Galactic Hitchhiker Attempt

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I’ve done a lot of climbing in Yosemite. Sure, nothing like the true masters and at an average level, but I’ve done most of the major structures: El Cap, Half Dome, Glacier Point, Leaning Tower, Sentinel Rock, Yosemite Point Buttress, Lost Arrow Spire, all three Cathedral Rocks, both Cathedral Spires, Royal Arches, Washington Column, Arrowhead Arete, etc. While I haven’t done a real route on Mt. Broderick or Liberty Cap, I’ve been to both summits. The biggest walls I haven’t done are Mt. Watkins and Glacier Point. Hence, these were the main focus for this trip with Derek.

I love climbing with Derek. Every father I know is jealous that my main climbing partner is my son. I know it is a rare situation and, possibly, but not definitely, a fleeting one. So, I try to maximize it. Derek has become a very strong gym climbing — he sent his first 5.13 this past gym season (gym season for us is November through April, when it is difficult to climb outside before work). But trad climbing is different. There are so many decisions to make. You are constantly doing risk analysis of the likelihood of falling, the quality of the gear, the obstacles to hit if you fall, etc. Route-finding is a non-trivial aspect of the longer routes, as is setting a bomber belay from trad gear. Derek knows all this and knows his inexperience here limits his safety and thus his opportunities to take the sharp end. This has never been a problem for me, to do all the leading, but, now, as our objectives get longer and tougher, it seems to be a burden that is tougher for me to carry.

Last year, the day we arrived in the Valley was the day Alex Honnold free soloed Free Rider (12d) on El Cap. A feat of such proportions that it might not be equaled in my lifetime (and I plan to live for a long time). We viewed it as a good omen for a great trip and we did have a very successful visit. This year, three days before we arrived in the Valley, Honnold and Tommy Caldwell broke the speed record on the Nose (2:10:15). The day we attempted this climb, they lowered it to 2:01:50. What might have been another good omen for us was massively blotted out by the horrific and tragic death of our friend Jason Wells. He, along with two other partners, were doing a quick ascent of the Salathe Wall — the longest route on El Cap — something Jason and partner Tim had done many times before. Their third climber, Kevin, was jugging the Half Dollar (pitch 8) on a short-fixed rope, while Jason and Tim were simul-climbing pitches 9 and 10 on a second rope. Something caused one of them to fall and, if there was any gear between them, it ripped out of the rock. The line Tim was trailing, the one short-fixed to the anchor atop pitch 8, was just clipped to a gear loop, which is a common practice when dragging up a line that you are not climbing on. The gear loop failed, as it is not designed to catch a fall, and both Jason and Tim went 1000 feet to the ground. Kevin heard and saw them fall by, knowing in an instant that they were both dead and possibly himself as well. A moment later he knew he wouldn’t be falling to the ground. He was able to join with a following party and, with their help, eventually get safely back down.

I love rock climbing and part of that appeal, somewhat, is the risk involved. It isn’t that I want to risk my life, though. It’s that climbing requires a lot of skills and judgement so that you aren’t risking your life, though you appear to be doing so to non-climbers. Climbing gets me to outrageous, unnatural places. When you are a thousand-feet up El Cap, you know deep in your gut that humans are not meant to be there. That I am not meant to be there. Many of the top El Cap climbers seem to be completely comfortable up there, as their skills are so great that they can extract themselves from that wall relatively quickly and easily. It’s different for the rest of us. We can’t extract ourselves quickly. We are very committed, very exposed, and it’s stressful. It isn’t like you can easily retreat at any time. Many of the routes have traverses in them, making it difficult to reverse your route. Rappelling means untying from the rope, an act that never seems to have zero stress, at least until you are standing on the ground. So, why climb? Why seek such stress and difficulty and danger? To see if you can conquer the stress and difficulty and have the skills to minimize the danger? “Conquer” is the wrong word, at least for me. I’m seeing if I can “handle” the stress and difficulty. When you succeed, the feeling is great. One can get a smaller dose of this feeling by staying comfortably below your limits. Of course, then you won’t know exactly what your limits are…

