Half Dome, Day 3

Chapter 5 - The Other Middle Bits

Well, so much for doing the route in three days.

Remember the route name? Let me refresh - Regular NorthWest Face. No morning sun for you, jocko. I have taken to sleeping with my Clif Bars in the chest pocket of my shirt so that they are not too cold and hard to eat in the morning. I hate mornings. Especially when they start one hour before dawn. Andrew has decreed that we need to get an earlier start today, cuz we have a ways to go. Grumble, grumble. grumble.

Here is a good place to discuss "big wall funky". Almost every big waller I have talked to personally, has had an episode of big wall funky. Call it nerves, or fright, or just overload; it happens when the wall is just too much. Some get manic and laugh out loud. Me, I want down. This is what I woke to on day two. I am cold, tired, and intimidated by the exposure. I would have given $100 to get down immediately. But, at this point it really was easier to go up than down. Reversing the previous day's traversing would have been ugly. So I immerse myself in minutiae of getting up and getting going while 1000 feet in the air. Packing the haul bag, sorting gear, not dropping the water bottle, eating, shitting, breathing.

Up into the chimneys with us. It is not really very hard climbing, but Andrew does heroic work on pitch 14 (photo). The traffic starts to jam up in the chimneys. Aaron and Evan (photo) catch up with us. A Colorado party passes us below Double Crack. And Dean Potter and Jose Pereyra pass us on their way to the top in 4 hours. After Half Dome, Dean races over to El Capitan to do FreeRider; and succeeds in the first free linkup of both routes in less than 24 hours.

Today was a long day for us, what with traffic and all, so I barely make it down from fixing the first Zig Zag before it gets dark (photo). No Dinty Moore stew tonite! Just granola bars, Clif Bars and some stuff we traded Aaron and Evan for some of our water. Oh yeah, we do have the heaviest haul bag of anybody on the wall that week.

Big Sandy Ledge. None of the above. It is neither big, nor sandy, nor a ledge. It is instead a terraced group of shattered flakes, typical of the upper part of the dome. I was really expecting it to be more like Dinner Ledge on Washington Column, spacious and flat. Nope! But, it is home for the evening and frankly better accommodations than the previous two nights. And because of the previous days rain storms, suprisingly odor free!

Half Dome, Day 3