We headed to
housekeeping camp in the morning to get coffee and decide what we would do for
the day. Gretchen and Jax were headed
out of The Valley for the day to meet Gretchen’s future-in-laws for dinner and
to resupply their food cache. We
considered climbing the 5 pitch After Six at Manure Pile Buttress, but the
weather forecast was calling for some rain (and the skies were looking like the
report might be true). While perusing
Mountain Project, Alex discovered that there was a large boulder directly
across the street from them that had two 40 foot aid routes on it. We headed over to the boulder, next to the LeConte
Memorial Lodge.
There was a
group already there, so we sat and watched for a while before retreating to the
car when it began to rain. After the
rain subsided, we grabbed our aid climbing gear and headed over. The
first route, The Hooker, was slightly overhanging, and had several bolts and
one rivet. Dave made a few laps aiding
the route, and Alex also ran it twice, aiding it on top-rope.
Next, we moved to the much more overhanging Kor Aid Ladder. Dave’s first run on this was tiring and awkward until he got
used to finding the proper balance to keep from spinning when weighting his
aiders. His second run looked exponentially better. After his second run, he fixed the line for Alex
to ascend and clean. Just as it was challenging for Dave to aid, it was also
challenging for Alex to ascend and clean. It took us some time to figure out a method to
allow Alex to be able to reach the pieces of gear, without weighting them or
locking up her ascenders. We eventually were able to achieve this, but need to
investigate the BEST way to do so. We headed back to the car, realizing that over 3 hours had
quickly passed.
We began to
organize and pack gear for climbing
Nutcracker (5.8) the following morning with Gretchen and Jax. As we finished up, a text message came
through from our friends Annette and Mark who had arrived in Yosemite the
previous evening. Since service is poor,
the message they sent at 4:30PM did not get received by us until 5:45. They were asking if we wanted to meet up for
dinner at 6:00PM at South Gate Brewing in Oakhurst. We were able to get a text saying we’d love
to, but we were an hour away!
Fortunately, they were willing to wait for us! We enjoyed catching up with them, as well as
the yummy wings, burgers, and fries we ate for dinner. We made plans to meet up with them on Tuesday
to get Mark on some climbs… Annette insisted she was happy just to watch. After leaving the restaurant, we headed off to
our “Wawona Entrance camping area” for the night.
