My family and I and Joe Q plan to head up Whitney tomorrow for an overnighter, assuming we can grab some permits. I do, however, have an interesting TR from yesterday's adventures in Yosemite some might find interesting.
Bob Pickering and I set out to climb Cathedral Peak's 5.6 technical route while Steve C and wagga were kind enough to meet us at the trailhead. It was great meeting both of them finally! While Bob and I set out in one direction for the SE buttress, Steve took my wife Barb and daughter Brianne in a different direction, and eventually up the non-technical mountaineer's route. It wasn't till after the day was done that I found out that the route they had taken was progressively class 2 to class 3, then to some exposed class 4. More on that later.
As Bob and I set up at the first belay station, it was pretty daunting looking up at Cathedral. Bob's been up this thing 50-plus times, and does it in 4 belays with a 70-meter rope. Bob can correct the figures, but I'm guessing it was about 500 feet of climbing. After some discussion and instruction, Bob set off with me belaying him. Bob is a FAST climber, but very cautious. I followed with him belaying me, and we kept this up through 3 of the 4 pitches.
I had my challenges on the way up, particularly due to the excessive wind, which added significantly to the technical difficulty. Bob said he had never seen the wind on Cathedral like it was yesterday, and several other climbing teams were commenting on the same thing. I managed to get past most of the difficult moves on the first 3 pitches, then, beginning on a section just below a relatively easy 30 feet I lost shoe traction and fell. Instead of depending on the rope, I instinctively grabbed a small "chicken-head" with my left hand and felt something wrench in my shoulder/trapezius/tricep area with the jolt. Lots of pain, then numbness in my hand and forearm area.
Suddenly I was a one-armed climber, and on the face I was on I couldn't go up or down. Bob was well out of sight and the howling wind prevented communication between two people 20 feet apart, let alone 30 meters. I saw a ledge about 3 feet below me that became my target for the moment - I was essentially hanging in my harness several hundred feet above the ground. Bob kept putting tension on the rope, thinking I was climbing, so I had some difficulty forcing my way down to the ledge. I eventually got there and managed to settle into a sitting position with only half my butt swinging in the wind.
The chilly wind was full-on in my face, and it didn't take a long for the shivers to set in from inactivity. I sat there quite a while trying to communicate with a climbing team to my left, when Bob finally appeared about 15 feet above me. He had anchored me off and rappelled down to see why I had been inactive for so long. I got the gist of it to him and he headed back up to begin an emergency belay set up. I could really feel the wind cutting through me and the shivers were getting worse when, just below me, a guy's head popped up. This was Ben, an ex-Yosemite SAR guy, who was soloing Cathedral that day. He checked me over - while perched precariously and un-roped on that tiny ledge - and determined I didn't appear to have separated my shoulder.
He was joined shortly afterwards by Theresa, from the climbing team I had been signaling to earlier. She turned out to be a Registered Nurse, and had supplies with her to sling my left arm. Bob joined us shortly afterwards, and between the 3 of them they rigged a rescue belay for me to get down to the next available ledge of consequence. I was shivering uncontrollably by this point and was clearly hypothermic, but once I got on my feet and started walking down the wall on belay the activity warmed up my body enough to reduce the shivers. Once everyone made it down to the ledge I was on, they decided to tie the two 70-meter ropes together to get me down in just one more (very long) belay, since I was back to shivering mightily again. This took quite a while, as Bob, Theresa and Ben set up multiple anchor points, prussicks and a 2nd tie-in for Ben to go down with me to assist me if needed.
Finally, after what seemed like forever to me, Ben and I launched off and began walking down the wall together (try this with one arm in a sling sometime). Once again, the activity warmed me up enough to get me focused on what I was doing enough for Ben to feel comfortable casting off his tie-in about 80 feet down and climb back up to assist with the tricky two-rope belay. This belay took a long, long time, but finally my feet were on semi-level ground and people from other climbing teams were gathering around me to see if they could assist in any way.
Bob rapped down not long after, and he and Ben and Theresa's 4-person team determined how they were going to retrieve the protection and two ropes. All told, this took another couple of hours, involving some tricky unroped climbing. On one hand I was extremely grateful to all these fine people for their attention and concern over my situation, but I also felt very guilty about so many people ditching their climbs to assist me. I definitely got everyone's contact info for follow-up and formal thank-yous a little later.
After a long hike back to the trailhead (again, in a sling - no fun), I retrieved my family, who were still with wagga and Steve. Steve and Bob had taken radios and had been trying to communicate all day, with very little success. We knew that one other climber fro Theresa's team had gone up and over the summit to communicate our situation to Steve, Barb and Bri. What we didn't know was that he got our names mixed up, so everyone was expecting Bob to show up with the bad shoulder. All in all, it was probably best that my wife and daughter thought this, as they had had their own harrowing, exhilarating adventure on the Cathedral Mountaineer's Route, and really didn't need too much more stress.
It was well above what my girls were expecting, with lots of exposure and class 3 and 4 climbing. My wife Barb had a blast with her first serious scrambling experience, but Brianne (11 YO) got the willies at several spots. Steve was an enormous help in getting her across/up/over the worst spots, and getting her to the summit block area - and back down safely again. Barb and Bri could not sing his praises enough. Bri was terrified at times, but Steve was always able to coax her into doing what needed to be done. When Bob and I showed up back at the cars, Bri was hugging Steve and wagga and had dubbed them uncles. After hearing about my experience on the other side of the mountain, she decided Bob was an uncle as well.
So, quite an adventurous day for the Bulldog family. We all had our challenges and tough spots, learned a lot, and eventually overcame. A big thanks to Bob for the invite to climb Cathedral, and especially for being such a dependable, knowledgeable climbing partner. Even if it had been just he and I, with no other help, I'm confident he would have been able to get me down. A huge thanks to Steve for shepherding my family up and down the other side of the peak safely. Needless to say, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Ben and Theresa for their selfless assistance in very tough conditions. Even if I never have the opportunity to cross paths with them again, they'll always be in my prayers.
At this point, the shoulder is manageable and plans are still on for Whitney tomorrow. Getting my girls up Whitney was the target of this particular trip, and it'll take a little more than a wrenched shoulder to keep that from happening. Maybe Joe will carry my pack . . .
