Astroman

What a beast. we had seen it several times over the last 2 weeks but when we actually rocked up there to climb it, I felt like one of the smurfs with Gargamel looming over them, ready to throw them into the cauldron. It was just first light- about 6am and the day was fairly cool. We were as ready as we were likely to be.
After the Rostrum, we had seriously thought that perhaps astroman would be left for next time, but in much the same way that mothers forget the pain and think that maybe they should have another kid, we started to toy with doing astro boy one day (the first half of astroman with an easy retreat) and then doing the man two days later if we thought we could. It then seemed like a better idea to wahbit another rest day and then just have at the bastard. The first thing that went wrong was that the first of my head camera bateries was dead. Gargamel's spells were powerful.
Alex lead the first 5.7 east pitch basically as a solo and then joined it to the first harder 5.10a pitch. For speed (our new diety) he lead the easy but less protected version of the boulder problem. It realy is by far the most natural line and the 11c hard bit seemed very contrived, especially when we weren't keen to waste energy that may be required on the last pitches. It was at the end of this pitch that Alex managed to drop a litre of water. What the hell, just 1/5 of our total water on a 10 hour climb. We hardly even blinked because we would not let Gargamel's spells get the better of us.
Then came perhaps the most asthetically impressive pitch that i have ever been on. The Enduro corner. From our recon photos, it looked to be jammable rather than needing to stem out and burn out my calves. I was right in a way. I could indeed thin hands jam it, keeping all 4 limbs in the crack most of the time. Placing gear though without stemming was damn pumpy and i sat on the rope several times, even grabbing the gear to clip the rope once or twice. Still, other than being thin and pumpy, there were no really hard moves. The easy 5.7 chimney at its top had worried me after the one of the same grade on the first pitch of the Rostrum. Luckilly this one felt like a proper 5.7 and i flew through it.
It was while Alex was climbing this pitch that I manged to drop one of our #3 cams. I could have really used it on the 5th pitch too. Astroman trying to thwart our attempt again, or just plain carelessnes when doing too many things at once?
The next pitch was fairly east but with some small sting at the end.
The last of my 3 pitch block was a bit nasty. A flarring chimney with a beautiful hand crack at the back. I didn't do it as well as i could have but it was good fun and the last half where I had to stem out with my feet and place some tiny nuts seemed a lot easier than it looked and what the book said.
The next pitch was one of the most notorious and intimidating pitches I have ever seen. The harding slot. Alex was doing this pitch. It is a roof that sticks out about 20 feet and is about 20 feet high. The harding slot is less than a foot wide and cuts this roof in two. The thin crack leading up to it's flarring bottom is about 30 degrees overhanging with little for the feet to grab. We arived at the base of the slot at 12 pmidday. Not bad time at all. Stupidly, i had forgotton to take one of our magical rope bags from the last pitch. We managed to get the ropes tangled when organising how to drag the gear through the slot as you cant wear even a helmet through.
After about half an hour we had sorted our shit out and Alex headed up. In total, He was in the slot for about an hour, moving up a few feet and then sliding back again annoyingly to the same spot. At least 4 times he tried this with no success. Eventualy, he was totally exhausted from the difficult thrutching where somethimes he couldn't even turn his head. Tonnes of rock either side of him with an open flarring bottom 600 feet off the ground. Both cloistrophobia and exposure at the same time.
At about 2:00 we decided that we had missed our window and would have to decend. Luckily some other group had left very overcammed #1 inside the slot for Alex to descend from. The rest of the descent was ok but there was lots of wind and it wasn't quite strait forward. When back at the bottom, we found both the cam and Alex's drink next to each other.
The moral to the story is this. It doesn't matter how well you can climb 9 of the 10 pitches, if you don't know how to wriggle through 20 feet of tight squeeze, you are heading down. Even though we didn't win the game, we managed to throw everything at it, regardless of what it threw at us. We also learned heaps about how to move fast and get these big climbs done on time. We will come back to do astroman at some stage and no doubt in better style.
We are also going to complete this blog with high res photos and detailed descriptions of both the Rostrum and Astroman to help anyone else who is keen for a go and wants to give themselves the best chance possible.


