Middle Cathedral Rock, East Buttress

By: Greg Opland | Climbers: Greg Opland, Inez Drixelius |Trip Dates: September 28, 1995

Photo: Gary Clark

® The author(s) and naclassics.com | Back to climb page NAC Home page

Back in July, I get e-mail from Inez. She says there are plans in the works to get the two most able climbers we know together for a shot at the world famous hardman climb, Astroman, in Yosemite. The trip is slated for the last weekend in September and Gnar needs a partner to go up Royal Arches with her to play support team for Brutus and Slime.

I send mail back and tell her if she climbs the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock with me a couple days before the Astroman event, I'm in. She accepts and we all make plans to converge on the Valley in September. A long two months pass in which I practice the Bob Harrington beer workout. This doesn't make my forearms bulge, but gives me plenty of mental bravado for the climbs ahead. Knowing that the two big climbs we have planned are fairly straight forward and relatively easy helps a lot too. Brutus and Slime didn't have that problem, and I'm sure that Astroman weighed on them heavily right from the day of committment.

This got me set up to increase my tally of Fifty Classic Climbs to three for this year so far. I'd even envisioned maybe hiking up to do the Lost Arrow Spire on Friday to bag three of the Classics in a weekend but in the end, it was hard finding someone willing to hike all the way up there to do the route, and it dawned on me that I might be biting off more than I could chew for one weekend. Sitting here now, it seems like it would have been possible... yeah, right. The story goes on...

Wednesday, Sep. 27:

I fly into the Oakland airport just after 2:30 in the afternoon, locate the bag-from-hell (tm) and nearly throw my back all the way to Phoenix pulling the load off the carousel. Brutus shows up in The Cave (his truck) 15 minutes later and we stomp my load into the back and fire off to the Valley after a quick stopover at his place for a guidebook.

"I'm psyched!" I say as we leave Oakland bound for the Valley. "I'm terrified!" Brutus responds, in reference to the impending Astroman experience. "I can sympathize with that emotion", I think, glad that I'm just a wienie 5.7+ climber and doing safe, sidewalk pavement routes compared to the beast that Brutus is apprehensing over. Sometimes it pays to be weak in the climbing department.

We camp outside the Valley that night, actually getting in early enough to get a fairly good night's sleep before our scheduled meeting with Gnar-Gnar (Inez) at the Bridalveil Falls parking lot at 6am (groan!). We hit the sack. Unfortunately for me, we'd made a stop on the way in at Taco Hell, and about 3:30 in the morning, I was paying the price, listening to my poor stomach gurgle and whine about the undisclosed macabre assortment of psuedo-meat by-products I'd assaulted it with. The noise was deafening in my sleeping bag and it made it hard to sleep very well. I kept expecting a scene from "Aliens" to be replayed right there in my bag! Morning finally came and we headed off to the rendezvous with the Gnar girl. We got to the parking lot at 5:30a, so I jumped into the back of the cave for a quick siesta while Brutus tinkered with his new camp expresso maker. Right on the money, Inez shows up smack at six bells and distributes hugs to the waiting throng (actually just Brutus and me). I transfer to the Gnarmobile and we head off to the parking for Middle Cathedral Rock.

Thursday, Sep. 28:

Our goal for the day was the immensely popular East Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock. According to reports I'd heard, the East Buttress generally has a string of climbing parties on it that look like ants at a company picnic. For the record, we didn't see one climbing party all day! This would be my fifth of the 50 Crowded Climbs, and on every one (so far), I've been able to do the climb in relative seclusion. The closest I got to "crowded" was all those parties lined up at the base of Fairview Dome in Tuolumne Meadows as we topped out, but they were well behind us and no problem at all.

The East Buttress is Fifty Classic Climb #42. First climbed in 1955 by Valley legend Warren Harding, with Jack Davis and Bob Swift, the route features 11 pitches of incredible moderate climbing on beautiful rock. The bottleneck would probably be the bolt ladder (climbable at 5.10c) on the fifth pitch. I had the nod for that lead, but since I've only been climbing cracks for a long time, forsaking any face climbing technique I may have once had, I planned on a quick A0 ascent of the ladder to save time (and face).

We made the short hike to the start of the route, stiff muscles loosening up gradually as we walked through rustling leaves, already grounded with the colors of fall. I realized that the photocopy of the topo for the route was still in the car about that time. Not too thrilled about going back to the car, we decided to wing it. Inez had been up the route three years before and seemed to remember that there was rock on it somewhere. Between her memory and common sense, we figured we could find the way up. As it turned out, all we really needed for a route description was "follow the blazing streak of chalk running from base to summit on the east buttress."