But free soloing El Cap and speed climbing up it are significant jumps in danger. Free soloing El Cap is so ridiculously dangerous that its only been done once. It’s a risk-reward equation that just doesn’t make sense to every single person on the planet Earth, except Alex Honnold. And more so now that it’s been done. The reward to be first at this is substantial. Honnold will likely be able to live the rest of his life on the basis of that achievement. He’s now the most famous climber in the world, by a large margin. Most elite climbing is too esoteric for the non-climber to appreciate. Watching elite climbers working a 5.15 on a rope would grab a non-climber’s interest for only a moment or two. But seeing something in the middle of a 3000-foot vertical wall is so beyond anyone’s (including all climbers) frame of reference that it captivates you. How can this be? I don’t know how he got there, but he will surely die now, we all think. Climbing Free Rider without falling or weighting a rope in any way is rare, even for the best climbers in the world. In fact, besides Honnold, I don’t know if it’s been done. This is because many of the pitches on this route don’t end at ledges where one can drop both hands. Even Yuji Hirayama who was the first (and still only?) person to climb the Salathe Wall (nearly identical to Free Rider, but with a crux 230-foot overhanging 5.13b headwall pitch) “ledge-to-ledge”, almost certainly weighted the rope at some of the slab belays on the lower portion of the route. It’s pretty much impossible not to weight the rope when climbing this route because the rope isn’t long enough to reach between hands-off ledges. So, Alex is the first ever to climb El Cap and not weight any gear. Even now, with a year to process what he’s done, it makes me sick to my stomach to even think about it. It makes everyone’s stomach turn. Except Alex.

So, we can dismiss free soloing, but what of speed climbing? I’m a practitioner of speed climbing myself. By that I mean, I have used some of the techniques of speed climbing, not that I’m threatening any records. The two main techniques of speed climbing are simul-climbing and short-fixing and Jason’s team was doing both simultaneously because they had three climbers. While Jason had blazed up the Salathe with three climbers before, doing a speed ascent with three is pretty rare, despite the first-ever speed-ascent of the Nose being a team of three. A third climber jugging a fixed line doesn’t slow down an aid-climbing team because jugging is faster than aid climbing. It’s faster than difficult free climbing too, but slower than easy free climbing. The Salathe has very little easy free climbing, so it was a reasonable strategy.

Simul-climbing is dangerous. But so is climbing. Just that simul-climbing is more dangerous. If either climber falls, both climbers will fall. If the bottom climber falls without a progress-capture device between the climbers, it could easily kill the top climber. The reason for this is that the top climber would be pulled down directly to the last piece of protection and hit it. There would be no stretch of the rope to lessen this impact. Either the sudden stop would kill the climber, if the fall was greater than thirty feet or more, or the force would cause the piece of protection to fail, thereby causing both climbers to fall the additional distance down to the next piece, if there is one…

Most of the time when simul-climbing the general rule is to have three pieces of gear between the climbers, but it is broken occasionally. When broken the risks go up proportionally. Why simul-climb if a fall by the second will kill the lead climber? How is this safer than soloing? If the second climber is a better climber than the first climber, then it is safer than soloing. Because you can switch, quickly, to conventional climbing, it is safer than soloing. If the second climber never falls, simul-climbing is very close to regular climbing for the leader, only that he is climbing on a virtual 500-foot rope without the 500 feet of rope drag, which would prevent any upward movement at all. In fact, many speed ascents specifically use a short rope to minimize this drag. This is only relevant to specific attempts at speed, as it would not be used on a more conventional climb where simul-climbing was just during one easier section of the route.

One of the key innovations to making simul-climbing safer is the PCD or progress-capture device. This is clipped to a bomber piece of gear, frequently a fixed belay station, by the leader and it allows the rope to go up, but not down. This way if the second falls their weight comes onto the PCD and not onto the leader.

One of the key aspects making simul-climbing less safe is the distance between gear placements. Why is this different from regular climbing? It need not be if only doing a little simul-climbing or a couple of pitches of simul-climbing on easier ground, but if you are trying to link many pitches runouts are necessary or you’ll have to climb with a much larger rack. A much larger rack is heavy, which slows down the climber and somewhat defeats the purpose of simul-climbing, at least for speed. Big runouts are dangerous whether simul-climbing or traditionally leading. A fall fifty feet out from your last placement is deathly serious unless the entire climb is overhanging. If not, you’re going to hit something. Hard. I have personal experience with this.

