Yosemite Valley (Oct. 11-14, 2007)

Roanne and I were married on Oct. 14, 2006, so for our one year wedding anniversary we decided to do something fun.  After tossing around a few ideas (this involved me proposing various rock climbing destinations and Roanne nixing them and suggesting alternate venues) we finally compromised on Yosemite, as Roanne had never been there before and it is an amazing place.  I flew out from Salt Lake on Thursday afternoon, and Roanne flew out from Seattle, and we met in the Sacramento airport around 4:30pm.  We then took a shuttle to the car rental spot in the airport, but then found out that our chosen rental agency (Payless) had a seperate location, so we had to wait for the payless guy to come and get us, and he took us to their location, which was in some random hotel.  Our car was a toyota Corrolla which was pretty nice but reeked of air freshener so strongly that we had to drive with the windows down for the entire trip.  Word of warning: don't rent cars from Payless in Sacremento.  We finally set out on the 3 hour drive to Yosemite, stopping en route to buy me some new pants since Roanne deemed all the pants that I had packed (a dirty pair of jeans and some prana climbing pants) inappropriate for a celebratory anniversary dinner.  We arrived in the valley around 10:00pm, and checked into our tent cabin in Curry Village.  It was pretty nice, except the blankets provided for the bed were a bit inadequate so we were a bit cold.  We were awoken around 6:00am by a bunch of annoying boyscouts (or something like that) running around and yelling that they wanted to watch videos on their iPods instead of go hiking.  Modern kids are so lame.  We finally rolled out of bed and had a big buffet breakfast in the dining hall and then decided to hike up to the top of Upper Yosemite Falls.  When it is running, it is the highest waterfall in North America, and the 5th highest in the world.  Unfortunately, it's water source is snow melt so it runs dry by late summer, and never actually saw any water run over the falls.  It was a nice hike though, gaining just under 3000 feet of elevation to the high point and about 8 miles round trip.  Here is a photo of Roanne sitting on a big tree most of the way to the top of the falls:

At the top of the falls we walked around where the water would have been flowing, here is the view looking out from where the falls go:

All of the granite was really polished from the water running over it.  We hiked up this granite river bed until we came to a nice bridge that Roanne is shown sitting on top of in this picture:

We then continued on to Yosemite Point, where we had a nice view of Half Dome, which we planned on hiking the next day:

We also went by the lost arrow spire, which is a really tall and slender spire that is partially disconnected from the formation that the falls come out of.  Here is a picture of Roanne getting close to the edge to check out the spire.  You can see some slings on top of the spire, these are used as an anchor by people that slackline between the spire and the main granite monolith.  Crazy!  Looking down into the valley you can see some of the meadows.

We then headed back down, and on the way out walked around Camp 4 to check out some of the classic boulder problems, such as Midnight Lightning.  After making our way back, there was still about an hour of daylight left, and Roanne was tired and decided to read so I went out to check out some of the bouldering around Curry Village.  I did a bunch of classic moderate problems, two standouts of which were The Angler (V3) and Zorro (V4).  It was really fun, the boulders in Yosmite are much more featured than in Little Cottonwood, making for fun problems that are a little less funky.  As it got quite dark I headed back to our tent cabin, which incidentally was beside a large boulder which had a V7 on it called Flapping Shoe.  I hadn't tried it before since I had thought it would be too hard, but in the half darkness I decided to give it a shot since I was warmed up from the other stuff, and lo and behold I flashed it!  Realistically it is probably more like a V3, but the book gives it V7 and two stars, so, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I have my first V7 flash under my belt.  I repeated it the next day with Roanne taking photos, here is a move by move breakdown of the softest V7 in Yosemite:

Start sitting, with hands on a good shelf, then launch up left to grab the bottom of a sloping rail (L), then do a hand foot match to heel hook the starting right side pull (R):

Move right hand up to undercling/sidepull edge (L), then step left foot up to shelf and bump left hand up to a better spot on the sloping rail (R):

Move right foot up to shelf and bump right hand up to a good edge (L), then bring left hand up to another good edge (R) and proceed with a mossy, dirty top out.  Verrr nice!

The next day we rose bright and early, had a big breakfast, and headed for the half dome trailhead.  It wasn't too busy as we set out, and soon we were approaching Nevada Falls, which unlike Yosemite Falls actually had some water flowing over it:

Here is Roanne the responsible outdoor person dropping rocks off of the top:

We then continued on, hiking at a fast pace since we had decided that it would be totally lame if anyone were to pass us.  We passed many more people on this stretch, apparently most people got an earlier start than we did.  Finally our objective came into view through the trees:

We continued up, finally arriving at the cables.  The last time I did this hike there was a bucket of communal gloves at the bottom, but that was not the case this time so we proceeded up with just our bare hands, which wasn't too bad.  Incidentally, the night before in the visitor center we had found out that this was the last weekend that the cables would be up, so we were lucky to arrive when we did!  We finally arrived at the top, after about 8 miles of hiking and 4800 feet of elevation gain.  Here are some photos of us on top: Roanne relaxing, me doing a David Brent impression, and the happy couple.

It was pretty awesome to relax up on top, it was a perfect sunny day, about 60 degrees F and no wind.  We ate the donuts that we had saved from our buffet breakfast, and admired the view.  After relaxing for about 30 minutes we decided to head down, here is a shot of Roanne descending the final stretch of the cables (she is the 5th person from the bottom):

On the way down we were passed by some guy running, which left a bad taste in our mouth, but apparently his exuberance was short lived, as we passed him shortly afterwards, he having slowed to a walk and we maintaining our fast "don't even try to pass us" pace.  We stopped at the Nevada Falls bathroom for a break, and accidentally headed down a different way than we came up, which happened to be a lot nicer.  We passed below Nevada Falls instead of approaching it from the side, here is a shot of it from this vantage point:

We also passed by another more impressive falls called Vernal Falls, note the rainbow:

These would both be a lot more impressive in the spring with the increased water volume.  We finally arrived at the trailhead, and took the shuttle back to our campsite.  I then snuck off to try some more boulder problems while Rosie read her book.  I climbed partway up a really nice V2 finger crack called Short Circuit, but chickened out from topping it out since it was about 20 feet high and I only had one pad and no spotter.  I went up top to take a look at the topout and found some toprope anchors, which made me feel not so bad about chickening out from the topout.  We then went to the Mountain Room where we had a nice anniversary dinner.  The next morning we rose to another beautiful day, I had planned on bouldering that morning but we had to leave earlier than originally planned to catch our flight, so other than checking out a few problems I didn't really climb anything.  We did stop at El Cap meadows to take in a view of the big stone, and pose for Huber brothers pictures in front of The Nose.  Here is Roanne's attempt:

This was a nice first effort for a novice, but there are a few problems: 1) The Huber brothers would never be caught dead with Passion Fruit Tea from Star Bucks, 2) The Huber brothers never smile - they always look very serious as if they about to do a 5.13d deadpoint above an 80 foot runout, 3) The Huber brothers never wear colorful scarves.  I then took a crack at it, doing as well as I could given that I didn't have a pair of leather pants handy:

So, with great sadness we said good bye to the granite wonderland and headed back to the Sacramento airport where we flew home.  We have decided to make exciting trips like this for every anniversary, next year we are tentatively scheduled to visit Hueco Tanks, pending approval by my lovely wife.