Fun Climbs Around The World

The Alimony Cracks on Daff Dome

We headed up to Daff Dome (which imaginatively stands for “Dome Across from Fairview” – they obviously didn’t have climber’s naming those formations!) to climb shorter one to two-pitch routes, since we’d been fiercely hailed on a day earlier and feared a repeat performance.

On the south side of Daff Dome, a collection of both easy cracks and less easy face climbs entices the climber to try them. We started on a face climb called Great Circle with a 5.9 first pitch and a second pitch rated 5.10a. Hal led both pitches together, but you need either two ropes to rappel or need to do two rappels to get back down. Great Circle starts up a thin crack, with nuts and small cams for protection. When the crack ends, the climbing continues on friction and thin edging on orange glacier polish. The crux, in the second pitch, involves edging on thin polish.

Looking west from Daff Dome I saw climbers on the adjacent Alimony Cracks, which we climbed next. The route involves very enjoyable hand jams with one short crux move and goes in one long pitch at 5.8. From the anchor it’s possible to toprope another 5.10a face climb. The descent requires either two ropes or two rappels.

While climbing today, a huge storm drove us down off the rock and back to the shelter of our cars. Soon after I’d reached the safety (and comfort) of my van, thunder and lightning pealed simultaneously and hail pounded the roof of the car. I was sure happy to be inside, and not out in the weather.

Close to an inch of hail fell in a very brief time. I’d driven to the Tuolomne Store after the climb, and when I left the store parking lot, I noticed about a mile’s worth of stopped cars on the road (luckily heading east, whereas I wanted to head west. The torrential downpour loosed a rockslide across the Tioga Road - the only east-west road to cross the Sierra Nevada for miles in either direction.

I headed west, back to Porcupine Flat where I hopes my tent withstood the assault of wind, rain, and hail. The day before, when I returned from climbing with friends, I noticed that a bear had visited my van and left a large footprint on the window. I took a photo, but don’t know how well it’ll show up.

Penstemon bloomed along the roadside on the drive from the Big Oak Flat entrance to Tenaya Lake. Lupines bloomed along the road beside Tenaya Lake and Stonecrop grew along the cliffs.

We’ve moved into our new home for the coming month – a campsite in Porcupine Flat campground in Tuolomne Meadows. Our tent sits beside a small brook with burbling water that drowns out any traffic noise on busy weekends.

Our nearby neighbors include a juvenile marmot that lives in a hole under a tree beside the bathrooms (and trash can). The campground only opened for the summer on July 3, so Mr. Marmot has had a long winter (since mid-October) without human visitors. He doesn’t seem very shy and I can get pretty close to take photos.

I’ve noticed a lot of European visitors, all of them happily telling me about how cheap the dollar is for them today and how much easier it is for them to travel around the US in the large motor homes they’ve rented. The German couple across the creek moved in on July 3 and saw a bear their first day here. I haven’t seen the bear yet, but it’s gotten a lot busier in the campground.

We left the City of Rocks, Idaho and drove to Tuolomne Meadows in California. We’ll be here about a month while I’m the campground host at Porcupine Flat campground. We’ll rock climb here about four days a week and hike, swim (if not too cold), and visit spectacular nearby places like Mono Lake on our rest days.

The snows that pummeled Colorado and the Sierra this past winter left a legacy of more wildflowers in Tuolomne than I’ve seen in years.

Stonecrop (Sedum)

Stonecrop grew along the cliffs and what I think may be wild Buckwheat grew in sandy areas.

The sun hits the west side of Site 18 shortly after noon

On Sunday, we headed to site 18. With temperatures hovering near the high 80s, shady crags like Morning Glory Spire, the east side of Parking Lot rock, and other east-facing crags teemed with climbers on every moderate route and a waiting line behind them.

Getting to site 18 involved a hike (nearly 40 minutes, since we weren’t sure of the way), but when we arrived, we had a shady crag with a flat sandy base and a nice cave to ourselves.

With five bolted climbs, we started in on our first route, rated 5.7. Tristan rushed upwards at less than his usual speed, even occasionally stopping to figure out the move. When I cleaned the climb, I could see why: though rated 5.7, the moves proved more challenging than I had expected and at the crux, I couldn’t have clipped the bolt and could barely reach to unclip our long draw. A few pumpy moves on steep rock got me to better holds and a good stance, but the climb was by far the hardest seven we’d climbed and harder than some of the 5.8s, like Rye Crisp and Delay of Game in the City, or It Takes Two at Castle Rocks.
Tristan commented that the climb has a hard start, especially for shorter climbers, and a steep hard move at the third bolt but then eases off after the fourth bolt. With only six clips total, the climbs are short but stiff.

