I met Clint, as planned, at the Green Gate bivy near Hetch Hetchy, Wednesday night at 11:30pm. After a few words, we both went to sleep, waking up around 6:30am Thursday morning. After driving down to the Ahwahnee parking lot, we packed up in the chilly morning; the sky was patchy clouds, which was fine since we had a long hike ahead of us and we didn't want a lot of heat.
We packed 5 ropes, harness, jugs, ice axes, 2 days of food, bivy gear, and so on. I swear my pack was 60lbs, a bigger load than I'd ever taken on any backpacking trip in my life.
In 1992, Bill Wright and I had climbed Serenity Crack to Sons of Yesterday to the Ahwahnee Buttress, all to reach the North Rim of the valley. The first two routes are 3-star classics, but the seldom-done Ahwahnee Buttress was mostly 3rd class munge, bushes, loose rock, and some technical climbing; it was awful, but the only way to the rim. Bill and I returned a month later to investigate some promising-looking cracks out left; we installed 3 2-bolt belay stations and rappelled through this area, deciding there was climbing potential. I'd been back with various partners about 6 total days to clean out those cracks, but there was still much to do.
Clint had volunteered to help me continue this job; it'd had been 4 years since I'd last worked on these cracks, but I still wanted to finish. Our plan was to hike UP the North Dome Gully (the usual descent route for that area of the valley), fix the entire area to be cleaned, and then work on it for two days. I enthusiastically accepted Clint's offer since he would be the first person with a good deal of cleaning experience who had offered to help out.
The load was excruciating; after 20 minutes I was wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into. Clint warned me that he was a "weak hiker" but I could barely keep up with him. I was soaked in sweat despite the heavy cloud cover and cool temperatures.
But of course after a while you get used to the pain; four hours later we were on top of the route, fixing lines down the face.
Clint is a minimalist: he doesn't use a pillow, his can-opener is a tiny sliver of metal, and he doesn't use a rappel or belay device (he prefers the Muenter hitch). Most of his rack is booty, and the 10mm and 9mm ropes he brought were, well, a bit on the manky side. I did the first rappel down only to discover that Clint's 10mm was about 40' too short to make the first station: I'd told Clint that most of the pitches were 100' or shorter, so he'd brought a 120' rope; he's a minimalist! After using jumars to pass the knot (something I'd only read about before), I was on my way. Clint came down afterward and went to work on pitch 1 while I worked on pitch 2.
Digging dirt out of cracks is some of the filthiest work imaginable: you hang there in your harness and pry the pick of your ice axe into the cracks and pry out the munge, grass, dirt, and loose rock. Since Clint was 80' below me (and helmetless) I had to be extraordinarily careful not to drop any rocks. This was quite stressful for me. Also, since we were above one of the most popular routes in Yosemite, Clint also had to be very careful about what he dropped. Mostly we threw stuff over the left edge of the buttress, thinking that no one would be down there.
Clint had brought goggles, I'd forgotten to. When the wind whipped up (as it always does in the afternoon), this made seeing almost impossible with the amount of dirt I was cutting loose. But at least I was the top guy, not getting Clint's dirt added to my own.
After a strenuous hike and 4 hours of cleaning (which is quite strenuous) I was ready to collapse. Also, the weather had been terrible: windy with black clouds everywhere. I was surprised it never rained on us! Finally at 6:30pm, I jugged out and set up our bivy on the rim. Clint showed up an hour later in complete darkness. Clint was having SO much fun cleaning that he just couldn't bear to quit! :)
After a cold dinner and some chatting, we settled in around 10pm. Clint feel asleep quickly, but for some reason I had a horrible night trying to sleep. This happens to me occasionally and it's very frustrating to stay up all night; I finally dosed off around 3am only to awaken to the sounds of a very strange skunk-like thing pawing through my food sack. I hung the food on a tree branch and slept in 10-minute spurts for the next four hours.
I felt horrible from lack of sleep, but it was time to get back to work. We would be rappelling down to the ground later this day, so I descended to the bottom of the fixed lines and deposited all my bivy gear and my big pack. I hung out on the ledge there seeing if maybe I would start feeling better; Clint was already at work, this time on pitch 3.
Gravel was raining down on me; each time it happened I would tuck my head in and use my helmet to protect myself. But one time I did this I suddenly heard a loud *crack* and my head jerked back hard. I screamed in pain. After a few minutes, the pain died down; without a helmet I would probably have been rescue-material. Over the course of the day, my neck got very stiff and began to really hurt. In spite of this, I jugged up and cleaned pitch 2 some more for about 4 hours. We then decided at 2pm to call it quits. I waited at the bottom of the fixed lines as Clint did some more cleaning, replaced some 6-year-old bleached slings, and pulled the ropes. The weather again was miserable, yet it rained only a little.
We hit the ground around 7pm and said our good-byes. The route needs about 6 more person-days of cleaning to be completed, I'd guess. It's had about 10 person-days put into it now, so we're more than half done; the exit pitch hasn't seen ANY attention yet.
I immediately went to the clinic and had my neck examined; they said whiplash and gave me a soft neck collar to wear. They asked me if I'd like to take a shower before I put it on... I thought to myself, "do I stink THAT bad??" But I gladly accepted the much-needed shower. Once I got into the bathroom I was shocked: my hair stood straight up, my face was BLACK with dirt except for the whites of my eyes, and all my teeth were outlined with thin black lines of dirt. No wonder they'd asked if I wanted a shower!
The neck collar looked atrocious, but it made my neck feel much better ....