Tuolumne:  White Flake, Eunuch, Slabstick, Great White Book, El Condor
 7/17-18/04 - Lance

Lance asked to go climbing, as part of his 11th birthday - how could I
refuse!  It was a good chance to check out some of the 5.7s which I
have not done before, as well as repeat a few classics.

Saturday.  It was rather hazy with smoke from the forest fire near
Little Yosemite.  The haze was actually helpful for keeping the temps
low at sunny Stately Pleasure Dome.

White Flake 5.7.  This is one of the moderate routes on the far left
side of the dome.  We walked up from the left and dropped our packs
in the shade of a big tree.  The topo was a bit confusing, showing
the route started up a long crack, and then an unprotected slab.
I didn't see any long cracks.  So I just started up the easiest path
on the big slab, directly below the white flake.  No bolts were in
sight, but I found an old 1/4" about 30' up, and then a new 3/8"
on a ramp about 100' up.  I continued on to a ledge about 180' up,
where I placed a couple of cams for a belay anchor.  Lance followed
with no problems and I clipped him in.  I set him up to belay me
on the uppper slab with a GriGri.  About 15' up was a 2 bolt anchor
with a small stance; I clipped the bigger bolt and continued on.
One more big bolt was clipped before I reached the bottom of the
White Flake.  Here I placed a #2 Friend to protect a smooth friction
move to gain the main flake.  The flake itself is only 5.5, and
after a few moves I was at a 5/16" bolt at a stance on the flake.
I should have probably stopped here and belayed, but instead I kept
going up the flake until I ran out of rope (60m).  Here the crack
was wider than my largest cam (#3 Friend), but I looked into the
crack and saw a #3 Camalot (old Chouinard, but in nice shape) just
sitting there!  So I placed it and belayed from it.  Lance was up
quickly again.  I led out an easy third pitch to a ledge near
the descent ramp.  Lance came up, and we simulclimbed (with 20' of
rope between us) down the descent ramp, and actually straight down
a wide groove to the big tree.

Hermaphrodite Flake / Eunuch 5.7.  Lance likes to do chimneys, so
we decided to do the chimney version of Hermaphrodite Flake next.
We traversed straight right from the tree ledge, on a narrowing
ledge which petered out into a couple of 5.7 moves to reach the
corner below the flake.  I set an anchor with 2 cams and Lance
came across with no problems.  While I was clipping Lance into
the anchor, I took my only fall of the trip -- I wasn't careful
with my feet, and there was lots of slack in my tie-in, and I
fell about 2' and bruised the back of my pelvis slightly.
I led up the 5.4 chimney with no kneepads, facing in, and using
the slick face holds as much as possible.  I belayed from some
chains where the chimney turns into a lieback.  A climber
had appeared from the left and had liebacked the left side of
the flake, and was using the chains on top of the flake, so I
figured there was no much point in extending my lead.  Lance
had fun following the chimney, and we both noticed how much the
flake vibrated when we struck it.  I liebacked the wide flake
above and set up an anchor with a couple of cams right of
the chains.  Lance followed easily.  The slab above is the
start of Eunuch, which originally had only one protection bolt;
I did this route with Jon Rokosz in the mid 80s, and I remember
that I had to place my faith in the rubber of my Fires on the
runout friction up there.  Since then, the start has been retrobolted,
with about 6 bolts, about 10' apart.  The original 1/4" bolt
is still there, too.  I clipped the first 2 new bolts, but
then skipped the rest, and only clipped the original 1/4".
Stan was at the standard belay chains, off to the right, so
I just went a little to the left and above him to a single big bolt,
where I was about out of rope and made a belay.  Lance came up
quickly, and I set off above, soon reaching a crack through
a small overhang (just right of West Country), and then on
to a belay on a ledge above it.  Lance followed the slab easily,
but had a little difficulty with the unfamiliar crack climbing.
His shoes got a bit stuck, and he got a small cut on his leg in
the struggle to free them.  But soon we were done, and we headed
down the descent ramp, grabbed our packs, and went down to the
car for some lunch.

After lunch, we drove over to the west end of Tuolumne Meadows,
parked, and hiked up to the base of Marmot Dome, which has several
moderate routes.  We both felt rather tired on the hike up, so
we just stopped for some rests and didn't try to go too fast.
I guess the altitude was catching up with us.

