Snakes and Ladders reprise

by Richard J. Hughes  

An almost soft-body Los Alpinistas' plan was hatched to climb Snake Dike (8 pitch 5.7***) on the southwest face of Half Dome. Tuck Russel had reserved a permit for four to backpack to Little Yosemite Valley on the night of May 19. Daun asked me and Patsy if we'd like to join them. We thought about it and decided sure, what the heck, we'd love to go. Last time we climbed Snake Dike we did it in one long day, with three people on our rope team and it was just brutal. As a backpack, with only two on the rope we thought it would be much more enjoyable.

Thus, Patsy and I hatched our own plans, inviting our Israeli friend Mordechai (Moti) Bodner to join us. Whereas Patsy and I would climb Half Dome via Snake Dike, Moti would ascend via the cable route and meet us on top. This was to be a trip down memory lane for the three of us. Moti and I had led a Sierra Club backpacking trip to Yosemite in the summer of Love, actually the summer of 1985, on which we first met Patsy. I subsequently married Patsy, but Moti is now divorced. Moti was recuperating from a back operation to fuse two vertebrae he had had just a month before this trip.

We were at the A16 Mothers' Day sale, a pathetic event vis-à-vis earlier years, when I called Daun to ask her for more details. Daun told me she had decided not to go. Another So.Cal. flake-out! Daun attributed her inability to go to Ph.D. thesis commitments and to Bill's previous leg injury, sustained on the descent from Tahquitz after leading Traitor Horn. Since Patsy and I weren't involved in the initial deliberations for this trip we didn't know which campsite Tuck had reserved in the Lower Pines Campground. We were told it could be site 3, 4, 9, 10 or 11. Tuck was by this time already ensconced in Yosemite where there is poor cell phone reception. Heck, we'd just have to scour the entire campground.

Patsy, Moti and I set off for Yosemite late on Tuesday afternoon. We reached the southern entrance at about 11 pm., just after the fee-collecting Rangers had retired for the night, so we avoided paying the entry fee. By the time we'd reached Lower Pines it was midnight. We started looking for Tuck's car, a Subaru Outback as we recalled. I hate driving round and round campgrounds at this hour of the night. I hate even more when other people drive around at this hour of the night and wake me up. We were as stealthy as possible, but we couldn't see any sign of Tuck's car. Well damn! I was tired, and tired of driving. W had to find a place to sleep, and soon. We drove over to the backpacker's walk-in campground. We wouldn't be legal there, since we didn't have a backpacking permit, but I was past caring. Moti, however, spotted two unoccupied campsites and we decided to crash in one of them. I was just coming out of the bathrooms when the Ranger Nazis drove by in their electric cart. I hid from their searchlight and we slept soundly until 7 am. We quickly packed away our gear, lest we be fined, and drove over to Yosemite Village where we arrived at the permit office at 7.50 am, ten minutes before opening time. There were two parties ahead of us, but we were still able to procure a permit for 3 to backpack up to Little Yosemite Valley that day.

We drove over to the backpackers' parking lot, close to Happy Isles, and ate a late breakfast, enviously eyeing the VW Westfalias and the one Syncro Vanagon that was also parked in the lot. A few months later we ended up buying our own Syncro Vanagon, but that's another story. It was almost noon by the time we'd eaten breakfast, packed our gear and were ready to go. There was still no sign of Tuck, which we thought was very odd since his backpacking permit was for the same day. On the trail it was hot, our loads were heavy, and we were being passed by innumerable tourists. It was such a relief when I finally reached the top of Nevada Falls, but what had happened to Patsy and Moti? I waited and waited. Finally they joined me. Moti had injured his leg, not his back, thank God. He was limping badly and it didn't seem possible that he would be able to reach the summit of Half Dome the next day.

Little Yosemite Valley campground was close, and the path was fairly flat. It's a relatively squalid campground as wilderness campgrounds go. It was set in a stand of dense trees, many of which had been cut down and sawn into small logs. A sign noted that there should only be two communal campfires but, with so much wood free for the taking, each group had its own fire. We scoured the campground, but there was still no sign of Tuck. That night, during dinner, the entire campsite was plagued by the visit of a black bear. People were running around banging pots and otherwise making plenty of noise. This didn't frighten the bear, but it sure annoyed me. The campground had a liberal number of large metal, bear-proof boxes in which to store food. Providing you kept everything locked up there was no problem. That being said, however, this bear wasn't at all timid. He'd come right up to your camp. The next morning Patsy discovered that she'd left a small plastic bottle of sunscreen in the side pocket of her backpack. The bear had chomped two holes in the plastic bottle, through the side pocket of the backpack, but evidently decided sunscreen wasn't to his taste since he didn't gobble it all down.

