Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Nose again, El Cap 9/07

Corbin and I were on a roll and we knew it. As soon as we hit pavement after h-dizzle we began hatching more plans. What next? The Nose again of course! This time we took 2 days rest before going again.
Same plan as last time except a 9 mm rope and no rap line, just a 50 ft tag line. We got pretty much the same start as last time around roughly 7 am. Again we scrambled to the start of the route and Corbin took off with the first lead.
This time the first pitch was exciting. I was digging in the bag for something not really belaying well. Corbin was running it out as usual but then screamed falling. I had easily 30 ft of slack out just laying on the ground, oops. My first instinct was to grab the rope with my hand so I did. I held the fall in my left hand on a 9.4 mm rope without ever locking the grigri. It wasn't very hard and i only got burnt a little, Corbin was fine! Pretty fucked up on my part but Corbin was none the wiser until I told him. He said it was a normal fall and thanked me for the catch! Back to the task at hand.
We climbed the same blocks as last time and took the same breaks this time as last but we were much quicker. We were at dolt in 3 hours this time and watched a sunset from the summit! Both of our first daylight ascent of El Cap which is pretty cool although we had to hike down in the dark. At least by now I have the trail dialed! 12 hour ascent this time around, can't wait to hack more time off it or add another route to the day now!

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