El Cap Report 05/28/07

ElCap Report 5/28/07

 By Tom Evans

Yo... This morning I came down the invisible lines from Heartbreak Hotel.   I slid down to man my station as the gate keeper at the gate of adventure.  Another great day here at the epicenter of the center of the climbing universe in Yosemite... lots to report today... big sends... big bails ... and of course big flails... so throw that rack back into he closet because your little vacation is now over and you have to rely on Ansel Evans for all your big wall vicarious thrills and I've got the dope right from the center of the ditch itself... from the nipple pitch that you just dream about hugging, to the triangular roof high on the Dihedral wall... here it comes... unfiltered, not spell checked or grammatically correct.... you have to figure out the botched parts.. a good mental workout so you won't get Old Timers disease like I have!!

Today's ElCap Report.....

 

Zodiac.. The two guys from yesterday did the Nipple pitch this morning/afternoon and made the mistake of sending the open ledge up on a tag line in a 30mph wind!! The bridge was packed with all the hot dog climbers and SAR guys with nothing to do but watch and make comments!! Everybody said.."WTF are those guys Doing”, as the thing took off like the China clipper and headed toward Lunar Eclipse alternately slamming against the rock and spinning around like a distressed kite!! But they had the situation in hand because they had a back line on it and it didn’t get totally wacked... two other parties are grubbing around the base, one doing the very punk so called "direct start" which IMO should be chopped and epoxied out of existence and the other doing the Classic start to the route.... I'm routing for the classic guys and hope the punks bail..

 

Trip... the two guys with the nice bags lurking on pitch three vanished into thin air over night.. but some tears were seen staining the bridge from their walk of shame in the dark... the other two are high on the route and I learned that one is the Big Southern guy from several days ago that makes solo Dave look like a chicken (Steven)... they are moving right along and may be off tomorrow late... got some nice cross lighting shots of them this morning from across from the pile...

 

PO Wall... Marc is well into the bearing straits now and I got some good shots of him too...

 

 SSPO:  Ragan, from Poland, but living in England, is crawling along but the route is super steep and a very big step up from his last wall Zodiac in the fall... so I have hope for the lad and think he will move faster with each advancing day... he better had or he will be a hungry man in a week or so!!

 

Mescalito... yes my man Ottawa Doug is getting the job done in fine style.. I have a radio and decided this was the morning to ring him up.. unfortunately I interrupted a purge so we rescheduled for 5 minutes later..... mmmm...... ok.... ready? Well he is feeling fine and has lots of food and water as he is doing 3 pitches each day instead of the 2 he was planning on...the man is gaining weight!! I had him pose for an arms over the head shot at the Bismarck ledge and watched him do the pitch above in late afternoon... He is a little short on the big cams so devised a plan to use large chunks of wood in their place and you could see them dangling from his rack as he rose up the feature... at the ending wide section he took one out and beat the hell out of it so it was like a rung on a ladder spanning the crack... he is of course sponsored by 84 lumber and home depot!!! Then he put in another of the 1934 style units and used it to pull the last moves to the ledge... I was ready with the camera as I was sure the damn thing would pull and send him wheeling off the pitch... but amazingly the things held and he was up!! I think he is going back to the big ledge to spend the rest of the day relaxing and the night too... did you catch those pics of him I put on the site today... sweet... he is taking orders for replicas of those green pants!!

 

New Dawn: My friends Ian Jewel (the vaguely resembling a shaved headed Robert Redford one... you know the guy) and Josh were seen in the vicinity of Lay Lady ledge this morning...... but they soon proceeded to bail and were down in good order... we were ready for the walk of shame to begin and had even engaged the Mariposa High School Band to provide the music so they could keep in step...but they threw us a curve ball and said they came down because Josh had to be at work tomorrow and they needed more time ...so they left 4 pitches fixed...and thus technically were not bailing... so I sent the band home on the bus but will keep an eye out to see if they sneak up there and take their ropes down in the middle of the night.

 

Nose:... check this out... there were two parties above camp 6 today... and that was it... really! Oh maybe some posers fixing a rope or two way down low but you know how that goes...

 

Muir: Rob and Justin were seen working on the traverse pitch after the stemming corner and made good progress with a couple small dings... later they were seen relaxing on the ledge going over to chicken head ledge..

 

Shield: MMMmmmmm...Well I was expecting to see DT show up on the shield roof today in the company of SEG ie.. (Someone else’s girlfriend)...but he didn’t show...maybe they made it to gray ledges last evening... so I was a bit anxious when I went down to the west side to see what was up... well it was 3pm and through my powerful scope I was able to discern their figures sitting on the ledge with no pitches fixed above them... mmmm ... must have needed a rest day after jugging 10 pitches up someone elses ropes... anyway DT was seen leading off on the next pitch at 4pm to I suppose fix a pitch before spending the night there...

 

El Corazon: TC and BR have not been visible for a while and I assume they are long gone from the route... anybody?

 

Salathe/ Free Rider:...Well the party of 4 I mentioned are slowly moving up the face in a manner reminiscent of the advance to Baghdad.. big loads are being hauled and the pitches are falling fast to the hands of JD who is the rope gun.. got some nice shots of the entire party on the top of the ear which was fully loaded... JD did a nice job on the crack above...you know the one that everyone doing so called "free ascents" avoids. They were seen checking in at the Alcove hotel as I left... higher on the route 3 Colorado climbers were big walling their way up the sewer pitch to the block... higher were a few more people at Sous Le Toit ledge pressing toward the headwall roof ... under which was spotted a certain Cedar and Nick about to go around the corner on Free rider which they soon did... I didn’t seen Stephan up there and assume he is off... anyone?

 

Dihedral... the party of two was at the triangular ledge atop pitch 16 this afternoon and will certainly meet the Bulgarian Flash and the Kentucky fried chicken sometime tomorrow on their push up the route. good luck guys...

 

In other news:   Well there it is .... another day on the greatest rock on the planet... the scene at the bridge was crowded with SAR heroes and local climbing luminaries who even consented to a picture... a slew of Colorado climbers were hanging in MY parking spot but moved up a few inches to allow me to slide in so I could commence operations in the photographic wars from my command post at the bridge...Piton Pete and his partner on the tower showed up and provided liquid refreshment. Many others came and went on another wonderful day well spent in the valley... the Rocking chair was busy as the word has spread that you can get 10 years back if you just rock in it for a few moments... but now the crowds are gone and I have packed away my photo stuff and I have dragged the rocker up the invisible fixed lines to Heartbreak Hotel... so until next time... remember .... where ever you may go... there you will be...

Later Dude... ECP's