Years ago I was simul-climbing with my good friend Tom Karpeichik. We were trying to get in 100 pitches of Eldo climbing in a single day and to do that we were simul-climbing every route as a single pitch. Tom was leading up the 7-pitch Redguard Route (5.8) and fifty feet above his last piece when a hold broke and he fell. Simul-climbing below him, I heard him scream and looked up to see him plummeting towards me. I had time to notice the two pieces of gear between us, the closest one to me twenty feet above me. I thought, “We’re dead.” But the system worked. The top piece caught and held us both. I was pulled upwards and stopped just short of the piece above me. Tom was unconscious and had a serious head injury, but after months, made a full recovery. We had to be rescued, one of us was not functional and we only had a 100-foot rope. If I had fallen, it would have been much worse for Tom and me too, as we didn’t have a PCD between us.

Back to Jason and his 3-person speed ascent. They weren’t using speed techniques to try for any record or even any personal best. They were using them because they are required to climb  El Cap in a single day. It’s a rather large cliff. Climbing El Cap in a day is a very different experience than climbing it over several days. In one day, it is just climbing. In several days it is camping and hauling and some climbing as well. They just wanted to climb, so speed techniques were the only way to go. But they missed a chance to add additional security by virtue of the third climber and the extra rope. If Tim had tied his trailing rope into his tie-in loop instead of the gear loop, they’d have had the advantage of always being clipping into a fixed anchor while still simul-climbing. This comes at almost no cost (it is a bit less convenient to have the rope tied in front versus in back). It might not have saved their lives because they still would have fallen a long way and likely bounced off the wall a number of times, but they wouldn't have gone all the way to the ground. I think this technique should always be used when speed climbing as a team of three.

Not surprisingly, I thought a lot about Jason and this accident while in Yosemite. It made me more adverse to risk. This isn’t a bad thing. I didn’t become paralyzed with fear and stop climbing altogether, but it made me hyper aware of risk. But, as you’ll see, it didn’t make me less lazy or smarter.

Galactic Hitchhiker is a 39-pitch route and ascends from the Valley floor to Glacier Point, 3000 feet above. It is at a much gentler angle than El Cap, with plenty of low-angle slab climbing. The appeal of this route was the length and the rating. At 5.11b all free of 5.10a with aid, it seemed right in range to be able to move quickly. Despite it’s length, we read that most parties ascend it in 8-12 hours. We knew it would be a long, hard, hot day and brought 100 ounces of liquid each. In order to save some weight we decided to do this route with a single 60-meter, 8mm line. With only one line retreat would be difficult, but we were confident. Over confident, as it would turn out.


We had scoped out the first three pitches on our first day in the Valley, to find the start and to stretch our legs after a long day of traveling. So, Derek led off at 5:56 a.m. and linked the first two pitches (5.5 climbing). I led the familiar third pitch and Derek followed. On the topo the fourth pitch is marked as the “psychological crux” for the runout 5.8 slab climbing. Crux of what? I wondered. Certainly not of GH. The first eight pitches of GH is an older route called the Goodrich Pinnacle and it has some scarier, more runout climbing further up. Nevertheless, I moved up this rather long pitch pretty well, trying not to pause too long on the holdless slab for fear that I’d freeze up. Our confidence was high at this point, though it would immediately change.

The next pitch is 5.9 and started with a traverse nearly straight right for more than thirty feet and gained probably fifteen feet with no protection at all. After this stretch there are two bolts right next to each other and the route then goes straight up for fifteen or twenty more feet without any gear to a two-bolt belay. So the entire pitch has one piece of protection. I started across thinking it would be pretty easy to get to the first bolts, but went too low and stalled out on a polished, very slick, holdless slab. With nothing to grasp and no confidence that my feet would stay put, my stress level started a slow, steady rise. I climbed myself into a dead end and didn’t even think I could down climb out of it. I told Derek that I was coming off and he readied himself to try and pull in some rope. I was at least twenty feet out from the belay and looking at a sliding fall across the slab to end up well below the belay. I tried to step down and had it for a second and then my foot slipped and I fell. But stopped, miraculously, two feet down. How that happened I don’t really know. I guess I hit some rock that was less polished and I was still in my climbing stance with my soles against the slab. Yikes.

