Our bivy on El Cap Towers

By the time Aaron and the pigs had reached El Cap Towers, it was getting pretty late. We really wanted to lead at least one more pitch and leave a fixed line in place, so that we could get a jumpstart on the following day. After taking a few minutes to organize things, Aaron took the lead, and started up towards Texas Flake, a huge feature that is easily visible from the ground. By the time he had reached the base of the flake, it was already dark.

The only way to climb Texas Flake is to free climb up behind it, chimneying up in the foot-and-a-half wide gap between the flake and the main part of the wall. It can't be aided. At 5.8, this is the hardest mandatory free climbing on the whole route, and it has no real opportunities for protection other than a single bolt about two thirds of the way up. Aaron grunted up the chimney, and before long he reached the top of Texas Flake. I jugged up and cleaned the pitch, and we both rappelled back down to El Cap Towers.

Aaron rapped first, and by the time I got down to the ledge, he had already started to string up the haul line along the whole length of the ledge, using several of the available bolts. This functioned as a sort of hand-rail for us, allowing us to easily remain clipped in as we walked along the ledge, and it gave us an excellent way to clip in all of our gear without having everthing piled up in one big jumbled mess. (You can see this pretty well in the photo. Notice the MRE packages, our gear neatly strung up everywhere, and Pooky hanging out with a water bottle.) After organizing things, we put on some music using Aaron's MP3 player and a pair of portable speakers, ate a nice dinner of MREs, and Aaron doctored up his toe and his thumb again. We also made some phone calls, since we had a little bit of cell phone reception. Aaron called his wife, and I called my mom. (She had already, in a state of near panic, called Aaron's wife, who then called Aaron's mom, who called her back and allayed her fears.) Soon Aaron and I were ready for bed, so we unrolled our sleeping bags, and hit the hay. I tried to set an alarm on my watch, but it didn't go off, so we ended up oversleeping by a little bit.