Patsy and I set off early the next morning, at 7 am. Since I figured it would warm up, I wore only shorts and a shirt. I had a wind jacket stashed in my pack. We had no problem finding the route to the base of the climb, although it was a lot more exposed than Patsy remembered. "Do we rope up here?". "Not yet honey buns". We arrived at the base of the climb to find three parties ahead of us, the last guy still belaying his leader. Three more parties came up behind us. This worked out pretty well as the party ahead of us proved faster than us and we were, in turn, faster than the party behind us. You need a 50m rope on this climb. A 45m rope would be too short and a 60m rope would be unnecessarily long. The belay points are fixed by the location of the two or three bolt anchors. You can't possibly belay anywhere other than at these established points on the Dike itself.

At the first belay I was still in the shade and it was somewhat windy. I was freezing, my legs particularly so. I shouted down to the parties below, "Hey, any of you got a spare pair of wind pants you'd like to trade?". "Sure, what have you got to trade?". "How about a Camalot?". "What size?". Just then the sun peeked around the corner of the rock. "Screw you :-)".

Patsy and I had a blast on the climb, swinging leads. I led all the odd-numbered pitches. The traverse on the third pitch seemed pretty secure, well-protected by a hard-to-see bolt. When you start climbing Snake Dike proper you realize that your closest protection is getting to be a long way away, but the climbing is solid. At the top, however, just when you think the climbing's over, you find that there's one last tricky move up and onto a slab. This has a high hold that Patsy could barely reach. With the security of a belay, though, she made the move and reached up into that groove. Another thousand feet of unroped climbing on the upper slabs of Half Dome finally brought us to the summit. There was no sign of Moti, which didn't surprise us. There was no sign of Tuck, either, which no longer surprised us. Just another So. Cal. flake-out. However, as Tuck has proven to be reliable in the past we had begun to grow genuinely concerned that something ill had befallen him.

Daun and co. had speculated at great length as to how they would cope with the downed cables. Patsy and I had brought along a pair of gloves each, just in case. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that the steel cables had been restored to their fully upright position just in time for our descent

It seemed a long way back down to Little Yosemite Valley. Of course we were younger when we did the entire climb in a day from Yosemite Valley. Five years younger, LOL. Back at camp we met back up with Moti who said that his leg had made a miraculous recovery and he had, in fact, climbed to the top of Half Dome. He'd waited for us on the summit and must have left only 15 or 30 minutes before we arrived. Fantastic! It was too bad that we couldn't have been on the top together, but at least we all three of us made it. The bear, too,must have grown tired of all the noise because he didn't come around that night.

The next morning we packed up and headed back down to the Valley. It was even hotter, and more crowded, than on the way up, if that was possible. We managed to sneak into the showers at Curry Village without paying. Freshly laundered, we ate lunch. Alas, Patsy slipped on the door sill when backing out of the Bronco and lay whimpering in the dirt. No amount of loving talk seemed to comfort her, but she finally perked up a bit

After lunch, we decided we had to get the Hell out of this madhouse, Yosemite. We headed towards Tioga Pass, where we managed to make our egress from the Park without paying an exit (aka. entry) fee. We spent a further, very much more relaxed, three days 4-wheeling and trout-fishing in the Eastern Sierras.

It later transpired that Tuck had driven to Yosemite in Duran's, his girlfriend's, car. Furthermore, Duran had declared that it would be too cold in Little Yosemite Valley. These two need to learn to snuggle more. Actually it wasn't cold at all, except on that first belay.

This was one of my best trips to Yosemite since we didn't have to pay either the entry fee, or for showers. I'm still collecting on a $200 debt I figure the National Park Service owes me for once towing my car from outside the gate at White Wolf, where they claimed I was illegally parked. I dispute this and so, ever since, I've been out to screw them at every possibility.

Can you imagine returning, after a 3-day backpack, to where you left your car to discover it gone without a trace?

Comments?

This forum is powered by Ceilidh ("kay-lee")
Copyright© 1995-2000 Lilikoi Software, Inc. All rights reserved.