The end of the trail

As we approached the end of the trail and the parking lot for the Manure Pile Buttress picnic area, we radioed ahead repeatedly to Aaron's parents to keep them informed of our progress. Aaron's mom was so excited to see us that she ran up the trail a little ways to meet us. Altogether, the descent had taken us about three and a half hours.

At the edge of the parking lot, we passed a guy, apparently a climber from back in the day, who asked us what route we had just done. “The Nose,” we replied, almost in unison.

“Awesome,” he said, “I tried to do that route twenty years ago, but didn't get any higher than the stovelegs. Congratulations!”

We thanked him and continued across the parking lot, to where Aaron's parents had parked my Jimmy. There were several tourists around, having lunch at the picnic tables, and a lot of them seemed to be looking at us like we were exotic wildlife. I guess to them, we were. It felt weird to be in the presence of so many people again (especially with all our gear on and the massive pigs on our backs), and it really felt weird to have so many eyes on us. I guess that we'd had a lot of eyes on us at various points on the wall too, but we hadn't really known it.