Yosemite Update; N-E Buttress of Higher Cathedral Rock

We jumped out the tent at 05:00am this morning to have a quick bite to eat and biked towards the North East Buttress of Higher Cathedral rock. After some elevation gain along the climbers trail and some boulder hopping along the way we reached the base of the climb at 07:00am. We were the first ones there! Seems like the longer hike kept most of the weekend crowd away. The climbing was definitely more physical than I expected. We knew that a good part of the climb involved chimney and off-width cracks. The length of the wide cracks had us sweating a lot on the way up. Neither of us had much practice on the awkward wide cracks which made them even more physically demanding than they needed to be. We wiggled our way up and topped out on the 12 pitch climb around 18:00h. Tired and mentally drained. I was happy to have done the climb. But I’m not convinced I enjoy wide crack climbing more than before. It’s a completely different technique! I guess it was good practice.

Unfortunately I didn't capture any photos of us climbing in the wide cracks due to the location of the belays. Here are a few from the climb.

Click on photos to enlarge.