On the Saturday morning of this Labor Day weekend, we drove out of the bay area and headed straight to the Rostrum. Recently, our friend had tried to remind us that there were other climbs in Yosemite. It's not that we had forgotten that; rather, the Rostrum had become a project of ours. It offers almost every element of challenges that a climb can offer, so we can use it to gauge our progress: how are we doing with hand crack, finger crack, lieback, and offwidth, and how is our endurance? As a result, this time when Erik did well leading every pitch clean from the ledge, we both felt happy. (We skipped the first three pitches because we arrived late, and plus, we had always done those pitches every time we got on the route this year.) I didn't do very well on the 11c crux pitch, but I did a little better on the rest of the route. Still, when we topped out, I was a little let down because I had expected to have done better, especially remembering that I managed to top rope that crux pitch clean twice last time we were on it. But I had to admit that I was not carrying anything on my harness when we cragged, while I had all kinds of extra weight, such as water and the big pieces needed later, on me when we aimed at topping out. That crux pitch remained my nemesis.
We did not have a plan what to do the next day. Partly, we just wanted to sleep in and relax -- in Erik's word, sit by the river and eat ice cream whole day. But part of me wanted to do something long. We had Monday off, so we would not need to be concerned about heading home early for next day's work. But what should that "something long" be?
It was Blaine who put Northeast Buttress of Higher Cathedral (NeBoHC) in my head last time we met him on the Rostrum. Last time I climbed it was almost five years ago (wow, time flies!) with Allen. It was epic. We progressed nicely on the climb until we came to a grinding hault after five pitches when we caught the party in front of us. It took them forever to do the seventh (crux) pitch when we watched from a big ledge. However, none of us had done the route before and when they assured us that the pitches above looked like cruisers, we pushed on behind them (impossible to pass up high without causing the other party great inconvenience). It turned out that the upper pitches were not cruisers as they had hoped after all, and eventually, Allen led the last pitch for them so they did not have to bivy in their harnesses 150' below the top as they had thought about doing. But by the time when we all topped out, it was dark. We ended up getting lost descending on the wrong side to the top of Bridalveil Fall, which I learned later is a fairly common mistake that climbers make, and had to shiver bivy the night. In the morning, exhausted, I stepped right through a yellow jacket nest and got stung by a dozen of the bees when they got trapped in my helmet and wind breaker. Man, it was epic! So, when Blaine brought it up, I found myself thinking it would be nice to get back on it and descend the route and get back to the car in light on the same day. The route is a gem in the valley, long, strenuous, and above all, of a modest grade, something that fits me now since I'm not feeling particularly strong these days. The idea got me excited. Blained says he will do it with me in the fall when it's cooler. Okay, it sounds good, but I want to do it now too!
However, every time I talked about it with Erik, he didn't sound very interested. He had done it a few times before, albeit years ago. He would prefer getting back on Kor-Beck to go to the top. Every description I have read makes the upper part of Kor-Beck sound unappealing, loose, dirty, and meandoring with lots of 4th class. Plus, the notorious kat walk at the top is not something I would seek out for. I guess, not having another long route we both wanted to climb also attributed to us keeping getting back on the Rostrum. Anyway, on Saturday night, when Erik muttered he would take me up NeBoHC, I appreciated his good intention. It was our anniversary weekend. He had been behaving exceptionally kind, from the cards, flowers, and chocolate on Friday, to this sacrifice he was willing to make. I thought about being a good wife and offering to follow him up Kor-Beck, but decided against it immediately. I set the alarm at 5:30am before we went to sleep.
I don't sleep well when I'm away from home, so, when the alarm went off, I didn't feel the urge to get up. Erik was grunting too. But after tossing for about half an hour, we decided that neither of us could fall back to sleep so we might as well get up and get on with the day. When we left the car with our packs on our back, it was 7:10am, not as early as I had liked for an epic route like NeBoHC, but I'd better take whatever life had to offer -- we weren't really getting any younger and friskier. One hour and fifteen minutes later, we were at the base. I must give Erik credit for his navigational skills because whether we were on the trail or not, he always maintained his cool and always managed to get us where we were headed. Oh, my heart sank a little when we heard voices coming from above on the route when we were still hiking up the talus field -- oh no, there was a party in front of us! But my heart immediately recovered its position when I rationalized that they would be way ahead of us since we were not at the route yet and it usually takes me forever to get ready. At the base, I dumped my pack, stretched, answered the nature's call, clipped my toe nails, and taped up. Seriously, it took me forever to get ready. What's a little disconcerting was the voices above us did not seem to pull away from us. Oh well, maybe it was just the acoustic effect -- they had to be moving up, right?
Finally, it was quarter after nine that Erik started leading. Last time on it, I led some pitches of the climb, but today, Erik was my rope gun. I was doing the best I could to help prepare him for climbing with his buddy Steve in mid-September. Also interested in our times on this climb, I started my watch in chronograph mode. I set a lap split every time Erik left a belay for the next pitch. Shocked, we caught up with the party in front of us at the second belay. They were two nice fella from San Diego, Phil and Bart. They kindly let us climb by them with some careful maneuvering from both parties. Luckily, that was still a possibility on the lower pitches. They started arriving at the ledge for the 5th belay when Erik was already leading away the seventh pitch. The sixth belay is, to most people, the point of commitment -- you just have to keep going once you go beyond it unless you are willing to leave your expensive gear behind. As soon as I pulled over the roof on the seventh pitch right above the slick groove, I could no longer see them, at that time, Phil was leading up to the sixth belay.
Despite various options available for the last few pitches as suggested on the internet (I only read about those afterward), the route we did was what Supertopo had laid out. To me, it seemed the most straightforward way. However, this variation means there is either chimney or offwidth, or both, on every pitch above the sixth belay. Having done some other variation before, and not remembering the route very well, Erik was surprised by how much wide stuff there was on this climb. I remember on our way driving back to Ron and Liz's B&B, I asked Erik if he had a pen in our room and he asked me what for. "Oh, I wanted to mark my topo." "Are you going to write wide, wide, wide, and wide?" His remark made me chuckle for a while, but I realized there was some truth to it. I just wanted the pen to write down our split times and some comments about the belay stations for future beta purposes.
The climb took us a little over seven hours. Having plenty of day light, we took our time hiking down the (correct) gully back to the base, eating, packing up, and hiking down the talus field back to the car (exactly twelve hours car-to-car). The progress of Phil and Bart kept coming up in our conversations. We were a bit concerned about them and were grateful that they let us pass. While we were hiking down the talus field with our packs, we stopped to check on them whenever we had a line of sight. Erik found a little compact telescope on the hike and it became very useful when we tried to make out where they were and what they were doing up there. Last time we saw them, Phil was belaying Bart up Pitch 8 (Supertopo). Phil was inside the chimney and we could see his arm from time to time. We could hear Bart cursing and laughing (often almost in the same breath). It did not look like they would make it before dark. We hoped that they had head lamps with them and hoped that they found their way down safely. It would not be a comfortable night, but they would have an incredible tale to tell afterward. "Be safe up there," I said a silent prayer before turning around the corning and loosing sight of them.
