Lost Arrow, the Tip

By: Bill Wright | Climbers: Bill Wright, Lou Lorber, Tom Karpeichik, Judy Morgan |Trip Dates: June 4, 2001

Photo: Gary Clark

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In years past, it has been quite rare for me to repeat a route, but recently I've been more interested in working routes and doing them faster. This trip I was also looking forward to repeating some of the classics with my friends. While I had previously climbed the Lost Arrow Spire, I did not do the famous Tyrolean traverse to get off the top. My partner on this previous trip was too intimidated by the Tyrolean, but this time my partners wanted to climb it because of the Tyrolean.

Lou had spent the previous weekend in the Valley with another friend, but he met up with us at Hans' house on Sunday night. He'd be joining the party until Friday morning and was Gung-Ho for the Spire. We packed that night and set the alarms for 6 a.m.

We were hiking up the Falls Trail around 7 a.m. My friend John Black has run up this trail in 48 minutes. We elected to hike it instead, as we were heavily laden with gear. We needed four ropes to complete this adventure. Each climbing team of two would need a single lead rope, but we needed two additional ropes to set up the Tyrolean Traverse from the summit of the Spire back to the rim. It took us an hour and fifty minutes to climb up to the winter closure gate.

From the bridge above the falls, it was still a good mile over to Yosemite Point overlooking the Lost Arrow Spire. We continued up the trail at a moderate pace and soon found ourselves at the big tree that would serve as our Tyrolean anchor. We firmly attached one rope and sent Tom down with the second rope. I told him there was an anchor below and that he could merely fix the second rope to that anchor so that everyone could descend quickly and easily. I'd handle tying the ropes together so that we could drag them up the climb to the top of the spire.

We waited and waited for the "Off rappel!" call from Tom, but it didn't come. We figured he couldn't find the anchors and had to tie on the second rope in mid-rappel and then figure out how to jug past the knot. On the rim, I grilled Judy on how to perform this feat so that it would go smoothly when she got down there. The key here is to know how to use ascenders and to tie a small knot to connect the two ropes, since you'll have to down jumar over this knot and you'll need to be able to reach your upper ascender.

Nearly an hour passed without a call from Tom. What was going on? We decided to send Lou down on a second line to rescue Tom. I thought this was a good idea regardless since it would make it so much easier for Lou and Judy to complete the descent. With two ropes, they could rappel down one rope past the knot on the other, clapping on the jugs to the current rappel rope, switch rappel device to the other rope, down jumar a couple feet to take up the slack in the second rope and be off. It should take a couple minutes at most - at least that was theory. In practice it took Lou and Judy 30 minutes each to perform this action.

Once Judy was off the second rope, I dropped it into the notch and started my rappel. I found both a nice, two-bolt anchor and a small ledge. I stopped on the ledge, pulled up the second rope to re-tie the knot at that point, switched my rappel device underneath the knot and was in the notch in no time. Apparently, Tom hadn't found the anchor since we was on the other side of the buttress. I don't know why the others didn't see it since they rappelled the same rope as I did, but I think they were just so focused on passing the knot via their ascenders. It turned out to be good practice for everyone and we were in no hurry anyway, having only two pitches to climb. This descent took us two hours!

Tom still wasn't leading by the time I got to the notch. Clearly, no one was in a hurry here. It was a beautiful day and I relaxed in the notch and talked with Lou while Tom made the extremely exposed moves out of the notch and up the initial thin crack. The route up the spire consists of two pitches. The first starts out of the left side of the notch and immediately gives the climber 1600 feet of sheer vertical exposure. The climbing is initially in a small corner that leads to a nice ledge. Above the ledge is a hand/fist crack that shoots up to the comfortable Salathé Ledge. Once Tom got here, he fixed the rope and Judy started to jug - with the Tyrolean rope attached to her harness. In order to set-up the Tyrolean traverse, we'd have to keep one end of the rope with us. The other end was firmly attached to the tree on the rim. Once we reached the summit of the spire, we'd attach it to the spire and go across.

Lou started leading the pitch as soon as Judy was jugging and he moved fairly quickly up to the fist crack. Here things slowed a bit, but soon I was on belay. I wanted to try free climbing the pitch since there was no rush and I had a toprope. The first pitch is supposedly 5.10+ and I found it quite challenging. It is a cool mix of very technical stemming, smearing and high steps and then a burly hand/fist crack section. I freed the lower section except for one tug on a quickdraw at the second hard high step. I couldn't find a sufficiently positive hold. Then on the crack section, I was doing fine and utilizing some key face footholds for stemming rests, but when they disappeared my tape-less hands cried for relief. I pulled on one cam here. I think I could go back and free this entire pitch with a little more effort.

