.

We now had the luxury of being able to do the first pitch or two
with no packs and no time pressure.  After belaying down to the
anchor tree, I led the first pitch, which diagonals up right on 5.8
friction past 2 bolts to the anchor.  Pretty nice rock (like I
had remembered).  The next pitch looked like fun, too, so I led up, 
starting with a very thin traverse to a tiny corner, then up some
golden polish with a couple of 5.9 sections.  I felt a little rusty
on my slab moves, but it was just featured enough to keep it friendly.
When Chris followed, she did the initial traverse nicely.  But all the
pitches we'd already done and the sustained nature of this pitch had her
feet starting to hurt a bit, so she eventually grabbed a draw and also
took a rest at one of the bolts.  Our struggles made our decision not to
do the entire route more palatable.  We realized the combo was just
too much of a stretch for us without a recent tuneup on similar
climbing.  To retreat down the route, I lowered Chris down each pitch,
and she clipped some of the bolts to prevent any swings.  Then
I rappelled from the ring anchors, and from a single (new 3/8")
bolt on the second pitch where our doubled 50m rope didn't reach.
I used the doubled sling trick on the hanger so that I could
clean the sling and leave no trace.

Back at our packs, we headed quickly up left to the top of
the corner, and then we simulclimbed the 220' 5.5/4th class slab
directly above, to reach the higher forested terrace below North Dome.
We hiked the reasonable (slightly brushy) path along the base of
the dome.  Once on the left side of the dome, the path faded a
bit as we started some traversing, instead of gaining elevation
up along the base of the dome.  Eventually the path petered out
and we wondered what was the most brush-free route to get us
to the notch behind North Dome.  I could see some low angle slabs
out to the west, so we dropped down across a gully and went up
the slabs for awhile.  Unfortunately, this route was the worst way,
as the slabs ended in manzanita quite a distance from the top.
We should have stuck close to the base of the rock on
North Dome and avoided traversing.  At one point we heard some
people back in the gully level with us, and they said they were
on a path.  But we had no way to traverse directly to them due
to thick manzanita and some big boulders.  So we kept heading up
slightly on faint deer trails, before finally forcing a traverse
back east.  At the start of this, we had to climb up into the top
branches of some brush.  When Chris did this, one branch broke and she
ended up briefly stranded in the tree.  Fortunately things improved
after this and we got onto the path.  I felt like a fair amount
of the fun of the previous climbing (19 pitches!) had been overshadowed
by the enduro bushwhacking, unfortunately.  On the other hand,
we had initiated a trip that got 2 out of 3 teams of SAC pals up the
combo and out to a warm car.  That has to be worth a little manzanita!

But now we were on the open trail and headed for the car.
We walked through a surprisingly large number of tents in the
slight notch behind North Dome.  I recalled it was 4.2 miles
back to the road, and I had previously told everyone it was
perfectly level, but in fact much of the trail was somewhat uphill.
After cresting the first small dome north of North Dome, we
could see one person hiking north from the summit of North Dome.
We thought it might be Dave or Jeff, but since it was already so
late and we didn't see both of them, we figured it was more likely
they were ahead of us, if not already at the car.  So we pressed
on with the hiking.  It took quite awhile, as we saw the sunset,
and the slowly fading light.  Then 1.6 and 1.5 mile signs at the
intersection with the Snow Creek Trail, some snowbanks on the trail,
and the somewhat discouraging .7 mile sign where the trail starts
following an old paved road.  Finally we reached the car, with
Marshall and Joe dozing inside, but no Jeff and Dave.  We grabbed
some food and water, and jumped inside to stay warm.  Shortly,
Jeff and Dave arrived.  We all squeezed in, with me improvising a middle
front seat with the rope and a seat cushion.  Back to the Ahwanhee,
then late dinner at a picnic table at Church Bowl.  Finally we stashed
our food in bear boxes near Nutcracker and drove off to sleep
at the secret spot.  It didn't take long to fall asleep.

On Sunday, Chris and I got up my 8:30 (with the others still mostly
asleep) and left a note at Camp 4 for Denali (we were giving him a
ride back).  After Chris reminded me that our food was in the bear
boxes (I had just driven to the Apron without it), we had breakfast
at El Cap Meadow, and then headed back over to the Apron.
We hiked to left side, and started up the Grack Marginal route.
This is an old classic 5.9 which I have wanted to do for years.
It's a bit runout at the crux above the first bolt, where
you could potentially fall from the 5.9 friction and slide down over
a roof.  But I figured I should be able to handle it, and fortunately
there were occasional tiny flakes to grab and help me maintain my cool.
It got friendlier near the second bolt, no longer facing a scary fall.
Above the third bolt was a flake which accepted some small
opposed wired nuts.  There were tiny flakes again which kept things
reasonable.  Chris came up with no apparently problems, except that
her calves were tired from all the pitches on Saturday, and she was
running short of calf strength near the end of the sustained crux section.
The next pitch was fairly short to another set of chains, but with
a little 5.9 to keep it interesting.  The final pitch was relatively
long, with an intriguing runout straight up off the belay to reach
a small corner.  After a few thin moves, many holds and flakes
appeared to keep things friendly.  Protection in the corner, a
little more 5.9 leaving the corner, and then easier to the top.
We did a single line rappel from the chains on Grack Center,
back to our last belay, and the nice person up on Grack Center
dropped our rope down to us.  Then 3 more straightforward raps
to the ground.  The Apron is nice and easier to reach than Crest Jewel!

We arrived back at Camp 4 at 3pm instead of 2pm, but Denali, Bryan,
Noah, et al were there waiting and in no distress.  We picked up
2 nice Stanford folks and drove back on 140/Merced/Pacheco Pass,
which was relatively uncrowded, arriving in Palo Alto just after 7pm.