memories of an epic day

I know it's been long overdue for me to write here.  In case you didn't notice, I changed the title of this blog to the unconventional life instead of the the year.  I forgot who told me to change it, but thank you very much for the suggestion.  I got the confirmation over here at work that the project we were working on in China is not going to continue.  They haven't paid up, and we should have made them pay first anyways.  So... my unconventional year became the unconventional half-year.  I am now back in the Boston area permanently.  At least for now.

I am going to continue to write!  Ever since grade school, I've been insecure about my writing skills in English.  I loathed writing essays and always got marginal marks on them.  Perhaps it took me a while to really get a knack of expressing myself comfortably in English.  But I've gotten a lot of encouragement since I started writing here and so I will keep going with this project of mine.

So read on!

I'm pretty much back to my old routine.  Except that for the moment I'm on climbing overdrive, since a bunch of us are going to be at Yosemite at the end of this month for a whole week!  I can't wait for it, but at the same time I feel somewhat unprepared mentally.  Climbing single pitch climbs in China has made me weak both inside and outside, and I'm already a wuss when it comes to the mental department anyways.

As much as I say that, we still set our goals pretty high.  Some of the climbs that we are planning to do include the uber-classics Snake Dike, After Six, After Seven, and the Nutcracker.  Another route that we might also try is the East Buttress at Middle Cathedral.

And here is a photo Max took of one of the routes we want to do, Crested Jewel.  It is, apparently, the best climb of its type on this planet.

A 5-star rating is getting us pretty excited.  1000' of rock climbing, yum.  It's going to be a long day, but probably not as long as last year's epic day we had at the Higher Cathedral Spire.  


Probably every trad climber has had some form of epic climbing experience, but it's really hard to define the term.  It's like being pregnant and giving birth (I can't think of a better example, sorry).  Only someone else who has experienced it would really understand what you have gone through.

So what would count as an epic day?

I try to block it out of my memory, but I think it's worth telling the story here once, so people know how EPIC it really was.

Last September, it rained at Yosemite and the forecast didn't look so good for the whole week.  So the six of us packed up our stuff in the minivan and went to Joshua Tree.  There was a massive climbing exodus from Yosemite to J-Tree.

After four days of beautiful sun and climbing in the desert, our hearts were itching again as we heard that Yosemite stopped raining.  There was a mutiny among the group and we eventually all agreed to go back to Yosemite to climb for a day.  Yes, ONE day.  Then drive back to SFO.

Since we were in J-Tree, Max and I thought it would be a great idea to separate from the group and go visit Caty and Seb in Pasadena.  It's really only about a 3-hour drive, not a big deal, right?

After climbing for a whole day at J-Tree, we drove to Pasadena and had dinner with our friends until 11PM.  We were both pretty tired, but then we had to drive back to Yosemite to go climbing the next day.  Max drove and I tried to stay awake until about 2AM or so, where he and I were both completely exhausted and pulled over at a hospital parking lot in Fresno.  It was super sketchy, but at least there were other cars in the parking lot so no one was going to come over and check what we were doing in an empty parking lot.  We leaned the seats back and pulled out our sleeping bag for a nap.

Max somehow woke up at dawn, and decided to start driving again.  It must have been the excitement of  Yosemite.  It kept him going.  I couldn't even open my eyes for the next few hours.  I only woke up after we hit the southern part of the national park, with the winding road tossed me gently to the left and right on my seat.

By 8AM, we arrived at the campsite and immediately started heading towards the start of the climb with our gear.  I think our judgement by then was already somewhat impaired.  Instead of taking the bus that runs around the park, we walked for about 2 hours on flat terrain to get to where we wanted to go.  Only then did the approach start, which took us another 2 hours or so.

We reached the base of the climb at around 12:30PM, and luckily there was no wait for us to get started.  There was only one party above us, the they were well ahead.  The climb started out on an easy pitch that I lead, and the second pitch was supposed to be the hardest pitch.  Max gladly volunteered to lead that pitch.

As Max got to the crux section, there was a big roof with a vertical crack following the contour of the roof.  He really struggled on it, and eventually made it through the roof and set up his anchor for me to follow up.

When I came up to the climb, he said in a very soft voice,
Hey, I have something to tell you.

At the time, I thought he was going to comment on how hot the two girls that climbed before us were.  So I wasn't really paying attention.

I dislocated my shoulder while trying to pull the move at the crux, he said.

You what?  
Yeah I popped it back, he said calmly.

I instantly got alarmed and said that we should go back down.  Instead of agreeing with me, he said loudly, No!  Let's get the fuck up to the top!

I swear, Max was experiencing summit fever, and we weren't even really high up.
If I did think that my life would have been threatened, I would have told him to go down.  But we really only had three more pitches to climb, and I didn't think that it was going to be a big deal.

I lead the next pitch, and Max still wanted to lead the next two pitches (which was a good idea in the end anyways).  He did fine, the shoulder didn't pop back out.  But this is how tired he looked like when we got to the summit.

El Cap behind!

So you think that's the end of the story, right?  Wrong!

By the time we got to the summit, we spent some time there and the sun was setting into the mountains.  After a few raps, we were descending down on the taluses in the dark with our headlamps.  The rocks were a bit damp and slimy from a light rain, and I was sliding down on my ass half of the time.  

Eventually, we reached the road where the busses would come around.  But none came to us.  We called the others to come and pick us up but they were tired and already eating at the pizza place.  So we started walking again, until some Yosemite old timer driving a white pick-up truck came by and asked us if we wanted a ride.  We were more than grateful, and shook his hand to introduce ourselves.  His hand was so callused, you can tell that he has been climbing his entire life.  He was probably somebody famous in the valley, but we didn't know who he was.  Which was a shame.

When we got dropped off, we wanted to eat and then shower.  I really can't remember at that point because I was beyond exhaustion.  We grabbed the car to drive to the campsite to grab our toiletries, but made the wrong turn (everything is one way) and ended up in a very long loop that took us 30 minutes to get back to where we started.

I started crying at that point, because we couldn't even really explain to the others what we wanted to do and how we ended up on a 30-minute detour.  But no tears really came out because I was so dehydrated and too tired to cry.  We just wanted some food in our system, take a shower, then go to sleep.

Eventually, at around 11PM or so, we got some food in our system.  Showered.  Sunk into our sleeping bags and passed out instantly.

That was probably the longest 24 hours of my life.

I think we are going to be just fine this year and hopefully be more rested and prepared ;)