It started off by taking the bus to the Ahwahnee Hotel and walking up the short approach (10min) to the base of Royal Arches. We started climbing at 08:30am. Pat and I simul-climbed the majority of the route with a few short belays along the way. This helped save time as we topped off Royal Arches at 11:00am. Not bad for 16 pitches! We stashed our gear and brought 14 draws to use on Crest Jewel which is all protected by bolts. It took about 45min from the top of Royal Arches to reach the start of Crest Jewel on North Dome. The route-finding along the way was a little trivial at some places. We didn’t lose too much time searching for a trail and resorted to some bushwhacking.
At the base of Crest Jewel, we were pretty sure that we had found the correct start to the route but couldn’t see any of the bolts. Pat won the game of Rock, Paper and Scissors. So he headed out a few meters to see if any bolts were in sight. After some searching he found a bolt actually quite close to him. The bolts seemed to blend in with the colour of the rock. On bolted routes it’s usually just a matter of connecting the dots. But the run-outs between the bolts on this climb made things difficult for route-finding on the featureless slab. We kept the route topo nearby while climbing to help us refer to the location of each bolt. It was the first time that I had trouble route-finding on a bolted route! The climbing was quite consistent and enjoyable on the slab. By the end of the climb I was getting quite confident with the friction of my climbing shoes. We made it on top of Crest Jewel by 04:00pm. To save time we had linked two and sometimes three pitches with the help of some simul-climbing. This allowed us to do the 10 pitch climb in as little as 4 pitches. As I took my climbing shoes off I noticed that my ankle had become a more swollen. I could feel it hurt a little on some of the slab moves. We walked off the back of North Dome and returned to our gear at the top of Royal Arches. There were 15 dedicated rappel anchors next to Royal Arches which were simple and painless. It sounded more enjoyable than the North Dome gully descent option. To save more time Pat and I both simul-rapped at once off of the anchors. We were back at the bottom of the route just as the sun set behind the horizon (6:00pm).
Click on photos to enlarge.
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| A view of North Dome as we approach on vast expanses of low angled granite slabs. |
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| Climbing the 6th pitch of Crest Jewel on North Dome. |
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| The swollen ankle (aka "cankle") at the end of the climb. |
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| Kickin' it old school with the short shorts. Coilling the rope at the end of the day. |
Oct. 29th: Rest day
Pat and I spent the day making our action plan to climb the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome (VI, 5.9 C1) tomorrow. We decided to go light and will try to climb this long 23 pitch route in a day! It will be more technical and committing than yesterday's link-up of Royal Arches and Crest Jewel. We’ll be putting the past 18 days of free climbing and aid climbing in Yosemite to the test. We plan to leave Camp 4 on our bikes at 01:00am and will have hopefully climbed a few pitches before sunrise. This should place us in position to top out before sunset.
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| A view of Half Dome's Northwest face. Taken while climbing Crest Jewel on North Dome. |
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