ElCap Report 9/26/13

Submitted by Tom Evans on Fri, 09/27/2013 - 03:50

ElCap Reports from September 2013

ElCap Report 9/26/13
By Tom Evans

Yo… Sunny, windy, and cold on the Captain today. Lots of action, scattered around the cliff, in spite of the conditions. Saturday is forecast to be the start of warmer weather. I spent the shooting day in the EC Meadow shooting in windy and comfortable conditions. So drop what you are doing and come along, up to the big stone, where the puffy’s were out and the ropes blew east.

Today’s ElCap Report… written just for you..unique in all the world!

Zodiac: The three soloists turned into two as the ??? guy bailed after a night atop the second pitch. Andrew Barnes is laying back to let Mike Ierien fix and blast ahead of him.
1) Here we see Mike running the first two together this morning.

2) North American Wall: The two on the route climbed toward the 5th this afternoon. Like Warren Harding once said “when your poop bag looks better than you do….”

3) El Nino: The two climbers, Ben Lepesant and partner Jorg, climbed to the traverse after the Cyclopes Eye traverse. They will be off later tonight.

4) Sea of Dreams: The three man team, Simon Anthamattan, the Swiss climber who with his brother had some great seasons on ElCap a few years back, partners Markos and ????? climbed the third today and hauled some kit … maybe still fixing.
Jugging the line!

5) At the 3rd belay this afternoon.

6) Simon leading on the 4th pitch.

7) Nose: The Nose had a clusterfcuk lower down in the legs as the lead team bailed from a pitch below Dolt Tower. Here several teams converged and jammed as the afternoon wore on.

8) Erik Sloan and Roger Putnam climbed the Nose for the crew shooting high rez shots of ElCap. The crew has an 800mm canon big gun and shot the climb. I picked them up around Texas Flake.
Here is Roger doing a very stylish King Swing as Erik belays.

9) After that Roger lead through the Grey Bands…seen here doing the Lynn Hill squat.

They passed camp 5 where they saw Mash and Geoff Bindeman just lounging around like they had all the time in the world.
They topped out around 3pm.

10) 3D: The lower party from yesterday bivied at the ledge below and west of Camp 4. Here one of them is tending the belay.

11) Mash and Jeff left Camp 5 around 1pm and we see Mash hauling kit to the Glowering Spot while Geoff cleans gear.

Salathe: I spotted a deuce team climbing to the Hollow Flake this morning and it looked like they were going to stay there for the night.

12) Horse Play: I saw Pete climbing the big arch up to the traverse into the cool looking corner leading to the Truck Stop. Cool looking area.

13) Muir: Matt Farrell has been hauling kit for several days after climbing to Mammoth Terrace on the route. Here he is hauling his next to last load to the base of the cliff today.