Yosemite - East Buttress of Middle, South Crack, Low Profile - 5/29-30/04 - Jared Brown, Jesse Hanson, Tim Tuomey Jared was looking to get some last climbing in before finals, so he posted to the climbing email list, looking to climb Saturday-Sunday but be back to get some work done on Monday. I joined in on the fun, along with Tim and Jesse. Tim drove up separately in his van, while the rest of us got a slightly late start (7:20pm) in my car. Traffic was not too bad, and we reached the bivvy on the Hetch Hetchy road before midnight. Saturday - up at 5:45am, and in the car by 6am, driving to meet Tim at El Cap Meadow at 6:45am. We paired up for the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral, with Jared and Jesse on the standard route, while Tim and I planned to do a special left hand start and the left hand finish, with the 50 Crowded Variation in the middle. At the start of the route, there were already 1.5 parties (1 team of 2 and the leader of a second team) ready to start the regular route. Jared was planning to lead all the pitches, since Jesse had not done much trad leading, but was eager to get up to speed by following. p1 - Tim led up to the fir tree midway up the normal first pitch. p2 - I led off above, on a variation start that I did the FA of back in 1992. The first half of this has some 5.10b and 5.10c face climbing past 2 bolts. The 5.10b move was tough, as the good finger hold was a very long stretch, and some of the holds were a little wet from rain the previous day. After a couple of tries I realized I definitely had to leave my pack at the bolt to have any chance of getting up this. I made one "dynamic retreat", where I grabbed the draw in lieu of falling. Trying again, I did the same sequence, but put my left foot a little higher, onto the good hold past the first bolt and I was able to clip the second bolt. Here it was obvious that a flake had broken off. I seem to recall making a long reach from this flake (back in '92) to the bottom of the main crack system. But this time I could only grab a diagonal edge where the flake had been, and try to get established on a high left foothold. After a few tries, I paused to tighten my shoelaces, and then managed to make the move, using a tiny and insecure sidecling for my left hand (mostly just standing up on my left foot). Now I had reached the main crack system, and shortly I was on good footholds and plugged some Aliens into the crack. After moving to the top of a tall narrow flake wrapped with many slings, I faced the semi-blank tiny corner that I remembered in this second half of the pitch. I gardened out a spot for a tiny steel nut, made the move to a good hold, and backcleaned the nut. Then better pro and just a few more technical moves led to an easy hand sized section of crack. Here I should have stopped to belay at a stance, so that I could drop my end of the rope to haul my pack. But instead I continued on up the hand crack/corner to the belay ledge with a 2 bolt anchor. (The hangers are stuffed full of slings and could use chains). Tim followed, but of course with both our packs he had little chance of freeing the crux moves. p3 - Tim led up above the bolt belay, with a short lieback, then undercling back left above the anchors, and a thin lieback section with some usable footholds amidst mossy rock. Then up easier rock to the shared chains belay below the bolt ladder pitch. One party had already done the bolt ladder, and a person in the second party was following it. p4 - I led up the Fifty Crowded Variation 5.10a, where I enjoyed clipping the 3/8" bolts which Greg had replaced from my original 1/4" Taperbolts. I found the thin crack reaching the jug a little harder than I remembered; it had been awhile. p5 - I led up to the fixed pin where the standard route traverses right. Here I went straight up, to reach a right facing corner and a nice belay ledge with a strange bolt and a decent cam placement. Tim went a little right of the fixed pin to reach the corner which was easier and faster. p6 - Tim found a nice traverse left into the main flaring corner/chimney pitch, on the "left hand" finish to the East Buttress. This is rated 5.8 in the topo but is rather physical. He set up a belay just above the roof in the corner. By the time I started following, a German climber had joined me at the belay ledge, by climbing a standard pitch up and left from the belay atop the bolt ladder. I followed by chimneying out near the edge of the chimney, a technique too insecure to use on lead, but efficient for following. I dangled my pack below me on a sling. Tim was fairly worked from this demanding lead. p7 - I led up the right hand corner, finding a tricky move when the crack widened and there was a slightly dirty ledge on the left wall but no holds above to help move onto it. After some quick cleaning work, I realized I could put my right forearm onto it, then turn my back to it and use my foot on a hold down below on the arete. It would help to garden the crack here so that a cam could be placed to protect this, although once I found the easy way to do the move it was not a problem. Continuing up the right facing corner, the moves were easier, using a flake on the right wall to avoid some wet spots. Soon the left wall of the corner became overhanging, but footholds and protection were good, making a very enjoyable short 5.9 finish. I stopped at a nice ledge and tree just above this section. Even though the pitch was short, the climbing above got easier, so this would help us clear the lower pitch for the Germans, and enable us to hear each other. This belay ledge is just down and left of the belay atop the groove pitch on the right hand finish. Jared was at this belay. p8 - Tim led, using an easy flake to reach the left of two corner systems. It had fairly easy climbing and occasional trees. At the end of the pitch, he climbed up a crack/flake on the right wall, mostly stemming against a big tree to the left. He belayed atop the crack/flake at a windy ant tree ledge. p9 - I led up a face crack above, which was slightly dirty/mossy but clean enough to climb. It also had a line of ants travelling on it. I belayed