Slabstick 5.7 (w/ 5.8 direct finish).
The first pitch of this was actually more than 200', to reach a
2 bolt belay.  So we simulclimbed.  It would also have been possible
to make a belay with cams at the small crack which goes over the
tiny roof with the small bush.  As it was, I waited for Lance to
climb to that point, and then I went up to the 2' roof, placed a
TCU, made the move onto the slab above, then up the slab with some
knobs to the 2 bolt belay.  Lance followed easily, and enjoyed
swinging from the anchor bolts using his tie in.  The topo indicated
going around the right end of the big roof above, but I went over
the left end, which was simpler.  I made a belay on the polished
ramp at a small ledge below the exit pitch.  As usual, Lance followed
easily; the climbing had only been about 5.5 so far.  The 5.7 pitch
exiting the ramp looked a bit tougher.  The initial part was protected
by a fixed knifeblade, then had a few sloping 5.7 face moves to
reach a stance.  From here, an intermittent thin crack in a small
corner reached a short overhanging lieback flake.  Here I placed a couple
of cams and did the fairly secure moves.  The next bit of 5.7 was
an undercling with a thin crack.  I placed a TCU and made a reach
move to sink my fingers into the crack, then after a few moves I
made a belay at the lip.  Lance cruised the lower parts, but paused
quite a long time at the final undercling.  Apparently he had to do
some thin moves to reach the deep finger crack, but he got it after
trying a few things.  There were 3 choices for the last pitch - an
easy ramp out right, a short steep wall directly above, or a very
polished lieback to the left (indicated as the finish on the topo).
The short steep wall looked reachy, so I checked out the polished
lieback.  It was pretty tough as well.  Lance expressed interest
in the direct wall, so I came back and led up it.  It had a reachy
move from a knob to gain a good diagonallying incut ledge/crack below
a roof.  Then another move up and right along this crack, with the
rock vertical below and above.  At this point the crack looks shallow
further along, and I could see that someone had used a lot of chalk
in the crack here.  But there was a nice incut flake just above it,
so I placed a TCU in the main crack and cranked a move to get onto
my foot on the slab to the right.  Then up an easy hand crack to
make a belay directly above this headwall for Lance.  It was 5.8
(would be 5.9 if it stayed steep for awhile for a better pump factor).
Lance climbed up and hesitated for awhile at the long reach to the
diagonalling crack.  But he made the move, then another move and
cleaned the TCU.  Soon he found the incut flake by himself and was up!
We simulclimbed (roped) a short pitch which zigzagged on ramps and
a short corner to the top.  Here we surprised a big black bird which
flew off from the summit.  We tagged the summit, and descended just
west of it to a notch where we unroped as we felt a few raindrops.
We scrambled down the 300' moderate slab on the south side, then
contoured east and north around the base, back to our packs.
We were tired, and it was relatively late, so we called it a day
and hiked back down to the car.  Shortly after reaching the car,
it started sprinkling some more.  We drove to the Lembert Dome
picnic area, had some dinner, and hung out in the car for awhile as
the sprinkles (and eventually the daylight) faded out.  We drove out
and slept at Camp 9.

Sunday.  We got a fairly leisurely start, with the sun reaching us
at Camp 9 (around 8:30), so we had our breakfast there.  We drove
back to Stately Pleasure Dome.