I climbed back a bit and then climbed up higher, trying for a different path across the face. A difficult, tenuous move got me to the next tier and now, further out, I tried the traverse from higher up. Here there were no holds as well, but I was able to scoot along a lower angle ramp until it ran out and I had to step across a wide slick section. I made it and clipped the bolt with great relief. The topo called the section above 5.9, but I was now right next to a bolt and didn’t fear a short fall. I found some micro edges to pull on, things just a couple of millimeters wide, smeared my feet and gained the belay. Derek followed across to the bolts with the same stress, as the hard move was way sideways from the two bolts. He slipped off the crux slab moves above the bolt, but soon arrived at the belay.

The next pitch, our sixth, was rated 5.9 as well. The 5.9 climbing is protected by three closely-spaced bolts and then absolutely nothing for seventy feet as it traverses back to the left and up. The climbing on this runout is pretty easy (5.7 is the rating, but probably easier) except for the start, which is still 5.9. I clipped the first bolt and tried to climb to the second bolt. Just as I got there, only three feet away, I slipped and slid down the slab. The climbing here is pure friction and I couldn’t get my feet to stick on the glacier polish. We had so many pitches to do and I decided to just grab and bolts and move on. They were close enough together where I could do this. From the third bolt I had to traverse left and a bit down. I did this, though I think some tension on the rope from Derek aided in my progress. Once seven feet left, the climbing eased and I moved quickly up the rest of the pitch to a bolted belay.

Derek didn’t even try to free the section protected by the bolts and grabbed the draws. But now he faced a more stressful situation than I did. He had to do these moves while looking at a rather large pendulum to the left. The fact that I wasn’t able to clip anything at all from there to belay, made the rope run upwards more than sideways, so the speed of the potential-pendulum fall wouldn’t be great, but he would probably go thirty feet sideways. He went back and forth on this numerous times, trying to find a solid way to make this move and thinking all the time about the fall potential. He eventually said, “I’m going to swing over.” He didn’t mean he was going to voluntarily come off, but knew it was highly likely and he wanted me to be ready (I was watching him like a father) and, I think, to ready his mind for what was about to happen. Then he made the move, didn’t slip and proceeded to finish it off without falling.

By tacit agreement I knew I’d be doing the rest of the leading and I linked the next two pitches (5.7 and 5.6) to the top of the Goodrich Pinnacle, which is sort of a spire plastered onto this slab of Glacier Point Apron. We didn’t pause long here. We had a long way to go. Eight pitches down, 31 to go.

I linked the next two pitches, a 5.9 and a 5.10a. These seemed a bit easier and less scary and I moved up there at a reasonable pace. Derek had to unclip from the belay and step off the pillar to give me enough rope to clip in, but he didn’t have to really simul-climb at all. Derek followed cleanly and here the climbing got more confusing.

The next pitch was supposed to be a thin 5.8 crack right above the belay. Indeed a seam stretched up and across to the right above us. I made some desperate move to get up high enough to try and get in a micro-cam, but it wouldn’t hold. I fell/slid back down to the ledge with Derek pushing me into the wall to control my fall. That wasn’t it. Instead I traversed about ten feet right to a crack in a small left-facing dihedral. It wasn’t particularly thin, but seemed around 5.8. Then I did a short easy pitch up to another good ledge and another bolted belay.

Next was supposed to be 10a pitch spanning “the gap.” Instead I went a bit left and climbed up a long left-facing, clean, dihedral ramp thing (probably 5.6 or 5.7) for nearly a rope-length before pulling out of it to the right at a 3-bolt belay. I think our topo was describing climbing to my right. Top of the 13th pitch. Next was a 5.10b thin crack, but I avoided it by climbing corners to the left. I ran out most of the rope and didn’t find a fixed belay. I set up a gear belay and brought Derek up. Another moderate pitch and I arrived at a pretty flat, sandy ledge below the Olympic Headwall, where things got a lot steeper. This ledge was just left of the Oasis, a bivy/water source.