Me looking up the enduro corner


Starting up the easyish pitch


Alex deep in the slot


Having been denied 4 times, Alex is lowering from someone elses lost cam


Just some ofmthe damage done in the mouth of the monster

Rostrum 2- the redemption

well, that was interesting. we prviously reached the ledge at the end of the third pitch after 5 hours. yesterday, lighter and determinrd to climb fast and not to procrastinate, we got there in half the time.
after a quick break we headed up for the other five pitches, starting with the 11c crux. how Alex Honold can solo that is crazy. the feet are very slick and the climbing is steep with powerful locks. lets just say that after three pitches of hard climbing I sat on some gear more than once. I think that it is about a frog 24 which I wouldn't normally on sight. Pretty short and quite workable though if fresh. That oitch finishes with a classic yosemite "5.9" section which ended my 4 pitch block.
Alex took over the lead and bravely lead the ugliest pitch on the climb. A six inch offwidth in which John - my big cam - was his saviour. you basically use every technique possible to avoid getting right in the crack but eventually you have no choice.
The two guys behind us were great to climb with. Tom from petzel was getting each pitch clean, including the 11c. They only started from the third pitch so were fresh and enthusiastic. Luckily for Tom, they didnt pass us, but I think he wanted to see how we did on the two offwidths. on the first one, his only big cam wouldnt fit and he would have had to run it out badly. I lowered him down John and he managed to thrutch his way through cleanly, if any offwidth climbing can be called clean.
the last pitch was another offwidth which starts traversing under a roof and from there the belayer cant see the rest of the pitch. getting up into the crack was hard and Alex did awesomely while I chatted to tom about gear and stuff. from the top of the climb I lowered down John and the new massive cam. otherwise Tom would have basically been soloing.
Tom was very appreciative of John and the other cam that there was a grigri 2 attached to John when he handed him back. Thanks Tom.
The whole day was great and I have never done so many hand jams in a day or even a week. I almost wished that I had taped up, but not quite. 4 amazing hand sections. thin hands corner, perfect to wide hands for 20m, a hard thin hands corner and finally an amazing perfect hands overhung section finishing with very hard 11b moves to finger locks.
We are seriously considering doing the last 5 pitches again to see if we can get them clean as well.

Tom from Petzl on the 10c thin hands

Tom and Greg still on pitch 5

Alex on Pitch 7, overhanging hand crack with some stems. The top of the Rostrum looming above.

Looking down from pitch 6 past my designer rope bag

Sitting in the cave before pitch 8 offwidth. Cosy if you don't think about what is to come.

 Bye Bye Alex and good luck getting into the off width via the overhanging shitstorm of a forearm jamming layback stem moves.

 Us on the top of the Rostrum with plenty of daylight and the taste of victory quenching our otherwise very dry mouths.

Rostrum 2nd Attempt

We have revised much of our tactics for the Rostrum now so that we can get it done in daylight. If we cant get it done then we are going to have real problems on Astroman since it will be hotter and longer and harder. Astroman is in the Sun and the Rostrum is in the shade. We are not taking any sort of back back or haul bag this time. We will just take a small stuff sack to put food in and taped up bottles of water for our drinks. We plan on taking only 2 litres each. We have also rethought our gear selection so that we are leaving some stuff back in the car and the leader wont be taking everything they imagine that they could use, just the stuff that we think we will need on that pitch.
Lighter weight, longer runouts and some knowledge of the first part of the route should give us the best chance we have to do this and Astroman.

Tomorrow is the day so we will be having dinner and getting ready for bed soon.

...... Might be a couple of days till I get to report again .....

Rostrum 1st attempt

We tried the Rostrum which was one of our big projects over here. It is 8 pitches of very good climbing. Some people call it the best climb in the valley.

It starts off with a fairly easy pitch and then the 4th pitch is the crux at 5.11c.

Things didn go exactly as planned. We tried ot haul a bag up with us. There seem to be 2 ways to go and both are a catch 22. If you want to take lots of water and food with you, then you need to haul a bag. But then you spend longer so you need more water. We liked this option but it turned out to be a bit of a fizzer on the single day long climbs.
I took too long on the first pitch because the last section was a fairly easy grade squeeze chimney. I had way too much gear on and it was getting caught all over the place. At one point, I was so jammed into the thinner part that I couldn even turn my head. Can wait for the harding slot on Astroman which is even tighter. I had to rearrange all of my gear from my back to the front before I could move properly. I eventually go up it and set up the belay. We were loosing time fast.