As Allen Steck has said (somewhat paraphrased), "I don't need to take chalk with me. I can use all this chalk someone left here!" Ironically, I misplaced my chalk bag some weeks before and had spent the last few weekends climbing chalk-free. I still hadn't found it by the time I'd left for Yosemite on this trip.

Inez snagged the first pitch and racked up. We had lift off at about 7:20a. The first pitch was pretty easy, noted in the topo at 5.3 or so. Broken steps lead about 60 feet up to the top of a small pedestal with bushes and a tree on it. She made short work of it and I joined her soon after. The second pitch heads around the right side of a small overhang. Inez said something about moving up 5.8 moves on the right side past a fixed pin. I started out. The side of the overhang was kind of weird. I pulled up into a stem, laybacking off a small spike of rock, and clipped the pin, but the rest of the move was very awkward and hard to finish. I didn't trust my feet very much on the smooth Yosemite granite yet (I'm used to the epidermal-rending desert variety). I got through the move and continued on to a small ledge with a stout tree festooned with tons of sling. Figuring this was the belay, I anchored in and brought Inez up. The actual belay is the infamous Ant Tree just up and to the right of my tree. Whoops! Guess I missed out on the ants. Bummer.

Inez re-racked and headed up pitch three, a nice-looking left facing corner heading up from the Ant Tree. She had no problem with the nice layback moves up to the top of the corner. We had no topo, but I recalled someone saying something about running the third and fourth pitches into one long one, so she kept going. At the top of the corner, you switch sides and move right into a right-facing corner. More really nice laybacking and jamming took Inez up the wall. My little blurb of belaying on the ledge below the Ant Tree kept us from getting the two pitches into one, though, and she had to stop on a small stance and bring me up so she could finish the fourth pitch. She cruised the last section soon after and brought me up to a nice ledge with a two-bolt anchor. To our left and up was the famous bolt ladder pitch, featured as the cover shot of Fifty Classic Climbs.

We grabbed a quick slurp of water and I traversed left to the bolt ladder, just above a squared-off boulder perched on the ledge. I had long since decided just to aid the line. It would be faster and I wouldn't complicate things with a bunch of lead falls on the glasslike rock of the small headwall. I did a bunch of high-stepping in slings on the bolts and was soon looking at the last one. This had a bit of stretch to it, and a frayed 4" piece of perlon, tied to the bolt, wiggled in the light breeze. The high step went ok and I grabbed onto the perlon fragment, quickly snapping a quickdraw on the bolt. From there, I did a tension traverse to the left (man, it's always weird moving from aid to free climbing!). Ten feet left, I was looking up into the 5.9 roof leading to easier climbing. A 15-foot piece of webbing, with periodic loops in it, hung from the sole fixed pin at the lip of the roof. Kind of trashy, but it worked for me. I clipped into the end of the sling and free climbed up into the roof. I was soon dangling from the pin, working to get a better piece in the crack above. Some mixed climbing moves got me over the roof and onto some really nice flakes above. I ran for the belay. Gnar-Gnar free climbed most of the pitch, but had a bit of problem pulling the nut I'd placed at the lip of the roof. She was soon poking at it to loosen the nut, but things got crossed up and I heard a single "tink" and then "SHIT!" as her nut tool surrendered to gravity and the forest below. She had already loosened the nut, so she grabbed it and fired up to the belay in short order.

From this belay, the route can go one of two ways. Either to the left into a long, large chimney system, or to the right, across a semi- protected face that takes you to a cleaner crack system leading to the top. This version had been discovered by Yvon Chouinard and Mort Hemple in 1961 and has become the ruta normale for most climbers since that time. Frankly, I didn't think the chimneys looked all that grim. If I repeat this route, I'm heading that way next time to check it out. But, I digress... Inez, being the total Gnar-chick, and really solid on runout face climbing (after that pitch on the Steck-Salathe, she can lead all my runout face climbs for me!), took the rack and struck out for the next belay. A fixed pin was buried in a dying crack about 15 feet out, then a decent .75 Camalot before tip-toeing across the face for another 20 feet to get to a nasty looking pin for the delicate 5.7 move required to make easier ground on the way over to the belay. She took a moment to think about this, and told me to stop singing Christmas carols while she was climbing (everyone's a critic! :-) ), but moved on through this looking very solid. Another 25 feet to the right and she was anchored in. I did fine getting over to the last pin, but eyeballing the fall I was in for if I slipped off the mantle move (a nice head-busting helmet-cracking left facing corner) had my adrenaline pump turning over. The pack pulling me back off the rock wasn't helping things along either. I locked onto small holds, said a quick homage to Allah, cranked through the section, and ran like hell for the belay.

