>From TagNet:
El Cap Trip Report
By: Mike Manke (Birmingham, Alabama)
El Cap Trip Report by Nikky "Princess Butterfly" LaBranche
Saturday, June 23rd TinY and I found ourselves on the trail hiking up
to the top of El Capitan. The 15 advanced team members each had 20
pounds of team gear plus all our personal gear, so I was carrying a
little over 60 pounds on my back. We were hiking the 12.5 miles along
the Yosemite Creek trail as part of the advanced rig team to get the
rope rigged so we could start rappelling and climbing El Cap. The trail
followed the creek for the first half of the journey, and we stopped
where the trail split from the creek to eat dinner and take a much
needed bath. The second half of the hike was a lot harder than the
first, which was either steeply uphill or steeply downhill. It was
after midnight until we got to camp at the top of El Cap after spending
13 hours on the trail.
Sunday morning we awoke bright and early to start rigging. I helped with
the haul cord while TinY went over the lip to get the edge rollers, rope
pads and lip area set up. Ron and I managed to find enough dirt to fill
two sand bags and we used one to lower the haul cord to the bottom of
the drop. Once it reached the bottom of the drop the team there attached
the rope to the haul cord and we started hauling it up. It wasn?t like
Golindrinas, where it gets lighter the more you pull, this just got
heavier until we were pulling the full 180 pounds.
We got several rappellers off the first day. We were scheduled for later
in the day, so I ended up getting the sunset rappel, which was very
pretty. I was also thankful for no wind for my first rappel, I had
already heard stories about the wind from TinY. TinY rappelled right
after me and had the first night rappel of El Cap.
It was very late when we got back to camp and we still had to find our
cabin, shower and eat. It was about 1:30am when we were finally putting
all our stuff back in the bear box to go to bed. While I was bent over
in the bear box putting the final items away, TinY heard footsteps. He
looked at me and saw that my feet were not moving and then looked up,
and by the time I looked up he shouted ?Nikky, Turn around! Bear!? the
bear was close enough that I could have reached out and touched him.
Mike began growling at him and yelling at him and he took a step back.
At that point Mike stopped talking and the bear took another step at me.
Mike growled deeper and told the bear ?You don?t want to mess with us,
we?re rappellers, go eat a tourist!? At that the bear ducked between the
bear boxes and ran off into the tent cabins.
The next night we were scheduled for the forth climb of the evening. One
of the earlier teams had gear issues, so we had spent seven and a half
hours at the bottom of the drop waiting to climb. I did get a little bit
of sleep during that time, but TinY spent most of the night throwing
fist sized stones at animal noises he heard in the woods that night. It
was 9am the following day until we actually got on rope. We had planned
on a 4 am climb, so we left our sunscreen up top in the bear can. We
took the first climb easy and we made it to the top in 3 hours and 2
minutes. We were hot and sunburned when we got to the top, but I still
had a ton of adrenaline left. I just climbed El Cap!! We both rapped off
again later that afternoon on our second rappels.
All the other climbers for the next night had cancelled out, and it was
just down to us. We decided to get some much needed rest and start the
climb at 4am. We?ll the rest must really have been needed because we
both slept through the alarm and did not get up until 6am. So it was
about 9am the next morning when we got to the bottom of the drop. We
radioed up and asked the guys at the top if they still wanted us to
climb and they said let them get 1 rappeller off and then they would
need us and Peter Hertl to climb, so that there were enough people to
get them rapped off since there were no other climbers last night. It
takes 3 people to run the edge, haul system and camera. This time we
brought sunscreen for our climb. It was a little later in the day when
we got on rope and we were hoping for a breeze because it was so hot. I
guess you have to be careful what you wish for, because breeze was an
understatement. About an a thousand feet up the winds really picked up
and we were being blown all around. We discovered that its best not to
try to hold on because when you finally do let go it will wall slam you.
So we tried our best to climb in between gusts of wind. I could feel the
rope rolling over contact points above us which was not a nice feeling.
At one point I thought I was going to have to cross a lip, but a cycle
before I got there, we blew a hundred feet in the other direction away
from it. There were times when I was sitting still and I was moving
against the rock and there were times when I was moving, but still
against the same piece of rock due to the wind lifting us and the rope.