Some fast guys were waiting so we just let them go through. They seemed disappointed to find out that we were hauling a bag on a route that they planned to do in 3 hours. Anyway, the guy flew up thte thing strait to the 2nd pitch and only placed 1 piece of gear on the first pitch (30m). Mental, but light, fast and impressive.

I did the second pitch the same way that he had, a bit more run out but faster and slightly easier. I was very impressed when I did the moves and got to place some gear. When I moved up a bit further, my back twinged a bit and it seems that I must have pulled a muscle pulling through the vertical lieback moves. I couldn't get it to come good so I banged in a piece of gear and lowered down and Alex took over the leading for a while.

Just above where I had gotten to, he managed to take 2 scary falls, as is his way. The first one, he kind of flipped upside down. Not too dangerous, just scary. He finally got the second pitch.

The 3rd pitch which we will join to the 2nd next time was one of the best thin hands corner cracks you can imagine. I got some head cam footage of it.

The 4th pitch which finishes at an escape ledge was even better, with a hard start followed by a slightly wide hand crack that went for about 15 meters, even a bit overhung at one point. I also got some footage of this pitch.

From the ledge we checked the time, with the crux pitch just above. It is a 5.11c finger crack followed by an 11b Lieback. it was 2:30 already so we assessed where we were too slow and decided to come back and do it properly. Lighter, Smarter and faster.

The ledge where we bailed out at 2:30 was level with where the trees on the right come furthest to the left. Almost half way.

The climb is 800 feet or about 250m. It finishes up to the right of the roof at the top near the pointy bit.
If you look closely (click on the image and zoom in) in the bottom third of the cliff, you can see 2 guys on the route. We took this photo the day before we tried it.

Nut Cracker

The day after doing the Moratorium, we decided to go up an easier one. Nutcracker is a 5 pitch, 5 star climb that is not very hard. About 600 feet long and below vertical. It is a grade 5.8 (16) in comparison to the Moratorium 5.11b (23) but it was a bit scary in places.

The first pitch requires slinging a tree up about 20 feet and then running out another 20 feet above the tree before getting some gear in. It is a lie back flake where you walk your feet up on the wall behind the flake, relying on the positive angle and the friction on the rock to stop you from taking a serious fall.

Most of it was pretty fun and we often ran it out up to 7 or 8 meters to save time where it was positive holds. the rock was bloody hot.

The crux move both of the climb is a 5.8 mantle onto a block above a non-verticle slab, with the last protection at the bottom of the block. A fall in the mantle would leave a very lasting impression in the slab below. Probably about 4 meters before you would slam home. Anyway, Alex felt around the top of the block before commiting and found a good jug. He got up in good style and noone got hurt. Seconding the pitch was almost as bad as it would have meant swinging across the block with the rope not in a good position.

The moral to the story is that I would never do this route if I was a 5.8 climber, or even a 5.10 climber probably. There are far nicer routes to get hurt on. I think that it should only be a 3 star climb.

the moritorium

after not very much sleep on the aeroplane and on about 6 hours on our night at the hotel, we set out for our first climb. we wanted to start on something that would tellmus wher we are at so we chose to climb the first 3 pitches of the Moritorium. we wanted to skip the forth because we wanted to wrap. The pitches were 10d(21), 10d(21), 11b(22/23).

alex lead the first 2 and i lead the lasr one. jetlag, tiredness and a bit of altitude made it a bit tougher, not to mention the learning how to climb on yosemite granite. relearning in my case. we took longer than expected and we didnt get it clean, but we also didnt aid our way up. the last pitch was a great learning experience in very difficult stemming on a 90ish degree corner with a tiny crack and

alex working on the first pitch. if anyone is going to climb this pitch, just ignore the mentions of 5.9 in the topo. it is about 1 move. the second pitch grading was far more accurate. the firat is like sustained 10b laybacks.

arrived in Yosemite (or near enough)

Warning. If you are travelling to the US, you need to get a visa waiver thingie before you go to the airport. woops.

luckily for my great social powers, I engaged the services of a supervisor at Qantas
Jeffrey xxxxxxxx was his name and he inittially said that we didnt have enought time for me to do it. he then kicked into gear and worked out how to sort it before we checked in. 5 minutes before closing, he checked us in and we all said our goodbyes. we almost didnt get here.

we got about 2 hours sleep on the plane, although I dont think that Alex really got any.
we then did all of our shopping and stuff and drove at least 4 hours tooakhurst, just outside of Yosemite. weather was good but hotish.