The wall above looked dismal. It was soaked and very steep. It wasn’t clear where the route went and it all looked scary. The start of pitch 17 was obvious, though - three bolts leading straight up on 5.9 edges. The belay was supposed to be straight above them, but it wasn’t. I climbed a bit higher and trended to the left on easy ground before spotting the belay below me and twenty feet left from the bolts. I downclimbed a bit and then scooted over to the belay. The pitch was short and so I kept climbing, intending to link in the next 5.10 pitch. Nothing really matched our topo, which was really bad, but I followed the line of least resistance.

I climbed up a corner, supposed 5.9 but seemed easier and continued up to a bolt below a small roof. I clipped the bolt and bypassed the roof via moderate but exposed climbing. I moved up a bit to a small steep corner with minimal edges and was stymied. I placed the 0.3 cam, the one we found rapping off El Capitan, in a marginal placement with three solid cams and tried to move upwards without any luck. I backed down and put in a large stopper right next to the cam and it seemed solid. I tried again, but couldn’t quite reach what I hoped was a good hold. I backed down again. Way out on my 8mm lead line, on the 17th pitch, I was concerned. My hopes of completing the route had started to dim when I couldn’t do the 5.9 friction on pitch 6. I knew runout 5.10 climbing was above and was hoping it was more face climbing than friction climbing. I thought about retreating, leaving both the cam and the stopper and lowering off. I didn’t want to let Derek down, but I knew I wouldn’t be. He knew we were a team and no one person let the other person down. We would succeed or fail together. Yet, I wanted to give my best effort to complete the climb. I clipped a sling into the stopper and stepped in it. I still couldn’t reach the good hold but I had plenty of time to grab the tiny edges I needed and place my right foot, the one not in the sling, on a small edge. Then I committed, cranked up on my arms, and hit the hold. It was good and I moved upwards on easy, but steep, unprotected ground for fifteen feet. Here I placed a .5 cam and struggled to find the belay. There were suppose to be three pitons. I didn’t seen anything. I moved up another ten feet of easy climbing and placed a bomber #2 Camalot, but there was no other protection to be had.

I scanned for the belay without any luck. I thought I could belay from the single #2 Camalot, but wasn’t thrilled with the idea. It wasn’t a hanging belay, but it was a tiny stance. The climbing above is what made up my mind. I saw no gear for thirty feet and the climbing, while not continuous was steep friction above a low angle ramp, which was just above me.That had to be the 10a climbing. Doing that climbing and risking a 50+ foot fall onto a single Camalot belay anchor was too much for me to risk. Even if Derek was at a bomber belay and my last piece of protection was a bolt above that belay, I wouldn’t have taken the risk on 10a friction. It was over the line for me and my abilities. I wrestled with the decision for quite awhile, trying to see some easier way past the ground above. Scanning the near vertical walls in either direction without luck. I tried to talk to Derek about it, but the wind was blowing so strong that we couldn’t communicate very well. I basically wanted him to agree with me and tell me to come down. I wanted confirmation that it was the wise choice and I wasn’t just a chicken. It’s funny, but some of my self worth is tied to being brave and leading the scary pitches and keeping calm in dire situations. Because of that I wrestled more with this decision than was necessary. It would be stupid for a climber of my age and ability to take such a risk against his gut this high up on a wall that is already going to be exceedingly difficult to descend. Actually, the difficulty of the descent also had me trying to push things as far as I could. I rued not taking a second rope. Our commitment had been complete.

In making my decision Jason’s accident weighed heavy on my mind. I was definitely thinking about not taking too much risk. We wanted to have a grand adventure and push ourselves, but not to the point of recklessness.

I made my decision and got it communicated to Derek, who said OK without hesitation and in full support. Now how was I to get back down? I was 60-meters out from from his belay with no second rope, over a thousand feet up this wall. I pulled the #2 Camalot and descended back to my 0.5 cam, thinking I could maybe find another placement or at least a less expensive piece to leave. Once back at the 0.5 cam, I noticed one old pin driven to the hilt almost next to my cam. Derek suggested that he untie from the rope, have me pull it up and rappel down to the belay at the top of the 5.9 pitch. I didn’t like that idea. I didn’t want us to be unbound. If my anchor pulled I’d go to the ground and Derek would be stranded without a rope. I wanted him to lower me, but in order to do that we needed more rope. He’d need to climb the 5.9 pitch.

