June 10-11th 2006 - Valley with Durbs.
Hit up the valley with Durbs. Cragged Saturday at Sentinel Creek, where I clawed up Yin Yang after winning (losing) the ro-sham, then followed Dan up Manana - which after a mungy first 30ft turns into what must be one of the nicest cracks in the valley. We then napped in El Cap meadow for a little while, and then rode the TR on the slabs to the right of Pine Line for a little while.
Sunday we had a go at the North Buttress on Middle Cathedral, which Reid calls Grade V .10a. We found it to be more like IV .10c, with a fairly serious crux pitch and a lot of old school wandering and burly "moderate" pitches - but all in all a worthy outing.
Durbs following the classic early pitches:
Nice early morning view of a verdant El Cap meadow:
Durbs coming up somewhere around p5. We didn't have a watch, but it felt like the first 5 pitches went pretty quickly.
Durbs taking off on p8, where the route finding, fairly obvious to this point, got a little less straightforward. We found the Reid topo on the whole to be pretty useful, though, despite its abstract expressionist reputation.
Higher on the route, directly after the crux pitch . Clint had advertised this route as a "no wide climbing" affair, apparently contradicted by Dan's foot stacking:
Dan following the last hard pitch, a thin 5.9 slab with bolts from the late Cretaceous.
The top out is pretty cool, right on top of Thirsty Spire with killer views of the Captain and Ribbon Falls.
We eschewed the Kat Walk descent and instead simuled a long pitch to the top of Middle Cathedral proper, and walked our ass around Higher Cathedral and down the Spires trail/Gully. Not sure that this was the fastest way, but it was probably the mellowest, despite the obligatory manzanita hate-in.