The Great White Book 5.6.  Lance likes chimneys, so this was an
obvious classic to do.  Plus, he wanted to try a 5.6 to compare
with the 5.7s.  He admitted something about pulling on some of the
bolts on Saturday, although I'm not sure exactly what he meant - there
were not that many bolts!  The lead on pitch one went fairly well,
although the friction on the left wall of the corner with my feet was
a little slick at times.  I had Lance simulclimb a little of the pitch
so I could reach the base of the corner with the semi-loose blocks,
where I anchored with a sling around the highest solid block.
Lance paused a bit when starting the chimneying, but after he found
the right position, he motored up the pitch.  On p2, I demonstrated
the old technique of stemming the corner, with one hand and foot on
each wall (something Chris Kaiser had told me about, back in the mid
70s!).  Lance used more standard laybacking when following the pitch;
he said he wasn't sure he could get into position to do the stem that way.
The start of p3 is a lieback of a wide flake; I remembered being sketched
here the last time I soloed it, so I had Lance put me on belay
temporarily with a Munter hitch.  It was not so bad with a belay!
I didn't mind using a weird position of facing into the crack and
having my belly on the edge of the flake.  Above, it was not
hard to step around the roof and head up the slab.  We were using
the 50m x 9mm rope, and I was running out of rope fast, with no
bolt anchors in sight.  But I did spy a fixed 1.5" angle in a small
crack, so I headed for it, and ran out of rope just out of reach of it.
But I was able to reach a good fingerlock and place a TCU.  Once Lance
was unclipped from the lower anchor, enough rope was freed so I could
clip the pin as well.  Lance cruised up and was soon at the anchor.
There was a guided party over to our right on South Crack, and one
of the clients had fixed a cam under the roof before the final 5.7
runout.  I offered to help, but the guide had it under control and
went down to try to get the cam herself.  It was too deep, though.
I led the next pitch, and reached the base of the final small roof
with hand crack before I ran out of rope.  I set an anchor with 2
cams below the roof.  Lance was unable to remove the TCU at our
anchor, because it was very tight in the crack.  So I fixed the rope,
rapped down with a Munter hitch, and cleaned it.  Then I batmanned back
up, and Lance climbed up quickly.  We traversed over and did the
descent ramp again.

El Condor 5.7.  This route (on Daff Dome, on the slab right of Crescent
Arch) gets stars for quality, but I had never done it.  And it was supposed
to have good knobs, according to the folks from Eunuch who had tried
it on Saturday afternoon.  It was also supposed to be rather runout,
but Greg had reported on the ASCA page that the bolts had been replaced,
and somebody else had added a bolt to the second pitch.  So Lance and I
drove over and hiked up to the base of Daff Dome.  The first pitch has
a 5.5 lieback which I thought was a lot trickier to start than any of
the 5.7 moves we had done on Saturday.  I was a little gripped, but
it went OK.  I set up a belay with a #3 Friend at the ledge below
where the wall steepens.  Lance followed very quickly, as the clouds
sprinkled a bit, but then stopped.  p2 starts with an easy move
over a small roof to a narrow ledge above the roof (I placed a cam here).
I could see the retrobolt above, and I climbed up good knobs to
reach it.  The knobs are on a black streak which could be called
a rather moderate version of the Bachar-Yerian.  They are generally
quite positive.  I clipped the bolt.  I certainly would have placed
one there if I had done the FA in modern times.  It helped protect
a slightly less positive section to reach a short crack.  At the top
of the crack, I placed 2 cams and looked at the runout above.
I could see a few larger knobs, and I figured I should be solid
enough (plus I had brought my chalkbag on this route, to make sure I
could reduce the slipperyness of a knob if I had to; I used it quite
a bit).  About 15' up, there was a knob which protruded especially
far, and I realized this was the feature labelled the "Condor's Head"
on the topo!  Pretty cool, and a nice surprise.  It was good enough
to sling for pro!  The next runout was a ways, but I could see
some good knobs, and I could also finally see a protection bolt
and the belay bolts at the same level.  After some more careful moves,
finding the best knobs to grab, I had clipped the protection bolt
and was at the belay.  Lance came up smoothly, having no trouble
removing the cams, and enjoyed grabbing the Condor's Head.  Soon
he was tied in at the belay.  For p3 we chose the 5.7 version
straight up (vs. the 5.8 version out left).  The smaller knobs
directly above the belay were a little thinner than anything on p2,
but they were fairly positive, and soon I was at a horizontal crack
where I plugged in 2 Friends (TCUs would also fit).  I also noticed
an old bolt sleeve above the crack, but of course it is not needed
with modern gear (or even back in the day with pitons).  The black
streak and knobs continued straight above, plus a few pockets, one
of which accepted a #2 TCU for good pro.  Soon the angle eased back
and I reached the belay area where I set up an anchor with
several cams and a wired nut.  Lance had no problems following
the pitch, and enjoyed this climb a lot.  I led a 4th class pitch to
the south ridge, and soon Lance joined me.  He wanted to toprope the
short gold knobby wall above us, so I walked around and belayed him
up it.  We then walked up and tagged the summit, then came back down
and walked down the 4th class downclimb with 20' of rope between us.
Soon we were back at our packs in the shade of a tree, watching the
big ants.  After the descent, Lance fiddled around at the stream
by the road, and then we drove home.