Yosemite 6/27-28/98  with Andy Gardner

Saturday - Serenity Crack, Ahwanee Buttress, Sons of Yesterday

We continued our quest for *** routes, and we were in luck, because
there was just one party on the route, already 2 pitches ahead of us.
1. Serenity p1 5.10a (formerly rated 5.9).  A nice sustained pitch up
the pin scars.  Fortunately it was dry.  Later, on the way down, I
removed a well-chalked loose flake at the crux flaring section.
2. Serenity p2 5.10a.  Awhile back, Dennis described doing this pitch
with Brian Cox, and how Brian led the traverse between cracks much lower
than the "usual" way (which is well chalked).  So I led the traverse
low, too, and it was fun.  Later, on the descent, I took a few minutes
to clean dirt and vegetation from this section of the crack.
3. Ahwanee Buttress p3 5.7.  My favorite bypass to the 5.10d Serenity
crux, with some fun liebacking, stemming, and easy hand jams.
4. Sons of Yesterday 5.10a (but mostly 5.7 hand cracks).  Since Andy
has trained well on hand cracks with his crack machine, and I enjoy
them too, Sons was an obvious climb to tick on our continuing summer
of hand cracks.  We bagged all the pitches with no falls.

Sunday - Arrowhead Arete

We got a leisurely start, after talking with Dennis Strom and Steve
from Colorado about their 18-hour trip up the Nose on Saturday.
Dennis' leg was feeling very stiff, and not long after this, a surgeon
made him a new ACL.

Andy and I headed for Arrowhead Arete, which I had heard about for
some time as an uncrowded moderate classic.  I think it was Dennis
Drayna who told me it was 5.8 but very sustained.  We managed to find
the old abandoned trail up Indian Canyon that is most of the approach -
a nice and mostly shady way to gain all that elevation.  The "dirty
100' wall" did not have an obvious easy way up, but we managed, and
the ensuing traverse on the ledge system was spectacular.  Finally up
the "chimney" (gully) to the base, where we could hear another party
on Arrowhead Spire.  Originally I thought we could bag both the spire
and the arete, but it was getting moderately late, so we concentrated
on the arete.  After some steep 4th class, Andy took the first real
lead up a 5.8 hand crack with many loose flakes.  There was obvious
sign of a big rockfall just above this pitch.  The next pitch looked
wide enough to be ow, and I was about to consider bailing out, but I
figured I ought to be able to handle it at 5.8.  No ow moves were
required (given the ample features), and my #4 Friend on a sling
provided good protection.  But routefinding higher on the pitch was
surprisingly tricky, as most paths looked well over 5.8.  I swear
I was doing 5.9 or easy 5.10 moves and was glad when protection
appeared.  The interesting and tricky climbing continued on the
sustained 3rd pitch, and I got to do a second lap when Andy was
unable to remove one of my tightly cammed Friends low on the pitch.
He also took a fall there when sitting on a TCU in his attempt
to remove the Friend -- quite a long and airy fall with all the
rope stretch!  The 4th pitch start was shown on the topo as a 5.7
corner.  The corner had an overhanging thin crack with no footholds,
so I knew it wasn't 5.7 and tried a face out to the left that looked
like it might lead to a fixed pin.  This was runout and vegetated,
and eventually turned harder than 5.8, so I backed off and returned
to the original corner.  I swear I was cranking 5.9 or 5.10 moves
as I locked off on a finger jam to place some pro!  It was getting
late, and I didn't even bother to try to score a booty large Alien
on the nice pitch above, which crossed the arete on airy and inobvious
buckets to a belay in a tree above 1000' of air.  The White Flake
pitch at least offered an obvious route, and we sped up as the
climbing eased.  Eventually we got to the classic traverse along the
top of the narrow fin, and raced solo into and down the gully, to
the 3 75' rappels over huge chockstones.  We reached Andy's headlamp
just before dark, and I felt like a true idiot for not bringing mine!
But it was no problem descending with just the one light, except for
some brief routefinding problems near the bottom of the gully.
We even found a soloable free descent of the 100' dirty wall, and
then the nice abandoned trail made for a nondesperate way to lose
all that elevation again.  Andy's light finally started fading out
as we passed some houses near the Church Bowl, and the drive
home was late but not too tiring.