We had to climb with one hand out to keep us away from the wall. It?s a
little harder to fight the rock on a climb than it is a rappel because
your feet are basically pinned to the rope. I was glad to get over the
last contact point so I would stop feeling the harmonic from the rope
rolling over the rock. But when we cleared it I realized that we were
now at the end of a 1300? pendulum and we really started swinging. We
were told there were people watching us from the Valley yelling ?their
falling, their falling? because they could see our shadows come down the
rock face as the wind blew us away from the rock. I think we got to see
more of the face of El Cap that day than most climbers do and we almost
made it to the nose. Mark did an excellent job of keeping tension on the
rope, and without it we would probably have had to bail from the climb.
I ended up with only one good wall slam to the knee and a few scrapes on
my arms. By the time we reached the last 600? the sun had gotten high
enough in the sky that the top of the rope was in shade and the wind had
stopped. This made the last couple hundred feet of the climb a little
nicer. With the high winds it was a very exciting climb but we still
topped out in 3 hours and 9 minutes on our second climb of the trip. We
then had a very short break, a whole 67 minutes, while we waited for
Peter to climb before rapping of the other rappellers. TinY ran the haul
system, Peter ran the edge, and I sat down there with Peter with my feet
dangling over the edge, videoing the rappellers as they got on rope.
The next morning started with the tandem rappel. TinY and Lance got a
haul team together and Lance had them practice a few hauls with a
release on a munter hitch. They put this into the system to give a
smoother lower. This was the first year they had used this new haul
system and the one the previous trip had slipped with Gordon?s weight
and the weight of the rope, so this was definitely a test of the new
system. I got on rope, crossed the lip, called for rope weight, passed
the jumar, and then got to hang out while TinY did the same. It was an
interesting experience sitting there in midair two thousand six hundred
and fifty feet above the ground, waiting for them to haul me and the
rope weight. But I just set my French wrap and hung out, its not like I
could have picked up the 180 pounds of rope weight to lock off. The
first haul did not produce enough slack, so I rappelled down a few more
feet which gave Tiny enough clearance to get on rope. Once TinY was down
passed the Jumar we started our World Record Setting Tandem Rappel. A
tandem rappel of El Cap had only ever been done once before, by TinY and
Gordon Birkhimer in 2004, and now I was the first female to ever tandem
rappel El Capitan. We had a slight bit of wind on the rappel and some
rock contact, which didn?t bother me a bit after yesterday?s climb. When
you?re on a tandem any sudden movement will cause a change in friction
for the top person, so I was very careful to tiptoe down the rock when I
was in contact and not to bounce off of it. The whole rappel took a
little over twenty minutes. After that we went back to camp for a little
bit to get a shower and get ready to climb that night, our third climb
in three days.
That night we were hiked back to the bottom of the rope to get ready for
round three. I was carrying up an extra duffel bag so we had enough for
derig the next morning. This was our first night climb and we had a
gorgeous full moon to do it by. It was so nice climb in the cool night
air, much nicer than with the wind and the sun. There were several
controlled burns going on in the park and we could see the fires from
those as we were climbing. The climb was without incident and we reached
the top in 2 hours and 55 minutes. When we got to the lip I realized
that the edge line was around the flake and not in the edge roller where
it should have been. I tried to radio to the top to see if someone could
free the edgeline, but got no answer. So I decided I was going to have
to cross the roller, not an easy task with TinY and 180 pound of rope
weight under me. I jumped my top ascender and safety over the roller and
found that from this position I found that if I stretched I could grab
the edgetender line. Once I got a hold of it I clipped my safety to it
so I wouldn?t lose it. From their I removed my knee cam, moved my foot
cam closer to the roller and performed an interesting pirouette type
maneuver and was able to get my butt up on the ledge. From there I
transferred totally to the edgetender line and walked over to the other
side of the flake to free the rope so TinY could come up that line.
The next morning was derig and the week was coming to end. I helped take
down the tent and get camp packed up into duffel bags. The goal was to
rappel off as much gear as possible so the crew hiking out would have as
little gear as possible. I had a great ride, which was great end to my
fabulous week of rappelling El Cap. I had been on rope every day the
rope was rigged. I figured that if I could match climbing and rappelling
schedules with TinY and Peter Hertl I wasn?t doing that bad.
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