Our fan club

As I cruised up the summit overhang, a crowd of tourists gathered around the Reites in the meadows. My radio chattered non-stop as Aaron and his parents relayed their equal joy over our success. I reached the end of the final bolt ladder, and carefully stepped free of my aiders to climb the final slabs to the finish. The rope drag was pretty bad, and the first free move seemed tenuous after having aided the whole pitch, but the rest was easy. I soon clipped the final anchors and radioed a triumphant message: “Aaron, I am at the summit. You can take me off belay.”

I took a moment to enjoy my first Yosemite Valley sunset (they're not visible when you're down in the valley). I wished I had my camera, so I radioed down to Aaron and his parents to get a picture of it. They took photos, but of course, none of them could see it, certainly not as I could.

As Aaron got ready to follow the pitch, I quickly started hauling the pigs, expecting to encounter difficulty where the pigs had to go around the lip of the overhang. Fortunately, because the pigs were so light, this turned out to be no problem at all, and I had the pigs all the way up well before Aaron arrived. His mom called up, “Hey, did you guys see that BASE jumper?” I quickly turned around and looked down, just in time to see a tiny dot moving across the east side of the meadow. Cool.

At one point, a different female voice came across the radio and said something in German. The only words I made out were “der swinem”, which I guessed must have been something about the pig. Apparently it was a German tourist, one of our “fans” in the meadows. I still have no idea what she said, but according to Aaron's mom, she wanted to offer a little advice about how to handle our swine.

While jugging up the pitch, Aaron paused at one point, hanging in mid air just below the lip of one of the overhangs. While soaking in the beauty of it all, he radioed down to his parents to describe the beauty, the exposure, his emotions. His words nearly brought tears to my eyes.

When he arrived at the anchor, it was dark, and we both had our headlamps on. We were still not on completely horizontal ground, so I quickly scrambled up to the summit tree, a large juniper, and made an anchor of it with a large loop of webbing. Aaron helped me drag the pigs and the rest of our gear up to it. Finally, we stood on the summit.