Rest Day

Tuesday morning, we slept in a little. The housekeeping camp was nearly deserted now, since the Labor Day weekend traffic had all gone home, so we were able to get a much better night's sleep. I didn't know it at the time, but Aaron didn't sleep so well. He was worried about the climb, about his injured pinky toe, about a new cut he had somehow gotten on the pad of his thumb, and most of all about the hauling. When we woke up, we had a nice big breakfast, courtesy of Aaron's mom and dad.

As I ate, Aaron pored over a stack of topos and trip reports, going over every inch of the climb for the millionth time. He related some of his concerns to me, and I agreed that to improve the hauling, we either needed to get a swivel, or bring a dedicated lower-out line. We had to do something to prevent the pigs from tangling up the haul line so badly when we lowered them out. On the one hand, a lower-out line was a simple solution, because we had extra ropes. But it was another couple of pounds to carry, and a third rope would probably just add to the chaos at each belay. Having to deal with two ropes would turn out to be messy enough. On the other hand, a swivel, which would allow the haul bags to spin without twisting the haul line, was an expensive and specialized piece of gear that we would never use except on a big wall. We had to stop at the Yosemite Mountain Shop anyway, to pick up a stopper to replace the one that we left behind on pitch 3 the previous day. While we were there, we took a look at the Petzl Swivel, and decided it would be really helpful. Aaron's dad even offered to buy it for us, and that sealed the deal. I am eternally grateful to Aaron's parents not only for their gracious hospitality and generosity in providing food and a free place to stay while we were on the ground, and for their untiring attention while we were climbing, but also for this one specific gift. That swivel was a life-saver.

Other than that small shopping trip, we spent most of Tuesday being tourists. We drove up to Glacier Point and enjoyed the view, but did very little hiking, since this was supposed to be our rest day. On the way back, Aaron started feeling sick. He had a bad headache, and his stomach started to bother him. It may have just been nerves, pre-climb jitters, but whatever the case, I was getting a little worried about him. His motivation seemed high as usual (despite the concerns he had voiced), but physically, he seemed to be falling apart. Between the pinky toe, which now seemed to be slightly infected, the mysterious cut on his thumb, which was painful as hell but didn't bleed, and now this, he didn't seem to be in any shape to climb. When we got back to camp, he took two Excedrin, and soon started to feel better. He and his dad doctored up his thumb and his toe again, and they loaded up my little first aid kit with half a pound of extra first aid supplies: iodine and extra gauze for his cuts (I had Neosporin, but he's allergic to that), ibuprofen, Excedrin, and Immodium, sleeping pills in case we couldn't sleep well on the wall, and some magic little pills called Provigil in case we needed to pull an emergency all-nighter for some reason.

Knowing his tendency to not sleep well (if at all) the night before a big climb, Aaron took a sleeping pill that night before bed. I generally try to avoid drugs of any kind unless they're really necessary, so I was a little uneasy about my climbing partner being all drugged up for our first day of climbing, and about our carrying so many drugs on the climb. But the next day, Aaron felt fine, and other than re-bandaging his toe and thumb each morning and each night, and taking half a sleeping pill each night on the wall, he had little need for any of the other first aid supplies.