Running
the rope through a biner connected to a #2 copperhead, I
shout to Mark, "Lower me!" and I slowly descend
the slightly overhanging granite wall. I grab the rope
with my right hand and using my left for balance press my
feet hard against the wall and begin sprinting back and
forth across the golden face. A small sloping edge emerges
and I thrust my body forward, left hand extended, and latch
on. Sweat begins to ooze from my fingertips as I fumble with
the rack, remove a Talon hook, place it on a tiny granite
granule and begin to pray. The hook holds for five seconds
before PING! I lurch backwards skidding back across wall in
a helpless rag doll arc. I attempt to regain control on the
back-swing, feet clawing desperately, but lactic acid in my
legs is too much and I give up, gradually coming to rest
below my last piece. I look across the 200-foot blank
expanse of rock to the next feature and then I look at Mark.
He stares at me with mixed expression of impatience and
empathy. I begin to curse. Is the Girdle of El Capitan an
impossible task?
Girdle traverses have enjoyed modest popularity in the
Britain but have only a brief history in the America. Paul
Ross pioneered the first U.S. Girdles beginning in 1972 with
a traverse of White Horse Cliff, New Hampshire and went on
to make the first girdles of Cathedral and Cannon Cliffs. In
the mid 1970's Ross may have been the first person to
consider an El Cap traverse, but it wasn't until the 1980's
that Bill Price led the first serious Girdle attempt. Price
started from the East Buttress with the intent of not only
traversing El Cap but climbing many unclimbed features in
the process. He made it to a spot near El Cap Tree before
abandoning the attempt. After Price, numerous people drew up
in their minds potential Girdle lines but no more recorded
attempts were made.
For me the Girdle was born out of a desire to do a new
route on El Cap. Years of reading books like "Yosemite
Climber" and "Vertical World of Yosemite"
left me aching to make my own addition to Yosemite's
climbing lore. I scoured the face with binoculars locating
and connecting virgin micro-features until in 1997 I had a
new route pieced together.I
armed myself with hundreds of copperheads and a vast
collection of thin pitons and hooks and marched to the base.
Yet as looked up the nearly-invisible line and unloaded my
mass of steel and aluminum I was struck by the blasphemy of
my act. Unlike the Nose or Salathe, this route would not
sustain many ascents after mine. Fragile features would fall
off, rivets would be added, hook moves re-enhanced and
copperhead placements re-trenched. The route would become
another bland line of fixed copper, steel and enhanced
hooks. I didn't want to be a part of this movement in aid
climbing and decided to leave the squeeze-job for someone
else. By default the Girdle became my last chance at putting
a new line up on El Cap.
When first contemplating a Girdle Traverse I briefly
considered continuing Price's vision of a line that climbed
many new features in a proud diagonal across the face. Yet,
the more I looked at such a line the more daunting the
project became. The logistics required would be
unprecedented and the ascent might easily take twenty days.
And who would ever repeat such an ordeal? I decided that the
solution to the Girdle's logistics lay in attempting the
traverse as a speed climb. Instead of hauling hundreds of
pounds of supplies sideways, I would leave the gear behind
and climb in "single push" style. After two months
of scoping both from the ground and from the wall the
Girdleline came together in July 1998. Most of the terrain
was familiar; I had climbed every established route that the
Girdle would share. The challenge would be negotiating the
few blank spots between established routes where new
climbing would be required. These unknown sections cast just
enough uncertainty over the project to ensure a steady
infusion of adventure throughout the climb. Marketing the
Girdle as "A grand tour of El Caps finer ledges and
pitches" I began searching for someone who had the two
requisite skills for such a long traverse: speed and the
ability to improvise with rope techniques. Mark Melvin fit
the description perfectly. When Mark led me up my first big
wall, the West Face of El Cap, he forgot his rock shoes I
assumed the climb was off. Yet Mark didn't see the fact that
there were four feet and two shoes as a problem. At the end
of each pitch he zipped the shoes down to me, except on the
easier pitches where he would leave them with me and lead
barefoot. Novel situations clearly don't faze Mark but when
I explained my idea for the Girdle, he harbored some
skepticism. However, he agreed to give it a shot in early
August.