We then climbed the adjacent 5.8, which also seemed hard for the grade. A face climb on rounded knobs, with some discontinuous thin seams scattered about to use as sidepulls, it provided enjoyable climbing with well-placed bolts. Both routes have excellent chain anchors.
After a short snack, the sun was approaching the cliff. With shade until 12:45, if someone got up earlier (not easy with a teenager), they’d have four hours of climbing before the sun hit the rock.
Feeling lazy after climbing three days in a row, and hot in the sun, we headed back.
Our laziness soon ended. As I desultorily ambled along the trail, a flash between my legs followed by fierce rattling caused me to jump and run. I’d missed stepping on a rattler in the trail by inches. Horrified, I watched as the big snake, about 2 inches in diameter, lazily crawled into the bushes. I wasn’t fast enough to get out my camera, since I’d been busy running and screaming. The rattler was loud enough that my son heard the rattling even over my screams, and the snake continued to rattle all the way over to the rocks, where he disappeared into a hole.
I volunteered Tristan to walk first on the remaining way back, but he declined.
“Snakes are more likely to bite the second person anyway,” he explained. “The first person just riles them up, and they bite the next.”

It seemed as though every canyon surprised us with a new, different array of flowers. In the center of the City, near Flaming Rock with the creek flowing directly by the rock, we saw many Columbines. Hiking out to Stripe Rock, we saw mostly cacti in a profusion of colors.

By the road to Steinfells dome, we encountered bright orange mallows, and near Elephant Rock, we saw our first lilies. Here are a few more photos of the many flowers blooming this June.

Indian paintbrush

These striking mallows grew directly beside the road

James on Wheat Thin

After Tristan and I (ok, mostly me) managed to climb the wrong route, James got the first go at leading Wheat Thin. This flake, just to the right of Rye Crisp, involved stepping up on many small dishes and large knobs with a positive flake to provide a continuous hand rail.

Unlike Rye Crisp, this flake took excellent small nuts and hexes and James elected to protect the entire climb with only hexes. With its large selection of footholds and handholds, It’s a perfect route for a relative new leader, and a great place to take a novice climber. James was taking a friend Tara climbing, who’d not climbed for many years after climbing a bit earlier. Tara commented that she felt much more comfortable on this climb than on some of the other, harder routes that her friends had taken her up.

Wheat Thin, with its two-minute approach from the road, easy climbing, and good protection, tends to get mobbed on weekends. We luckily got on the route with no competition since we were climbing fairly early on a Tuesday morning. If you want to climb this route on a weekend, I’d try for really early in the morning! The climb faces east, and thus receives morning sun, which accounted for our unusually early start (considering that my teenage sun is not particularly fond of the morning hours). The other option is to wait until late afternoon, when the climb is in the shade, but I’d seen many carloads of climbers waiting in line here on the past afternoons.

We headed to Elephant Rock early in the morning so that we could climb the hyper-popular route Wheat Thin while the rock was still cool, before the sun warmed it up to unmanageable temperatures. In my rush to get out there before it got too hot, I neglected to look at the guidebook. But that was ok; I remembered climbing the route once before with my father.

As Tristan was starting to lead the pitch, our friends James, Jim, and Tara, who planned to climb with us, showed up.
“That’s Rye Crisp,” James informed me.
Woops. Here I had Tristan on a 5.8 instead of a 5.7, with rather minimal gear.
“It takes surprisingly large cams,” James suggested. “He’ll want a few 3s and 4s.”

Well. We had none of those with us; I’d left them in the car. We hadn’t used anything larger than a number 2 Camalot yet; why should we use such large pieces today, on what I remembered as a very easy 5.7 thin crack. Except that I’d climbed it about 18 years ago, when I was pregnant with Tristan, and obviously pregnancy had a dampening effect on my memory.
I didn’t bother to inform Tristan of these new findings. Since he was over halfway up the pitch already, I had no way to get more gear to him anyway (aside from the fact that it was in the car).
At one point, he mentioned that nothing would fit and he would have to run it out for a while.
At least he wore a helmet, and he leads much harder than 5.8, so I laid my maternal fears to rest and told him to go ahead and run it out.
When I finally followed the pitch, I found it much harder than I remembered and was quite glad I hadn’t led the climb. It seemed steeper and more strenuous than it had been 18 years earlier. Perhaps the many ascents since then had made the rock more slippery?

Tara on Between Heaven and Earth

From our climbs lower in the Hostess Gully, we hiked further up the gully to the adjacent climbs Between Heaven and Earth (5.9) and It Takes Two (5.8), both on the west side of the Hostess Gully near the Red Rib.
Like the other routes we’d done on Castle Rock, these climbs on excellent granite were on good edges and sharp jugs with great anchors and well-bolted with camouflaged bolts. Anchors generally seemed to show up at 100-foot intervals and we were able to descend all the climbs with one 60-meter rope.
The start to Between Heaven and Earth is challenging, with a pumpy move over a bulge, but one can avoid this by traversing off around to the right. After this grunty move, the remaining climb is on pleasant sharp edges.
It Takes Two, just to the right of Between Heaven and Earth is just sheer fun. It’s possible to lead It Takes Two and toprope Between Heaven and Earth if you’re not ready for more challenging leads, but want the experience of climbing at this level to try it out.

The Hostess Gully provides a large number of climbs (I counted 15) with a short approach, excellent rock, solid bolts, and enjoyable moderate climbing. It’s hot here in summer – we were already experiencing temperatures in the high 80s in late June – but early morning provides pleasant shade.