at another ant tree ledge, level with the belay at the end of the 5.8 corner on the right finish. p10 - We could have joined the regular finish with its short undercling traverse to the easy rounded stemming corner. But another party was already doing it. So I led up the continuing face crack. However, it had some loose flakes at the start, so I had to be very careful. Higher up, there was a big dead tree to the left which was broken at its base and I wasn't sure what was still holding it to the rock, so I didn't dare let my rope touch it. I was describing this tree to Tim as I grabbed a ledge next to the tree to make the last moves to the belay. Suddenly the block I was standing on gave way and started rolling downwards. We started screaming "Rock!" and the 4 people on the belay ledge directly below scattered to the sides. The block was approximately 1.5' on each side, and it narrowly missed the foot of one of the German climbers. Once it hit the ledge there, it bounced out and well over the heads of Jared and Jesse on the 5.8 corner below (fortunately). A couple of smaller (hand sized) rocks which cut loose at the same time came very close to Jared; one small one hit his helmet and another scratched his bicep. This was an unfortunate and sobering event, pretty much wrecking the enjoyment of the climbing that day. But we were lucky and nobody was badly hurt; it could have easily been fatal. In retrospect, I should not have led such a potentially loose variation pitch with all those people below me at risk. Tim followed very carefully. p11 - Tim continued up easier rock above, fortunately with no further loose rock problems. We stopped atop the regular stemming pitch and waited for Jared and Jesse to arrive. I apologized to all the climbers for the rockfall. The Germans were nice and simply said "we are all alive." When Jared arrived, I belayed Jesse while he had some long delayed lunch. We then moved together up to the Kat Walk descent, which I am very familiar with. Where it starts traversing left, there were some misleading low cairns, and we met up with the party which had been ahead of us, who had taken some wrong turns. We continued traversing and reached the Cathedral Chimney, which still had a fair amount of loose rock and dirt from the rockfall of 2002. At the first rappel anchor, there was a new second bolt with ASCA hanger and chain. Tim set up a doubled single 60m rope, which I thought would reach. However, it was 10-15' short of the bottom, so he stopped at a ledge. Jared converted it into a single rope rappel; then Tim finished and the other 4 people rappelled single as well. I brought up the rear, doing a doubled rappel to the intermediate anchor slings, and then a second rappel. The rope got fairly wet in this process, so we figured we did not need to get more ropes wet as well. We scrambled down to the next rappel anchor which also had a new second bolt. This had been the scene of the scary rockfall near-miss in 2002 with Dennis Erik Strom. Now the small chockstone at the lip of the rappel was gone, which makes it much more straightforward to downclimb under the giant chockstone and skip the rappel entirely. Further downclimbing in the gully was straightforward, and we eventually retrieved our packs at the base of the climb and descended to the car. After some dinner at El Cap Meadow, we headed off to our usual spots and had a good night's sleep. Sunday - we had a fairly leisurely wakeup at 8:30, then breakfast in El Cap Meadow. The temps felt a little warmer, and we wanted to do some shorter routes, so we headed up to Tuolumne Meadows, leaving Tim's van at Crane Flat. We climbed South Crack, with Jared and Tim swapping leads, while I led all pitches with Jesse. I did the direct 5.8+ version of the first pitch on Tim's recommendation - it's pretty nice. Even with a 60m rope, Jesse had to simulclimb 10-20 feet (on easy ground) so that I could reach the nice belay ledge. The next pitch went to the corner between the two runout slabs. I wished I had not left the #2 Camalot at the previous belay, but I made a decent anchor and plugged in the #2 when Jesse arrived with it. The 5.7 runout went fine, although it is always a time to be focused as there is little positive for the fingers! I managed to clean a booty pink Tricam from the flake belay, and continued onwards up easy friction to reach the bolted belay above. I wasn't able to clean a #1.5 Tech Friend below this belay, as I could only free one of the cams. One last pitch, straight up on fun corners and a short bulge reached the belay on top where Jared was waiting. Tim had already gone down and left to solo some of the friction pitches on West Country. We all did the standard friction ramp descent, and then did a somewhat high traverse back along the upper base to reach our packs. It was early afternoon, so I suggested we finish off the weekend at Low Profile Dome. We quickly drove over there and did the short walk up to the base. My goal was to set a toprope on Shit Hooks 5.10b or Darth Vader's Revenge. Normally I would walk way around right and traverse back on a small ledge to reach the anchors for this. But nobody was at the crag, so I led up the Golfer's Route (5.7) instead, as it looked fast/direct, and I had been curious about it. (It was retrobolted in the 90s, and is normally very popular). To save time, I trailed the rope, but only clipped the bolts at the middle crux, reversing a few moves to backclean them as well. This meant that nobody would have to follow the route. I reached the top ledge, and traversed right to some chains. By now, a party of three had arrived with the intention of leading Darth Vader's Revenge, which was fine with me, as I like Shit Hooks better anyway. After checking with Tim at the base, I moved my anchor over to the correct bolts and belayed Jared up Shit Hooks. He had no problems and enjoyed the fun knob moves. Jesse enjoyed a clean ascent as well. Jesse belayed me for a lap as well. What a fun route! And so much faster to toprope than to lead. By this time, the cliff had gone into the shade, and Tim's finger was looking somewhat abused, so he passed on a lap, and we left for home.