Previous climbers dreamed of a perfectly diagonal girdle
line. Our line was far from that; following the biggest,
friendliest features on the face. When pieced together the
jagged ups and downs of the line resembled the readout of a
heart monitor. We began on August 4 on East Buttress and
traveled across easy free climbing and a few rappels until
we reached the first pitch of Eagle's Way. From here we
began an upward diagonal that took us as high as the Black
Tower before we began a series of rappels back down toward
Tangerine Trip. Lunging through space for fixed heads and
bolts to guide us to anchors it became clear that we had a
distinct advantage over earlier Girdle attempts in the
1980's. In the last fifteen years numerous new routes had
been squeezed in, making it impossible to move 50 feet in
any direction without running into an anchor or a piece of
fixed gear. As we reached the second belay on Lost in
America Mark prepared to rappel by clipping the rope to a
bolt and calling for tension. No sooner had Mark leaned back
than he took a sudden five-foot static fall directly onto my
Gri Gri. With shocked expressions we looked at each other
and then the anchor. The bolt Mark was lowering off had
sheared, leaving a rusted and pathetic steel stud. I had
replaced hundreds of bad bolts with The American Safe
Climbing Assn. over previous months and was aware of just
how feeble many of them were. Still, I was not prepared for
ease with which this one broke. It was a sober reminder of
how, as safe as you try to be, things still
"happen" when you least expect them to. Twenty
pitches and twelve hours from our starting point we reached
El Cap Tree and rapped down to the ground, the
all-you-can-eat restaurant and beers.
Returning to the ground between pushes at first posed an
ethical dilemma. The purest way to Girdle El Cap would be to
haul all gear from start to finish, but this was
logistically out of the question. Another approach would be
to climb up various routes and leave food and water stashes,
but this would have required "preparing" the route
in advance which was more contrived than resupplying between
pushes. The drawback to rappelling to the ground was the
mental inertia that had to be conquered. On the wall the
climbing moved fast and painlessly but as soon we touched
the ground the momentum was lost and had to be regained with
the start of each push.
The Valley is always expected to be hot in August, but we
managed to pick the three hottest days of the year to start
the second and most difficult push on the Girdle. As
temperatures climbed into the 100's we couldn't ignore the
other climbers who had bailed off the El Cap and now lay
under the shade of trees on the banks of the Merced River.
Neither Mark nor I were enthusiastic about continuing the
traverse and we both went about the morning rituals at half
speed. We were both hoping that the other would make up a
decent excuse to bail and we could then get some Ben and
Jerry's. Yet by nine o'clock we had only come up with a few
half-ass excuses that didn't warrant retreat. We
unenthusiastically continued the ascent.
The second push of the Girdle would take us from El Cap
Tree, to Calaveras Ledge, across the Continental Shelf to El
Cap Tower and eventually down and across to Heart Ledges. Our
first plan was to try this leg in a single push but we
quickly changed our minds as we imagined spending a night
hanging in harnesses in the middle of the Dawn Wall. We
opted to bring a small haulbag with water and 60 degree
sleeping bags. The day began on the Atlantic Ocean Wall and
after two quick A4 pitches we were faced with 300-foot
stretch of new climbing to join the next established route.
