Paul, Brian and Coral have an excellent adventure.
Click on the images for a larger view.
We started from the backpacker's parking lot around 1 PM. After the traditional gear sort.
Our packs were over 40 pounds with camping gear for two days and climbing gear.
We took our time hiking up to Little Yosemite
valley, where we hung a left over the rock rib and up toward Mt.
Broderick.
Our goal, Halfdome appeared through the trees, it looked massive.
Snake Dike climbs the left edge.
We soon came to an excellent campsite.
Find Paul's bivy sack , the black bear canister, and Coral and
Brian's tent.
Paul got the stove going, the heat from the flame felt good, it was getting cold fast. In the morning there was ice in our water bottles.
After a long nights sleep we got up before dawn. I
planned to get water at Lost Lake.
But in October, Lost Lake was truly lost, it was a mud pit.
I had to walk out a log and strain out the green algae to get
water.
Never, I repeat, never look in your water bottle before you drink!
The trail to the base of Snake Dike is exciting. It is much easier to follow than it was twenty years ago, through the woods many footsteps have beaten the path into a groove. Over the rocks there are scattered cairns. Still, the trail made us crawl through tunnels in the manzanita, along the way we got scratched. I taught Coral about the Bob Ayers Manzanita scratch scale, it's simply the base 10 logarithm of the number of scratches you get. On this scale the trail is only a 1. Coral thought that was enough. The trail also crosses some high cliffs on ledges. I can't resist a cantilever rock.
Eventually we came to our first view of Snake
Dike. it angles up and left above the tree to my right.
It angles up and left for 8 pitches. I warned Coral and Brian,at some
point I am going to say "it's time to unrope and walk, you're going
to look around and say 'no way.'"
Pitch 1 is 5.7 up the face to the ceiling where
there is protection.
There was a group of 3 ahead of us. they were old pros, once they got
going they made good speed.
Notice the high tree in this photo, it is a great marker for the
beginning of the route.
Here's a view of Coral climbing up pitch one.
The belay at the end of the first pitch is comfortable.
Pitch one ends at a nice ledge. Then a traverse and a climb up a short steeper wall brought us to the end of pitch two. Here's Paul finishing the crux traverse to join Snake Dike.
I was having fun. There is usually a good bolt
every 75 feet, 25m, and two at the belays.
However, there are few protection placements on the route other than
these bolts. So leaders had better be comfortable with long runnouts
on easy rock.
.
Bright sun, 60F,15C, and a little breeze made for
fine climbing.
The dike climbs for pitch after pitch into the sky. Occasionally it
bifurcates, two dikes no waiting!
Some belays are a bit small. Two climbers share a tiny "belay ledge."
Other belay ledges are slightly larger. My foot is partly inside a giant hole that appears to mark the belay.
After 8 pitches we reached the gentler slopes that
led 1000 feet to the summit.
I said "It's time to unrope." Coral and Brian of course looked around
and thought, "no way!"
Luckily they remembered my earlier comments and actually unroped and
started hiking to the summit.
Coral claims that the hike up the last thousand feet were really the
crux of the climb. Here's Brian on the hike to the summit.
Geologists say that the summit of halfdome weathers away a few inches per million years!
Then all we had to do was descend the cables route and return to camp, which we did before dark!
Brian was the photographer for our trip, great job Brian!
Thanks to Brian and Coral for sharing a fine day on high granite with me.