The past 2 weekends I've been working on a new(?) route, left of the
East Buttress of El Cap.
6/12/93 w/ Joel Ager, we climbed 3 pitches of the East Buttress and
traversed over, wrestling with my mini-haul sack with the Drill on board.
I still for the life of me can't free the move at the start of p2, but
perhaps if the fixed pin is removed?  Joel led the first new pitch, a
long one that was easy until it got soaked by Horsetail Falls (it starts
blowing onto this section of the route at about 10:45am).  Joel finessed
up soaked holds while my belay ledge became a creek.  We moved the belay
twice, up a short vertical hand crack to a sunny ledge and dried out.
After a short blocky section, the main difficulties began, in a fairly
steep black corner with a shallow crack and seam.  A 2-pin belay was
found here; this route may be Snake, FA in 1983, but no details in the guide
except a vague line in the photo.  Gardening and aiding my way upwards,
I was stopped by a blank section.  When dry, the many face holds will make
it go free at about 5.10.  At the blank section, the corner crack is just
a seam for 12'.  By topstepping on a TCU, I was able to place a semi-blind
hook, which held under testing.  I brought up the Drill and placed a
bolt; hopefully this will go free by stemming; I didn't think it was likely
that Snake could have done this part (if free, it would have been quite
runout unless a nut fit where I had the TCU).  Then I aided up a nice flake
and put in a bolt belay.  By this time, the wind had shifted again and
Joel was getting a nasty cold shower.  He followed the pitch up to the
now soaked corner; then I lowered him to a rappel horn in the midst of
the downpour.  On rappel I knocked out a little moss, but Joel was suffering
so I left more cleaning for later and we got onto warm dry rock in one
more long rap.  We backed up the 1/4" rappel bolt at the top of the 5.5
arete pitch.
On Sunday, we did Sons of Yesterday 5.9+ via the Ahwanee Buttress start
(5.8 A1).  This start avoided heavy traffic on Serenity Crack, and we
both found it interesting following pitches with a coiled 9mm rope and a
2 liter water bottle.  Sons of Y is of course a long 1" crack and 3 5.7
classic hand crack pitches.  I even led the 5.8? slab at the end, happy
to find a bolt near the end that I hadn't seen when I started.
Booty count for the weekend: 4 biners, 2 spectra quickdraws, 1 nut, 1 aider, 
1 rope bag.

6/19/93 w/ Bruce Fortnam.  After a leisurely 9:30pm start from the Bay Area,
we didn't get an early start on the project.  Since the recon Joel and I
did indicated good potential free climbing, we needed to clean grass and
dirt from the upper corners.  So Bruce and I packed up 5 9mm ropes, jumars,
a rack, etc. and headed up the East Ledges descent trail at 9:30am.  After
some false starts, we bushwhacked up towards the right end of the Ledges
until it became too hard.  We roped up for the exposed 5.6 move and gained
the grassy/bushy Ledge.  When it ran out, we were still 100' from the
usual Ledges rap station, and it looked tough to me -- not the one 5.5 move
described in the Roper guide.  Fortunately, Bruce was feeling positive and
led out with his pack on, firing the 5.8 pitch, and I followed on jumars.
After more hiking, we found the top of the East Buttress, and I set up
the rappel while Bruce hiked up to the Horsetail Falls stream to fill our
water bottles with his filter.  Definitely the saving grace of the adventure,
a source of water.  Donning rain gear in preparation for another windy
soaking, I rapped down into the main corner, setting up some intermediate
anchors so we could simul-garden and stay in contact.  I left the main
grassy corner to Bruce (a big job), and started to work on the lower ramp
(tips).  I found 4 fixed pins of approximately 10 years age, so this route
could be Snake, but it couldn't have been freed unless they had also cleaned
the cracks and everything had grown back.  Dirt rained down and blew around,
along with occasional splatterings from the Falls.  I cleaned all the way
down to the week-ago high point, uncovering many cracks and holds for the
hoped-for fall FFA when it's dry enough (and perhaps rinsed by summer
T-storms).  Finally heading back up, Bruce noted that the start of the
main corner may not go free.  Most of it is a spectacular sustained
finger crack, but the start is a seam in places.  We left grass in the
first 30', since it was late and it looked like it would require aid.
We hope to be back in the fall!  We headed down the descent, using our
headlamps on the rappels, and noting some folks bivvying on the alternative
rap route to the SW.  Booty count:  biner, baby angle.

On Sunday, Bruce led No Butts About It 5.10b tips/lieback, L of the
East Buttress of Middle Cathedral.  I attempted to lead the old route
further L, which Bruce had led a year ago.  After several attempts,
I placed a semi-blind TCU at a runout section.  It passed the yard-from-a-
distance test, but not the visual test when I started the moves by it.
Conveniently, clouds had been gathering, the wind picked up, and I noticed
a haze up the Valley which I thought was rain.  So I downclimbed.  The
haze was just smoke, but it was followed by real rain before I could
get my hiking boots on.  We ended the day by comparing notes on jumar
slings, as Bruce had gotten a bit pumped on the previous day's jugging,
and I applied a "Frost Knot" to his aiders as we drove home.

Clint