The Nose, VI 5.10 C1+

On Sunday morning, September 4th, 2005, after spending nearly a week organizing gear, packing and re-packing our haul bags, and finally loading everything into my GMC Jimmy, Aaron and I hopped into the car and headed to Yosemite. We didn't leave too early, as we didn't plan on doing any climbing that day, but we were nonetheless a bit dismayed when we arrived at the back of a long line of cars outside the south entrance of the park. We had expected crowds in the park, as it was Labor Day weekend. We were just hoping that there wouldn't be crowds on the route we intended to climb, The Nose, one of the most popular climbs in the park, and in fact, in the world. After a solid hour of waiting in traffic, we finally found ourselves inside Yosemite National Park, heading toward the valley.

I remembered having done the same drive with Aaron almost exactly a year before, and the shock of coming around a bend in the road to see my first view of the valley, with its giant stone walls on either side. Though I had seen many pictures before, I was still left speechless, in awe of the sight. This year, I figured that the shock would be less, but I was wrong; it was just a different kind of shock. This time, when we came around that same bend, and then drove through the Wawona Tunnel, my first thought was, “Whoa.. there it is... that's what we're going to climb.” As if echoing my own thoughts, Aaron exclaimed, “Holy Shit! We're gonna climb that?!”

I continued driving, concentrating hard on the road so as not to be too distracted by the giant granite beast that was the object of our trip. As the park was packed with tourists, we progressed slowly down into the valley, until we finally found ourselves in the shadows of Leaning Tower and the Cathedral Rocks. But we didn't stop to sight-see or gawk. We knew without even discussing it where we needed to go. Our first priority was to examine our route. We continued along the one-way road, past Bridalveil falls, past Middle Cathedral, past The Sentinel, turned left and glanced up at Half Dome as we crossed the Merced River, turned left again at Yosemite Village to take us past Yosemite Lodge and Camp 4, until we finally arrived at the northern edge of El Cap Meadows. I pulled over and parked, and we got out and retrieved a pair of binoculars and a folder full of topos, trip reports, and route descriptions from the back. We casually walked out into the meadows, and checked out the route that had been the object of a year-long obsession for me (and a much longer obsession for Aaron.)

On the lower part of the route, we spied what appeared to be a party of three on Sickle Ledge. Higher up, there was another party near the top of Dolt Tower. There appeared to be only one set of fixed lines hanging from Sickle Ledge. All of this sounded pretty good: the route wasn't too crowded. And this was right in the middle of a holiday weekend, whereas we would be doing most of our climbing in the middle of the week, when it should be even less crowded.

(Note: This photo is a panorama, stitched together from two photos, which I actually took during my trip to Yosemite in 2004, a year earlier. The red line is a pretty accurate indication of the route that we climbed.)