Lurking Fear- EL Capitan 9/1/2018

Getting our gear set up at 11pm Thursday night.

With a rough start to the Yosemite climbing season by breaking my ankle on the first pitch of the nose and being out 
for 3 months I thought this year would be looking grim due to the quickly approaching winter season. I hunkered down 
for three months with a boot on doing what seemed like endless rows, pull ups and other body weight excersies  

just so I could maintain fitness for El Cap. I couldn’t climb really and practice, I just had to stay in shape. I was absolutely sick of pull ups. Up and down up and down.

After months of pull ups and rows, my ankle finally fully healed. Doug and I found a weather window from the smoke of the Ferguson Fire, not to hot and clear skies. I got the days off work (after paying a coworker $100 to cover me) and got all our gear together. Doug and I got to the valley Thursday night, parked in the meadow (not the bridge, could be potentially towed but didn’t) and we were off to Lurking Fear. Before we knew it we were at the base of 
The Nose and both thought wow this isn’t so bad. About 15 minuets later our pace has slowed and the uphill is killing us. Our usual attack method of going 100% all the time was stopped in its tracks. Everybody knows El Cap is tall. No body ever talks about how wide it is. It’s a short slightly uphill 15 minute approach to the nose. Once at The Nose, you can go either left or right from there and it’s just slightly never ending uphill. After an hour of slowly walking through the night and a couple leaking gallons of water, we made it to the base of Wings of Steel 
and bivouac there for the night. 

Friday morning we shuttled gear about a 1/4 mile to the base of Lurking Fear and then just started climbing. We never really stopped moving and just hung out. We were on a mission. I’m not saying we were soldiers sent on a mission to kill, we were two young climbers who trained for months to finally climb El Cap and we’re gonna do it. We joked 
around and had fun but we maintained efficiency at a moderate pace. 

Drinking the morning coffee on the portaledge.

We never came close to our physical limit  the whole time. We knocked out 5 pitches on Friday (I said moderate pace) with some bomber hooks, bolt ladders and easy C1-C2. Setting up our portaledge was a shit show. I hadn’t taken it out of the bag since we did The Prow and we always pack it so it’s readily deplorable upon next set up. For some reason it was more tangled than a hippie white girls hair. We spent 10 minuets solving the problem and then we’re cooking our freeze dried meals.

Sweet bivy at the base of the wall.

Doug on pitch #2.

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Pitch #7 traversing hooks.

Saturday rolls around, we take care of our business and we’re off. Instead of swapping leads we started doing small block leads of two. We found this is more effective for us giving the follower more rest time and and exhausting the leader more from leading and hauling two pitches and then giving them proper recovery time to do it again. We shared hauling duties with space hauling and jugging the haul line so it was not all that bad for hauling purposes. We climbed/hauled 5 pitches and fixed one. The stand out pitches that day were pitch 7 with fun traversing hooks and pitch 8 long off width. I placed a couple questionable #3s on the offwidth and just walked up two #4s the whole way. Doug took the next couple pitches and absolutely killed it with the free climbing. The whole climb, Doug took the bulk of the free climbing due to him being a stronger climber. We set up the portaledge quick and made dinner and we’re off to sleep.

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Sunday we did 6 pitches up to Thanksgiving Ledge (Pitch 17). Pitch 12 had a sweet traverse followed by some bomber hooks. Doug took the next two pitches French freeing and before I knew it and some horrendous hauling on pitch 14, I had the next two. I cruised through pitch 15 and then pitch 16 was a bit weird and dirty. Going off the log book at Thanksgiving Ledge, the last group to have climbed the route and log it in the book was three months ago. Some of 
the cracks higher up on the route were pretty dirt/leaf filled and I often found my self cleaning the crack with my nut tool. (Made the mistake doing it with my finger and got something lodged in my finger nail). 

Pitch #12 traverse.

Eventually it was Doug’s lead and we had one pitch to Thanksgiving Ledge. While I looked up into the night, Doug was cruising offwidth into the stars, it was a pretty sweet angle to watch someone climb an offwidth. Before I knew it we were in the cave cooking dinner psyched to have finally taken our harnesses off and sleep on a ledge.

Sweet cave on Thanksgiving Ledge.

Doug getting ready for the last day on Thanksgiving Ledge.

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The next morning we made a quick breakfast and got back to work. We shuttled our gear across the ledge and climbed the last two pitches to the slab section at the top. From the top of pitch 19, we shuttled gear all the way to the unroping spot and when it was safe, we packed our bags for the descent. We didn’t realize how long of a descent we had a ahead of us. It was our first time doing the east ledges, but it was pretty straight forward. The fixed lines were in good condition and 5 hours later we found ourselves in the manure pile parking lot. Not more than 20 Minutes later it begins to rain.

Summit pic.