Yosemite - Serenity / Ahwahnee Buttress / Sons of Yesterday,
           Little John Right - 12/10-11/05 - Claire

Saturday:
    We got a fairly leisurely start, as I needed to catch up on some
sleep, but we still got to the Ahwanhee parking lot by 9am, with sun
already on the route.  There was a little wet section on the first pitch
which had me a little concerned, but I've climbed it there when it was wet
before, so I knew I could do it.  My way of coping was to place some
extra cams, while drying my hands on my shirt.  p2 was nice as usual.
Claire led p3 (the Ahwahnee Buttress corner), and was partway up the
initial lieback section when she was standing on some sloping holds and
her feet slipped off, but she didn't hit anything fortunately and got
right back on to lead it through.  On the crux pitch of Sons, I had
my own adventure when my right foot got stuck in the crack at the
wide/shallow section where you can reach left to a parallel crack.
After working a rest, fortunately my foot finally freed itself; whew.
While leading the next pitch, Claire had an extra long backup knot
on her tie-in, and clipped a cam before going over a 5.9 roof, then
realized at the lip that she'd clipped it under the backup knot and
couldn't go any higher - so she had to downclimb that crux and deal with
it - frustrating.  She led the perfect hand crack on p7, and I got the
slanting p8.  While Claire was following, the remaining
light faded and then had a nice rap off in the cool moonlight!
We warmed back up at the fireplace in the Ahwahnee Hotel; I did my best
to impersonate a guest but then realized my blown out sneakers were
a dead giveaway!  Then we adjourned to dinner at the Church Bowl.

Sunday:
     We got an even more leisurely start, as there were some morning
clouds that cut down on the direct sunlight.  After scoping the Five Open
Books from the road, we concluded there were too many shadowy corners, so
we headed back to the base of El Cap (to climb this time!).  But on the
way there, there was a rollover accident on the road about 100' in front
of us, so we pulled over and lent assistance.  (Fortunately there was just
one person and he was relatively unhurt, although he was hanging upside
down from his seat belt - alert and calm!  OK, that burned another
hour...)
   We walked in to El Cap and climbed Little John Right (a 3
pitch 5.8).  Just enough sun to keep it warm enough, and some interesting
climbing.  I had done this route about 20 years ago, and remembered
some liebacking on the first pitch, so I was a bit gripped but did not
actually have to do any....  The second half of the pitch is a long
easy face which leads to a couple of moves up onto a blank ramp protected
by some small wired nuts.  Then a little climbing up the right facing corner
to a nice little belay ledge.  My 1994 guidebook topo was way off
on the traverse pitch (while the 1982/87 topo is accurate!), and
Claire headed up a dead-end crack, but managed to handle the situation
after a short fall trying to downclimb a blank face.
    For future reference, p1 was about 190' to a ledge with 2 fixed pins
in the corner (above a last section where there is a 1.5" face crack left
of the corner).  The traverse is 10' above this, on a couple of big white
holds but not much for the hands.  This reaches a crack which narrows
from thin hands to fingers.  One can climb about 12' up the crack and
then traverse left at a black knob foothold.  But it also appears reasonable
to traverse straight left at the same level as the initial traverse.
   Claire led the hand/corner crack on p3 nicely, over to the chains.
We rapped off before dark, but got to use our headlamps on the walk back
to the car.  :-)