When I got to the Salathé Ledge, Tom was only a couple of placements into the next lead. There is a very tricky move early on in this pitch and Tom finally solved it by threading a tiny wired stopper through the eye of an ancient piton. Later, while doing the Tyrolean Traverse, a member of another climbing team would poke his head around the corner of the spire and shout to me, "How do you do the start of the second pitch?" It baffled more than one team.

Once by that section, the rest of the pitch is mostly fixed and Tom zoomed to the top. Lou didn't want to lead the next pitch, so I did. I didn't try to free anything, though - it's a bit scarier on lead. I arrived on the top and we talked through the logistics of the traverse. At first we pulled the rope fairly tight and we should have left it this way, but when I lowered Tom out, he only went down a few feet before he would have had to start jugging the horizontal line. The reason for this is that the rim is considerably higher than the top of the spire.

We loosened up the rope and bit and then Tom clipped himself to the fixed rope via a couple of locking carabiners and I lowered him on a second line. He dropped out to the middle of the abyss and then slapped on his ascenders. He first just pulled himself across the line and then had to start jugging the nearly vertical free-hanging line. It was tough going until he got his feet on the far wall and then it was just ascending a normal fixed line.

Judy's stomach was churning about the prospect of this traverse, but once out there she did fine and was soon on the rim. As each climber hit the rim, they quickly moved over to a better vantage point for watching the antics of the remaining climbers. Tom shot more than a roll of film of us crossing. Lou went across with one of our remaining ropes. He didn't want to put it on his back as he feared it would tip him upside down and he be stuck dangling on the rope in the middle of the traverse. Instead he clipped it to his harness. He went across quickly and easily. Finally it was my turn. I had to tie the two ropes together like I was doing a rappel so that we could retrieve the ropes. Then I took a third rope and used it to rappel off the spire. I didn't get far (only twenty feet) before the rope pulled tight on me and it was time to start jugging. The toughest part was pulling down my rappel line. I was worried that I'd be the only one who couldn't perform the traverse in a reasonable manner, but my crossing went very well since the rope was tighter for me due to tying the ropes together (the other rope was a bit shorter).

Once on the rim we didn't waste much time packing up and heading down. We planned for a long next day and wanted to start eating and relaxing. Hiking down the trail, we passed a couple coming down with a porta-ledge attached to one pack. Judy, who was hiking ahead of us, had already spoken with them and they had known about our climb. As we passed by the guy, a lean, muscular man who was clearly a climbing stud, said, "Alright, Lost Arrow Spire as a foursome in a day from the Valley floor!" I stopped and looked at him a bit before responding, "Are you pulling our leg?" We certainly weren't fast - we were slow. The route is only two pitches long and the approach, while arduous, is nothing that would make a day ascent very difficult. He responded that he was sincere and we chatted a bit longer. They were coming off of the Muir Wall and I joked if they had freed it, knowing that Caldwell and Sager had just done the first free ascent. They mentioned adding some new bolts to the belays.

They asked what was next for us and I said the Steck-Salathé. He told us that he'd added belay bolts to that route also. I was now curious who this route maintenance Samaritan was. Could he possibly be someone that I knew by reputation:

"What's your name?"

"Bruce."

"Bruce who?"

"Bruce Bindner."

"Dang! I know you. Brutus of Wyde! I know you from your hilarious posts to rec.climbing."

I introduced myself and my friends to Brutus and Em "Nurse Ratchet", his female companion. He graciously recognized my name from some of my posts. We also had some mutual friends: Lord Slime and Opie Taylor. Bruce knew that I like to climb fast and mentioned something along these lines. I felt silly receiving some praise from a climber who I knew to be much better and faster. I can easily see why everyone that meets him likes him. He's very congenial. They offered to give us a new topo of the Steck-Salathé route, but it was down at their car and we said we'd be fine. As it turns out, I'd be very curious to see his topo of this route. After the next day, I'd draw a new one myself.

Editor's Note: This report can also be found on the author's web site. The author is a Major Contributor to the North American Classics project.