Fairview Dome, Regular Route

I cowardly cast my eyes skyward. A gray mass of moisture loomed low overhead. Again, I opened my mouth to voice my veto, but again I closed it. I had several reasons for my veto, but another realization overrode them. It was: "We'll not get another chance like this all weekend. This is a classic 5.9 and the queues will be long at any other time we might attempt it."

Maybe it was Spencer telepathically projecting this thought into my head; maybe it was my knowledge of the general weather pattern in Tuolumne Meadows at this time of year. After all, even though it was overhead, this storm cloud was the only one for miles, and would likely be gone shortly. If it were going to dump on us, it would do so now, before we got on the route. We were racking up at the trailhead to do the Regular Route of Fairview Dome. We had driven up that day, the Friday before Labor Day weekend, and it was almost 4PM. It had been raining hard from Tioga Pass to Lembert Dome as we came through, but the western end was dry. I tried to figure when it was likely to get dark up here. It would be about fifteen minutes later than in San Diego, so I estimated we'd have decent light until about 8PM.

So we had four hours. "How many pitches is this again?" I asked Spencer.

"Eight," he replied. "You want to bring your tricams?"

"Yeah. Crux is at the bottom, right?"

"Yup. We can simul the middle, and the last two are class 3 and 4."

"So we solo that," I finished for him. It seems any Sierra climb I do with Spencer involves simuling and soloing. The two times that I have thrown up while climbing were while climbing 5.9s with Spencer. Some of you may have met Spencer. Longish brown hair, glasses, about fifteen years my junior. Spencer likes big routes and likes wide cracks more than most. The latter makes him a suspicious character, but he is bold and strong, and tends to push my limits. All of us in our midlife crises need our Spencers, but getting the right dosage is important.

"Ready?" Spencer asked. I looked at the cloud, then the dome. If the climb didn't go perfectly, this would be my first major overdose.

"I guess. I've never had an epic before, might as well start now. You've done the descent?" Shrugging into my pack, I started off, walking rapidly up the trail. Spencer had said the approach would be about ten minutes, and it was. He said the descent was easy slab walking, and then one picked up the west trail. That trail came fairly close to the base of our climb, so we elected to leave my pack there, taking Spencer's smaller one.

When we broke out of the tree line as made by the dome's talus, I was again cowed. Not by the cloud, which had already dissipated, but by the size of the dome. This sucker was every bit as big as Tahquitz, and my foreshortened perspective now amplified that. I wondered how cold it now got at night in Tuolumne. We scrambled up to the start of the route to see someone's rump disappearing over a ledge several pitches up. We never saw its owner or anyone else till we got to the SCMA group campsite later.

This being Spencer's idea, I gave him the first pitch, the crux. Spencer likes to have the first pitch, whereas I like to warm up a bit, so this is a typical arrangement for us. It didn't look that bad. It was a low angle, left-facing dihedral, the arete about chest high, bisected by a thin crack. Another crack paralleled it to the left, creating a gentle, ten-foot wide bulge in between. This is where the left foot would go, and that face seemed featureless, so it would be smearing.

In fact, Spencer climbed a ways up the left crack before traversing over the bulge to the dihedral. I relaxed against the face as I belayed and observed Spencer's progress, but the gears in my Bail-o-Meter spun full tilt. "He sure is sewing it up," I thought. However, he was looking slow, not desperate. When Spencer is desperate, he puts in twice the amount of gear in sufficient haste that I usually have trouble cleaning some of it. ANY stuck piece would be trouble. "Gosh he's going slow, it must be worse than it looks." This is a trade route, after all, and the face has indeed been slickened by that passage of many boots. I looked beyond him at the rock that soared to the sky. "Man it had better be a lot faster up there."

I followed, finding the left crack easy, but noting that it did get harder, and the traverse was clearly the right thing to do. Once in the corner, I found that indeed the face was slick, and many of the finger jams were tenuous. The right foot, smeared into the corner, seemed reasonably solid, but every other point of contact was not. This first pitch took almost an hour.

My first pitch was 5.8, and no longer involved a dihedral, just a nice finger & hand crack, topped by a small roof. After that, a ramp curving into an easy right facing dihedral. I got to the end of my 200' rope in twenty minutes. Like Spencer, I had managed not to overcam or overpull when setting gear. But a shadow overtook the base of the dome, and I knew it would catch us before we got to the top. We each simuled for half a pitch, linking three pitches – of which two were 5.7 -- into two. I led another easy pitch, placing only four pieces. I had been trying to will the summit into my sight, but it continued to elude me, while I had not eluded the shadow.

There were two full pitches above us. As I belayed, I watched the alpenglow fade as the last ray of sun sparkled over a ridge to the West. Among several ongoing fires was one to the west, which exuded a haze that enriched the sunset into a bright, broad, orange band across the horizon. I could enjoy the beauty of Tuolumne while belaying, but I was going too fast to really savor the climb. I enjoyed it only in the sense of enjoying the problem solving inherent in working out each move, a steady stream of minor happiness overarched by worry.

It was now time to solo. We had fifteen minutes before it got really dark, and the route finding was not that obvious. Shallow ramps and ledge systems went this way and that. Many seemed to lead to serious fifth class. I realized that should we have to try it with headlamps, the odds of embarking on an epic were high. I wasted no time waiting for Spencer to coil the rope. I set off, figuring I might come to a dead end, and not end up ahead of Spencer, anyway. The only thing that might help was that the moon would be up early, and nearly full. However, it would be a while before it shone on our side of the dome, if at all. It would be of certain help only on the descent. Sure enough, I came to a dead end, while Spencer seemed to have found a more promising line. Then vice-versa, and I was in front again.

With the light failing, I came to a point at which I could see a line to the top, but it started with a fifth class layback. There was no time for further exploration of the surrounding maze; the light was going fast. Despite the fourth class we'd been doing, the rock was still steep here, and there were no ledges beneath this crack to catch us if we fell. Nevertheless, it looked easy enough, so I went for it. Neither of us had any trouble with fifteen feet of 5.3ish moves, and we scrambled comfortably to the top.

We were greeted by the moon rising into the stars above Cathedral Peak. Both of us whooped. We tried a high five and didn't blow it. To give the moon a chance to get a little higher, we spent ten minutes savoring our feat. We had moved too fast to savor the climb or the surroundings. But we could savor the result of our timing, our speed (OK, we're not Hans Florine, but fast enough), our skill in placing the gear, the absence of folks in our way. I padded carefully down the luminous south slab, holding my unlit headlamp, thinking that it could not have been any closer to an epic.

It had to be perfect and it was.

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