I began on what would be the crux pitch by hooking for
thirty feet up and left to a copperhead. From there I began
penduluming, face climbing and hooking for 90 feet left
across diorite to the base of large rotten flake. I put a
cam behind the flake and began testing when to my horror the
1000 pounds of rotten and sharp rock began to separate from
the wall. I quickly removed the cam and looked back ten feet
to my last piece of pro, a #2 knifeblade. >From there it
was another 40 feet to a small stopper and then another 40
feet to a copperhead. I was in a fix. I stared at the flake
for a few minutes, trying to decide: Was my fear the
irrational variety or was it the self preserving kind that
tells when you are about to get killed? Finally a wave of
confidence (or stupidity) washed over me and I called for
Mark to give me fifteen feet of slack (to eliminate rope
drag) and began delicately lie backing the flake for the
most exciting 15 seconds of my life. At the top I teetered
left across loose flakes to decent horizontal flake in which
I frantically began sinking pins for a belay. I equalized
three angles and gave one last hit to the last pin when the
whole flake began to move. I decided enough was enough and
drilled an anchor bolt. Another seven pitches of easy free
climbing and rappelling brought us to the top of the
Continental Shelf and our bivy. By eight o'clock the sun had
set but temperatures remained in the 80's and in an effort
to keep cool Mark and I slept in nothing but our shorts. I
had just gotten comfortable when I noticed the pitter patter
of small objects against my body. I quickly sat up to
discover hundreds of little brown bird turds covering my
bare skin. I grimaced, began brushing them off and looked up
to locate source of the brown pellets. But the attackers
remained hidden, hundreds of feet above. There was no way to
move so I lay back down with the hope that as night fell the
birds would let up and catch few Z's. We had no such luck.
Every hour I would wake up, issue a few terse words and
brush the little presents off. We got an early start the
next morning, eagerly abandoning our vulnerable position for
the flawlessly vertical Dawn Wall. Mark led across South
Seas and Mescalito's Molar Traverse to The Wall of Early
Morning Light. Here we cruised across a classic Warren
Harding full pitch of dowels to the last major unknown
section of the Girdle line.
From the start Mark had been concerned with this stretch.
I had assured him I had it all worked out. Now as we sat at
the belay, peering across the 300 feet of blank granite
separating us from El Cap Tower, I realized that I had
miscalculated. Mark mentioned bailing, but I convinced him
to let me have a shot at swinging over to the Tower. Thus
began my rag doll pendulum performance. Five hours, one
rivet, two anchor bolts and four hundred feet of pendulums
later we connected with New Dawn. Sighs of relief attended
our belief that the main difficulties of the climb were
over. We reached El Cap Tower by 4 p.m. and opted to bivy
rather push through the night. Even with the rations of a
five quarts of water per person per day, so intense was the
heat that we were nearly dry by the morning. The fourth day
began with Mark climbing the Texas Flake and Boot Flake. We
continued up the Nose to Camp 4 where we reversed the Triple
Direct to the Muir Wall and rappelled down to Heart Ledges
and the ground. We were tired, our thoughts dulled by the
heat, but were glad that only one last push remained.
We swam in the Merced River and refueled with
all-you-can-eat salad and beer to prepare for the last leg.
At 4 am on August 8 we began jugging up to Heart Ledges and
moved quickly up the Salathe Wall. By 1 p.m. we reached the
roof and I began moving left over the last 200 feet of rock
before Thanksgiving Ledge. I had led part of this pitch
before and was convinced that it was one of the uglier
pitches on El Cap. The first forty feet was easy free
climbing with poor pro that led to a large roof. Cams led
across the rotten, mossfilled, horizontal roof cracks to a
small ledge beneath the roof that formed a
loose-block-ridden belly crawl. Mark then received the honor
of re-leading most of the pitch to clean the gear.
Thanksgiving Ledge, a quarter mile long and 8 foot wide
weakness in El Cap, was clearly the key to the Girdle. With
only a few hours of daylight left we quickly moved across
the ledge through a 200-foot section of "5.8
bushes" to the West Face finish. By 7 p.m. we had
finished the final easy fifth class sections and stood on
the summit. After 75 pitches and 14,000 feet of movement
(climbing, rappelling, walking) we had triumphantly
conquered the illogical. The Girdle is not El Cap's best
route but it climbs many of El Caps finest pitches. It is
also not the worst route, although there are a few stinker
sections. In the end the Girdle was just what we expected it
to be: long, obscure and most of all adventurous.
Mark and I shook hands and once again turned our
attention to beer and the salad bar.
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