Derek climbed up to the belay at the top of the 5.9 pitch and put me back on belay. I pulled the 0.5 cam and left a biner on the pin and lowered from that. The pin was placed so that it would be nearly impossible to pull out and the metal wasn’t rusted and I didn’t think there was any chance it would break. So I came down off that. I cleaned my gear on the way down, but there still wasn’t enough rope to get me back to the belay at the top of the 17th pitch. I stopped at a stance, put in a piece, clipped to it, untied from the rope, pulled it down from above, and re-tied into it. I then downclimbed the rest of the pitch, while placing and pulling gear to protect myself with Derek belaying me, of course.

I arrived back at the belay and Derek and I rappelled down to the top of the 16th pitch, where he had left his pack. Here we planned our descent. We didn’t find a fixed belay on the pitch below this one, so we were sure we’d have to place a gear anchor and leave it. Also we knew there were a few rappels longer than half our rope length. Normally you’d have to set up gear belays and leave them. And some of these were on blank slabs so we’d have to clip into a single bolt and pull the rope and rappel from it. Doable, but scary and expensive with the gear left behind. But we had one trick with us…

A month or two ago I was in Neptune Mountaineering looking for a small haulbag for this trip. The salesman knew I was into going fast and light and he showed me a new tool called the Escape. This device is clever. And scary. The salesman said that people have one of two reactions to it:
1. Wow! That’s cool.
2. That’s insane.
I ended up in the first group.

This is a friction device that grabs itself (thus independent of rope diameter), and like a Chinese Finger Trap, doesn’t let go when weighted. You can tie your rappel rope to it and you can descend the entire length of the rope. Then to retrieve your rope you jerk down and release on the rope 8-10 times. The brilliance of the Escape is this bungie cord mechanism that gradually pulls your rope out of the prussik-like embrace it has on its tail, which is extra long.

I lowered Derek down so that he could keep hold of the other end of the rope to see if a single rope rappel would work, and I could avoid using the Escape for the first time ever. If it didn’t he could unclip from other end and I could continue to lower him the full length of the rope. He was also looking for the belay anchor we had missed on the way up. I lowered and he searched. This took awhile and eventually he gave up and I lowered him down about 160 feet where he was at a stance and he built an anchor (he was carrying a full selection of gear for just this purpose). He clipped in and I was about to set up the Escape when he called up that he found the fixed belay anchor. He cleaned his gear and climbed a bit up and over to it. I still had to use the Escape, but we wouldn’t have to leave a cam or two.

I set up the device and Derek called up from below, “Check it FIVE times!” I did. Still, easing onto it was freaky. It worked as designed though and down I went, trying to be smooth and keep my weight on it. This would be trivial on a steep rappel, but this was down a slab. It wasn’t hard and I arrived at the semi-hanging belay, where Derek immediately clipped me to a prepared sling. We repeated the procedure from here and Derek made it down to the anchor atop the 12th pitch. This rappel went sideways a considerable distance. On steep ground this would have been impossible, but it was slab and we could friction sideways. Doing this on the Escape made it just a bit more exciting. Once again Derek called up, “Check it FIVE times.”

We repeated the procedure on the next rappel, which went more or less straight down. This one almost made it with the doubled rope, but didn’t. I Escaped again. From the top of the 10th pitch I thought we could rappel on our doubled rope to the top of the ninth and again back to the top of the Goodrich Pinnacle. I lowered Derek here, though, because it traversed hard and he had to clip a draw to a bolt in order to get over that far. Once he was at the belay, he could pull me over. I measured the rope a bit carelessly and mistakenly thought I had enough to reach Derek. Two thirds of the way down it was clear I wouldn’t make it. I had to stop at one of the protection bolts. I clipped into the single bolt, pulled my rope and rappelled again off this bolt to join Derek, leaving the last of the four biners we donated to the route’s fixed protection.

The rest of the way down was more of the same. Three more Escape rappels, from the top of the eighth pitch to the top of the sixth pitch and then from there to top of the fourth pitch and then down the fourth pitch. From the top of the third pitch we made the familiar three doubled-rope rappels to the ground, reaching it 12 hours after we left it. What a relief to be back on the ground safely.