After a bit of water, I headed up the next pitch. A really fun bit of scampering up a left facing corner. Laybacks galore! Moving right at the top, I pulled a small ledge system that took me up another similar corner out to the right. This corner was really enjoyable climbing, too. About 100' out, the corner died. Not having a topo, I resorted to looking around for chalk marks, which didn't let me down. A few face holds out and up to the left, put me at the bottom of a flared crack system, on a nice little ledge block. I would have been happier with the belay if I'd had three angle pitons and a hammer, but I got an assortment of mostly trustworthy nuts in, and called it good.

The next pitch, our eighth, was rather intimidating looking from below, kind of dark and sinister. Inez remarked that it looked rather tricky before she started up to lead the pitch. I noticed later in Fifty Classics that this pitch had received due attention from the authors: "V-Slot Pitch. This 100-foot flared groove required every technique except pure friction climbing. A lieback move was followed by a strenuous handjam; a delicate face-climbing maneuver evolved into a wild stem. Many 5.7 moves were interspersed with minuscule resting stances where the leader could smash a piton into the perfect crack in the back of the groove. Some climbers consider the V-Slot to be the most entertaining 5.7 pitch in Yosemite Valley."

After climbing it, I would say that's a pretty good description. Inez started out cautiously, but picked up speed as she went, finding the climbing continuous, but interesting, fun, and well within her abilities. She went out quite a ways until I had to yell up that she should look for a belay (rope growing short). She set up on a tiny, uncomfortble stance and brought me up. When I got there, I just grabbed a bunch of gear, scrambled directly over her with some weird contortions involving my crotch and the top of her head, and headed up the next pitch, so we could move off the crappy stance belay as soon as possible. Easy face climbing up and slightly left led to a tree. The crack system disappeared but seemed to start up again around to the left. I traversed over left and found another left-facing corner heading up. This was solid climbing, and only 5.6, so I ran it out, reaching the belay as fast as I could. I found a nice three-tree ledge system where I got really comfortable and belayed Inez up.

We took a short break to snarf some trail mix and water before heading up the last couple of pitches. Inez had mentioned how much she totally enjoyed climbing with the small backpack on. We'd affectionately named the little monster "m.f." (after the climb in the Gunks?) for the day, a reflection of what fun it was to climb with the damn thing. The pitch above looked kind of tricky. Gnar took off up the left-facing corner after our break. We were both ready to be at the top, and from below it looked like we were nearly there. The corner had a few surprises, but mainly just straight ahead climbing where the hand and footholds would periodically get scarce. As she neared the top of the corner, I yelled out that the rope was getting rather short (we had a 200-footer, how the hell does anyone climb this thing with a normal rope?). She broke left and across to a good tree and I came up. I looked in the topo later after we got down and saw that the pitch was 5.8. That greasy little move near the top of the pitch wouldn't have me arguing with the grade.

I grabbed the gear and headed up the last pitch, a flared trough heading of towards a set of ledges above. The Katwalk? The trough was full of leaves and pine needles, which made it slickern' snot, but by stemming and sideways chimneying moves, I could "keep off the grass", so to speak. I ran the rope out until near the top, and heard "10-feet" when I was about 10 feet from a tree at the top of the gully (how the hell does anyone do this with a normal rope?). Inez took out the anchor and gave me the last bit of rope to get to the tree and I put her on. Long pitch. A few minutes later, we celebrated a wonderful climb.

We coiled up the rope and grabbed some water. Looking around yielded clear evidence of the walk-off route. Not only was there a big cairn stacked about 10 feet away, some environmentally numb bonehead had scratched an arrow on the rock (next to the cairn) pointing to the obviously well-worn trail. The trail wound up and out over the shoulder of Middle Cathedral and continued along the Kat Walk all the way over to the top of the gully between Middle and Higher Cathedral Rocks. If you have to rap before then, you'd be in bad shape. The trail looks like a tourist trail, tramped down and obvious, nearly impossible to lose, although occasional side trips appear in places. Once at the top of the gully, we worked down broken ledges and talus to the first rappel. Gnar went off first and I followed. We rapped down to another set of slings and pulled the rope. Or should I say, started to pull the rope. The end came down and got stuck on the first ledge below the slings. I climbed nearly all the way back up the rappel to loose the knot, which was nothing more than the taped end of the rope caught behind a small rock, and then back down. How come we rappelled?

We did another rap, then more scrambling to a last rappel. Once past that, it was a cruise down through the broken rock back to the car. We threw the stuff in and headed off to the campsite. A quick trip to Curry Village for showers and we returned to find Brutus and John having a beer and talking at the picnic table about their adventures that day on Moratorium (11b) along the bottom right hand side of El Cap. Sounded like they had a good time. We drank more beer, got generally obnoxious, and fixed dinner at the camp that night. Chicken tits, veggies, lentils, and pasta. Goooooood eatin'! Great day!

Editor's Note: The author is a Major Contributor to the North American Classics project.