Nightfall
Of course there was always the option of a bivouac, but it wasn’t very appealing to me. I had thought that this would be a climb easily completed in a day, and due to inexperience, I only had jeans and a t-shirt to wear. No warm layers or a windbreaker, and this exposed ridge was windy! Since the climbing wasn’t very hard, and we both had headlamps, we decided to just keep climbing in order to stay warm, and hopefully, finish the route and descend.
Darkness was a two-fold handicap. First of course, was the obvious problem that climbing by headlamp is more difficult, and hence, the route finding slower. Another problem was that by climbing in the dark, it seemed too dangerous to free-climb the class 4. I myself certainly wasn’t ready to try something like that, so we ended up belaying the entire 1,800 ft route.
Climbing on the ridge by headlamp was a surreal experience. Although there was a full moon out, Mt Conness blocked our route from its illumination. As a result, we could see the valley below quite clearly. In fact, at one of our belay stations we could actually pick out Half Dome! In the distance we could see the sparkling lights of Oakdale, and Roosevelt Lake shimmered below, yet we were in total darkness. While we could see the landscape around us just fine, when it came to our route, our worldview was limited to whatever the headlamp illuminated. Climbing became a much more enclosed experience, each of us seemingly alone except for when shouting commands. At one point there were some headlamps down in the valley. They kept flashing, on and off. Were they hikers trying to signal us? Obviously, if we could see their lights in the valley, they could see our lights on the mountain. We couldn’t decipher what, if anything, the people were saying, so we climbed on, and eventually the blinking ceased. A while later the air was filled with the echoing sound of coyotes howling. Still, we climbed on in our little bubbles of light high on the mountain.
It seemed cruel that as the full moon came out, Mt Conness kept us in the dark, but the mountain wasn’t through with me yet. At one point I reached a belay that was on a small, steeply sloping slab that I could tell was dropping me toward the huge abyss on the south side of the ridge. Although the belay was secure, and I was still sitting on a slab, I am also a wuss when it comes to exposure. I muttered my displeasure with the airy belay as Dirk climbed around a roof and out of site. Luckily I was in the dark, so at least I couldn’t see the drop off below. Then Conness finally let the moon out. As I sat on my windy perch, I watched with increasing discomfort as the moonlight illuminated the chasm below. I was more than ready to climb on when Dirk shouted back.
Dirk traverse left into the class 4 gully in order to save time on the next pitch. He was irritated that we didn’t do the route as purely as he wanted, but I was fine with the idea of moving to less exposed terrain - at this point I felt that staying on the ridge for 90% of the route was good enough! We had one more pitch of 4th class climbing and then we unroped. The climbing was suddenly easy class 2-3, with no exposure, so we dispensed with the belay and hurried up to the summit. As we scrambled the last few hundred feet, I asked Dirk how many pitched we had climbed. Neither of us could remember, having lost count somewhere over 10 pitches, so we figured we had done about 14 roped pitches on the route.
Reaching the summit was a glorious occasion. We whooped with relief, and eagerly signed the summit register. It was 5am.
The scramble down was tiring, but easy. A brief catwalk on the East Ridge required some attention, but after that it was smooth sailing all the way down. Now we were in a hurry to get down before the other AAC members noticed that we hadn’t returned last night. We made it back to the car at 9am – exactly 24 hours after we had left it the day before. Afterword
Since Dirk, Vito, Gus and I carpooled to the trailhead together, Dirk and I had expected to hitchhike back to camp. Instead, we were surprised to see the car was still parked beside the road, empty. Vito and Gus left the car. Did they not make it back last night?
First thing’s first – we took the car and drove down to the AAC camp to avoid being reported overdue. Once we get there, the camp was empty, except for a note saying that we were reported overdue. Shit!
Eventually we managed to find the AAC group and call off our overdue status. Vito and Gus reappeared later in the day too. Apparently they had backed off of their route, and in the dark they had gotten lost on the cross country travel around Mt Conness. They too spent the night in the mountains, and when the sun rose they found themselves at the road in Tuolomne Meadows!
After some beers and a nap, it was time to go home, but my adventure wasn’t over yet. Paul’s car broke down just outside of Yosemite, and ultimately we had to be towed to a dealership in Walnut Creek, over 4 hours away. While we waiting on a street corner in Walnut Creek with all of our gear, some bored cops harassed us until Paul’s girlfriend in San Francisco was able to pick us up. Finally, I arrived home at about 2am.
I was completely exhausted, but the trip was great. I couldn’t wait to meet up with Dirk to take a crack at Mt Sill.
Mark N' Dirk's Bivouac Trilogy: Part 2: Mt Sill - Part 3: N Palisade & Polemonium
Yosemite National Park
