Here’s Ken and Janet Klug welcoming me to Yosemite’s Land of Granite Glory.
I met Ken and Janet in 2002, bouncing across the Antarctic Ocean en route to South Georgia Island, where Ken and I and a couple others skied across the island tracing the steps of Ernest Shackleton's tale of disaster and redemption. Ken and I have had multiple rendezvous since then, including a few ice climbing trips (with a heavy emphasis on dinners in cowboy restaurants) to Ouray, CO, and a trip to the top of Mount Rainier. Ken and Janet live a couple hours from Yosemite, and it's their weekend playground.
I doubt anyone knows the hiking out of Yosemite Valley and off Tioga Road better than these two, and it was a treat to find them in their luxo-digs at the Ahwahnee Hotel the night before our hike. Ken is an incurable hiker and walker, having walked across Ireland, England, Patagonia, and probably Asia, home from school, and your backyard for all I know. He will not stop.
Since we only had a day together, Ken and Janet gave me the Full Tourist Route,
up Four Mile Trail, around the Panorama Trail,
past Nevada and Vernal Falls,
views of my Royal Arches rock climb route for tomorrow
(see the "arches?") and down the John Muir Trail and back to Curry Village for a massive pizza fest... fifteen miles in all, and jaw-dropping views
around each corner.
The dirty little secret about Yosemite is that "The Valley", which is where 99% of the tourist action is, is way, way too crowded (I'm part of that), and that Daily Life Management is a real hassle, especially for a newbie. God knows what I would have done without tips from the Klugs, most notably the all-I-can-eat $10 breakfast buffet in Curry Village. I also camped in Curry Village, which is essentially a desperate refugee camp, but without Geraldo Rivera or Katie Couric popping up to interview the refugees and complain about FEMA. (I presume this place is President Bush’s fault.)
I had a tough climb up the Royal Arches, with Ace Guide Chris Ecklund.
The route goes straight up the face, finishing at the dark eyebrow arch in the middle of the pic, just below and to the right of the triangular clump of trees.
It's mostly rated an unrelenting 5.7,
but we took a few 5.8 variations to spice it up. This is Yosemite, home of the Yosemite Decimal System for rating climbs, but man, this was the hardest 5.7/5.8 I'll ever do! It's a long climb,
16-18 pitches, and you rappel directly from the top of the climb all the way back to the Valley!
Quite a relaxing and exciting way to finish! I did not exhibit the best climbing of my short and sparse rock-climbing career,
but I did make it, and I certainly had a fine day. We finished around 2 or 3, so I offered Chris a beer and a snack at the fancy Ahwahnee Hotel at the bottom of the climb, but his traditional preference is to return to Curry, where we bought a six pack and two big bags of spicy Doritos, and had our snack on the porch, talking to other returning guides and climbers! These three climber studs have almost 100 El Capitan summits between them. Let's see, Scott (l.) has over 75, Chris (r.) has seven, and that leaves me (monkey in the middle) with, ummm, OK, OK, so I guess I'm not really a climber stud.
How 'bout this dramatic depiction of an adventurous tourist doing the backstroke over a waterfall? This is Yosemite, and if ya get enough tourists near enough waterfalls, well...
Et voila El Capitan, a 3,500' face of sheer granite. For the dedicated, hard man and hard woman of the big-face rock climbing world, this is Mecca.
Most climbers spend 4-7 days scratching their way to the top, slowly, spending nights hanging from tiny bivuoac "platforms," hauling all their gear
and food and water and supplies up behind them. Ken and Janet took me to a meadow, from which we could see their tiny headlights twinkling in the dark. There's no turning back once you're heading up. Accidents and dramatic rescues are a regular event. Camp 4 is the legenedary hangout for these climbing bums,
partly because of its proximity to the Yosemite Lodge, where they scrounge leftover food off plates left behind by tourists!
No comments:
Post a Comment