Y: Middle Cathedral - East Buttress 10/8/05 - SAC

We did this as 2 teams of 2, with Anne-Sousig Steunou and I in the
first team, and Christopher Bourez and Niloy Mitra in the second.
Anne and I climbed rapidly, but Chris was having problems because
he didn't have enough cams.  While I was waiting for them to catch up,
I took about 30 minutes to extract a stuck cam from the 3rd pitch;
we left at the chain belay for them to use.  I took a little time on
the crux pitch (50 Crowded variation, 5.10a), being careful to find
the easiest way to do the traverse and then getting good pro on the
thin crack section.  Anne cruised when following, and then we waited
a bit and gave Chris a toprope.

By this time we were in the shade for the rest of the day; the temp
was warm enough for climbing, but a bit cool for waiting.  I led 4
more nice pitches (p6-9) to the tree belay at the base of the final 5.8
pitch, while Chris led up a roof variation instead of the
easy but sparsely protected face which joins the standard route
at the fixed pin.  Anne couldn't clean a cam in the corner below
the tree belay, so I rapped down on the single rope and got it.
I went a bit further down and got a biner from a single titanium piton
rap anchor; then I talked with Chris.  I left the rope dangling so
he could get a toprope once he got a bit higher.  I climbed back up p8-9
with my ATC on the fixed rope as a backup belay.

After a bit more waiting, we belayed Chris up.  I led the 5.8 pitch,
Anne followed, and Chris led part of it and got a toprope for the rest.
On the final pitch, Anne and Chris climbed followed on my rope in
the fading light, and Niloy followed in full darkness (very dim
moonlight).

After changing shoes, we went up the 3rd class, roping
up for awhile in an exposed section.  We lost the trail up to the
Catwalk briefly and then slowly moved along it.  The main problem at
this point was that we had just one headlamp (somewhat dim) between
the four of us.  I had left mine at the base, since I had promised
Jared we'd be down before dark.  We eventually reached the gully,
did the raps, and downclimbed the talus gully.  Niloy was fairly
tired and he needed extra time to get good footing.

By the time we reached the car it was 3am.  This would have been
somewhat OK if we had our own car, but Jared, Darko, Sam and James
were waiting for us since before dark.  They were dozing a bit in the
cars while waiting and a ranger thought they were merely sleeping in
the cars and had a conversation with them.  Fortunately they came back
and were there when we returned.  We got back to Palo Alto at 7:30am....