Written by Matt Bernstein, 2019 Climbing Steward Volunteer
“Oh God! I think I’m going to vomit,” yelled Brandon from Camp V. We were mid-patrol on El Capitan’s Triple Direct route and just encountered what would no doubt be remembered as the low point on the climb. Someone had stashed two Crystal Geyser gallon jugs full of piss behind a boulder on Camp V. I remember seeing the urine filled jugs on my first ascent of The Nose back in June. That was an in-a-day mission, so we didn’t have the means to pack them out. It was the end of October now, and the jugs had been roasting at Camp V all summer. Upon finding the offending jugs, Brandon Adams, one of our park Climbing Rangers, fixed a line and rappelled with them, one at a time, forty feet down and left of Camp V, to empty the contents. Even from forty feet away the smell was enough to make me nauseous.
We had been talking about doing a “Bat Patrol” of El Capitan with Nicky Bunn, a park biologist and former YOSAR member, since the springtime. White Nose Syndrome, a fungus, has been killing bats by the millions in caves all over the Eastern United States. As the fungus moves its way nearer to Yosemite, we are hoping to collect information on bats in the park as we know relatively little about them. Having a background in both the sciences and big wall climbing, Nicky seemed like the obvious choice to head the Big Wall Bat study in Yosemite. Many bat roosts are high up in crack systems on the sides of big cliffs, so in order to research the bats, climbing to them is often a must. Come early October it was looking like we had an opening to do a multi-day Bat Patrol on El Capitan. Nicky and Brandon were in and looking for a third, so they invited me, a six month Climbing Program volunteer, along. I was stoked to be part of this first of its kind study on El Capitan. In addition, climbing El Capitan for the third time in October was a huge bonus! We chose to go up the Triple Direct because the route was moderate. The easier climbing meant we would move fast, allowing us plenty of time to do bat research around dusk each night when the bats come out of their roosts. The Triple Direct, being a well traveled El Capitan moderate, is full of all sorts of fixed manky gear, so Brandon and I viewed this patrol as an opportunity to remove the offending mank encountered on the route, and restore the aesthetic of the route while simultaneously making it safer.
A Professor from UC Merced is currently studying genetic trait distribution in Monkey Flower growing in steep environments and was interested in getting some Monkey Flower seeds at different elevations on El Capitan. So in addition to looking for bats and cleaning suspect gear off the route, we were up there to collect Monkey Flower seeds as well. Diana Wendt, a park Climbing Ranger, and myself had just done the first third of the Triple Direct, known as “Freeblast,” the previous week, collecting Monkey Flower seeds along the way. Because Diana and I had already done Freeblast recently, Brandon, Nicky and myself elected to skip Freeblast and start off of Mammoth Terrace. This “stand start” to the Triple Direct is referred to as either the “Double Direct” or “Double Indirect.”
The three of us hiked our gear to the base on October 28th and started the haul to Mammoth. We planned on four days including our haul day, but were going light, having only packed 7 gallons of water for the three of us. Our hope was to move light and fast. The hauling to Mammoth was okay. We used a 2 to 1 system Brandon had rigged. Our hope was that after sleeping on Mammoth for the night we would have lightened the load enough to 1 to 1 haul the rest of the climb. Upon getting to Mammoth, we set up camp and fixed a pitch up to Pharaoh ledge. Pretty easy first day. We only had one portaledge for the three of us, so we drew straws to see who had to sleep on the rock on which of the three nights. I drew the medium straw, so I had to sleep on the natural ledge the second night, which meant a comfy first night in the portaledge.
About an hour before sunset, Nicky pulled out his bat kit. He had this microphone on a telescoping stick that could pick up bat call frequency. The microphone was attached to a tablet which has an app on it that can speciate bats based on the frequency of their call. Pretty cool. We only picked up a few calls our first day. Hopefully there would be more bats higher on the route to identify.
The second day was our first real day of climbing. The hardest aid climbing on Double Direct is on the pitches between Pharaoh and where the route starts to traverse hard right into Camp IV on The Nose. As we were doing about 6 pitches a day, we each got a block of two pitches. I got the first block, which was a couple pitches of C2, ending in a 5.8 flare chimney that exits onto Gray Ledges. The pitches were a piece of cake. I joked a lot about how hard it was without Totem Cams (Climbing Management doesn’t have any Totems in its gear cache), but in reality the climbing, despite being the hardest aid on the route, was quite moderate. The dreaded 5.8 flare chimney even turned out to be quite fun. I had been up that section before, but never led it. Partners from previous ascents always seemed to struggle in there. Apparently they stayed in aid mode. Note to the masses: free climbing 5.8 flare chimneys is way more fun and significantly less awkward than aiding in the back of them.
As Brandon cleaned behind me, he seemed to be quite excited to remove some rusty angle pitons that were fixed on the route. We had brought a hammer and funkness specifically for this purpose. I was surprised how many pitons were fixed next to perfect C1 cam placements. Nicky took over the next block and led us up the beautiful “Silverfish Corner,” a 150-ish foot C2 beauty that ends where the Shield splits left and our route takes a hard right. Nicky cruised the pitch and then Brandon led us 2 pitches sideways to the “Crossroads Bivy,” down and left from Camp IV on The Nose. We set up camp about an hour before dark and Nicky got out the bat kit. More bats living on this section of the wall made for more interesting bat action on night two than the night before. After a meal of some cheap canned food item and a pork sandwich, I settled in for my turn sleeping on the rock. The Crossroads is a great portaledge bivy. It is long and wide and even has a private nook around the corner for going poop in the morning (in a wag bag of course). