Yosemite - Rixon's West Face, base of El Cap - Feb. 11-12, 2006 - Chris Chan

On Saturday, we climbed the West Face of Rixon's Pinnacle 5.10c.
This used to be a favorite wintertime climb of mine - it has lots of sunny
5.7-5.9 crack climbing with a little 5.10 thrown in.
But there had been some large rockfalls on it, and just to the west of it,
which had closed the road a few times in the late 80s, so I had not been
back to it since then.  However, I do climb at certain areas of the Apron
which have gotten some past rockfall (Monday Morning Slab), and I noticed
on Karl Baba's web page that he had climbed Rixon's West last spring,
so perhaps it was time to downgrade the rockfall risk a bit.
The climb was fairly clean and was about at the right difficulty for me
to lead - I was challenged at times, but never gripped.  Chris hadn't
climbed outside since our Pinnacles trip (it had been rainy and she
had to deal with a minor shoulder injury), so she followed and I led.

p1 was challenging, with the crack a bit too thin for solid fingerlocks.
It took good wired stoppers for pro, though, and once I committed to
using my feet it was not too desperate (5.9).
p2 had the famous 5.10c long reach or "cartwheel move" to traverse to
the right crack.  I took one hang when I could not make the reach my
first try.  I went back to the corner, and tried it with my left foot
on the smaller right foothold, which gained me a little more distance
but not enough to make a solid reach.  So I told Chris to watch me and
I lunged for the hand jam, which worked just fine.  I ran it out up
the easy crack to the belay, so I could belay to the left and give
Chris a proper overhead belay for the crux.  Chris is 5'3" and was
able to reach her foot over to the flake, but couldn't set up for
a lunge, so she made 2 solid attempts, but fell twice and then left it
for another day.
p3 is the fun low angle crack to the undercling - no problems.
p4 is a steeper face with a couple of fixed pins, which I have always
thought of as the "Gunks simulator".  It had a fun reach left from
a big pocket to a flake which I had forgotten about.  Chris took a
couple of falls on the last part of this pitch, which is a left-leaning
corner which is a combination lieback and jam.
p5 has a brief but intense slightly overhanging corner hand crack
that I remembered well.  Chris had a couple of hangs on it, which I
explained had happened to all my other partners on it in the past!
We rapped off the right side, which had rusty 1/4" bolts, but nothing
too scary.  We had trouble pulling the first rappel, which is supposedly
common, but it had not happened to me before.  We solved it by flicking
the pull rope over right, pulling down 18" of rope, and repeating that
process.  Soon we did the nice long steep raps, got our water and shoes
from the base and exited to happy ground out of the range of rockfall!
 
On Sunday, we climbed at the base of El Cap:

1. Sacherer Cracker 5.10a
It was fun to do this again.  The seasonal rains had left it nice and
clean (non-greasy).  I used the left chimney finish at the top,
again wishing I had brought kneepads for it.  Chris took one fall
on the thin crack start, lowered down to the ledge, and then fired
it free.  At the top, she wanted to try the direct smooth offwidth finish.
I tried to coach, but since I don't really do offwidth, I'm not sure if
I helped or heeded her.  After trying my ideas, she took a rest and then
managed to climb it rapidly by alternating bracing her right shoulder
and arm in the crack, and pinching the arete with her thighs (that's how
it looked to me at least; I'm sure she was using her right foot as well).

2. Short but Thin 5.11b (toprope)
I inspected this on rappel and cleaned a few tiny bits of grass,
then toproped it free.  The most marginal part for me were the flaring
fingerlocks about 10' up, just past the lieback flake.  I was also only
barely able to reach my left foot up onto the horizontal hold where
the crack fades to tips.  Chris had a hang or two at the flaring fingerlocks,
then nicely climbed the rest free with a little running beta.

3. La Cosita Right 5.9
It was also nice to have this clean from the rains; it was an easy lead,
with good feet to place a TCU in the middle of the lower thin section,
then good hands in the upper corner.

4. Little John Left 5.8 (toprope)
Steve York had led this, with some impressive yells and moans at foot
pain and frustration with the (sandbag) difficulty.  Chris wanted to toprope
it, so we traded topropes for La Cosita.  I remembered my idea from
rapping down it last December with Claire - it looked like a good size for
wearing hiking boots.  So I advised Chris to try it with her approach shoes.
This worked fairly well, but her shoes are smaller than my hiking boots,
so her leg and knee went deeper into the crack at times.  She managed a
cool stem back to a flake on the left wall at one point.  I took a ride
on the toprope as well, and my hiking boots fit it perfectly as I had
suspected - accurately graded at 5.8 with that size of boots (and way
harder with normal shoes)!

5. Salathe' p1 5.10c
I led this to finish off the day.  It's another good early season route,
since there are lots of rests and it's well protected.  Chris followed
free without any problems as the alpenglow hit the headwall of El Cap
and then faded out.