climbergirl blog

Picture Above Left: Alisha & Mike, Justine & Rachel, Me in front.
Picture Right: Me, Rachel, Alisha, & Justine! Who let the babes out!?!

And here it goes!!!!!!!!!!

The cell phone was croaking, a signal that I was supposed to hop out of bed. At 4:45am, not much is happening by way of brain movement, but my body was going through the motions. Get dressed, grab sunblock, brush teeth, take some pills, put sandals on, bug spray, …

It was so quiet all around my campsite-FINALLY a moment of peace and solitude rare for such a popular campground. And yet there I was banging around in the back of my truck! Where’s my Nalgene water bottle? do I have everything? double and tripple checking my actions-last year I forgot my sunglasses-do I have them?

Clutching the Nalgene, throwing the 20+ pound backpack on my back, I walked over to the groupsite. Stoked I was ON TIME and READY to climb Cathedral Peak. It was 5am.

When I got there, Mike & Alisha were quietly attending to last minute details. Those potty breaks to clear the system, the bite of hearty food before light trail type snackage, and organizing packs. I was happy they were almost ready to go.

Rachel & Justine were up, milling about, their stuff was strewn about the car haphazardly and poor Justine was sitting in the car TRYING to get warm. I admit it was a bit chilly at that hour, but since I had been moving around, I was fine.

We managed to get both their packs ready in 0.5 an hour-an amazing feat. I also managed to eat my b-fast and drink my mocha, it felt good to have something in my system! So, around 6am we were heading out for the Cathedral parking area.

The plan for climbing: Mike sponsored Alisha (his beautiful wife) and Justine (our beautiful newbee). I was excited to take Rachel (climber goddess) up Cathedral. We were a party of five, Mike being our token male. The soloists who passed us (including one girl) were either jealous of Mike, or suprised to see such a collection of girls on one route. It was a special day for all of us!

It was Rachel’s first time climbing multipitch with me, so it took a few pitches for us to hammer out the details. As a leader, it was my job to make sure our anchors were safe, that I protected for Rachel in the event of a traverse, and that we stayed on route. She being the designated cleaner of gear, and holder of the water/backpack. I thought we made a fabulous team and it was great climbing!

Mike, Alisha, and Justine did awesome for being a three-some. In climbing a multipitch route, parties of three normally take a bit longer than a party of two, but they stayed pretty much on our tail the whole time. Towards the end of the climb, we got ahead due to the tricky moves in the Chimney. Also, there were a few times where I took a variation of the route to ease with bottlenecks, so Rachel and I got to do some harder bouldery style moves!

All in all I had complete command of this route, and I managed to climb it in 6 pitches in about 5 hours of time. (Started around 9am and got to the top around 2pm). The top has some tricky little boulder moves in order to navigate across the top blocks. So, once I got to the top, and Rachel met me there, I climbed back to give Alisha and Justine a spot. They were both happy to have me there!

I spent a few minutes milling about trying to find the rappel slings Walter & I used 2 years prior. They were cut, to my huge disappointment!!! Such a travesty, because now everybody would have to do the 4th class downclimb and HIKE back around to our packs. It was a delay on the magnitude of approximately 1 hour. And, we’d have a pretty long hike back in climbing shoes. Sore toes and grumbling, we headed back the long way.

It took about 30 minutes for everybody to get down from the summit block. It was around 4pm when we were standing above a rappel on the backside of Cathedral (facing Eichorn Pinnacle).

Why is it okay to put a rappel there, but not at the summit? I just don’t get it. By the time we got back to our packs and started walking out it was sometime around 5pm. We took a bunch of pictures and headed back to the cars.

The hike back was hard for me. I gave Rachel most of the rack to carry out, but I was dehydrated and tired from the climbing and hiking. The girls wanted to chat on the way out, but I just couldn’t do it. No more talking.

I told them I could sing (Mike has a great set of pipes!) because it didn’t require thinking. So we sang a few things. Hotel California, Hound dog, and some They Might Be Giants tunes. That helped me to keep my spirits up.

One foot in front of the other, keep moving, swing those poles, don’t stumble on the logs and the rocks in the trail. My mind was a blurr, and I couldn’t wait to get back. I knew Dennis would be there, and I knew we were going to be noshin on Cornbread and home made chilli. I couldn’t wait. So hungry and I missed my hubby (awww, how cute-I know!).

Back at the car, I took some quick pics of the girls hiking the last 20 feet. And even a shot of Mike. Our token Male. What a fun day, so great to be out. Blessed to get in another Tuolumne Meadows classic. Psyched for Rachel, Justine, and Alisha too! You GO girls!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 28th, 2006 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Mountaineering, Rock Climbing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.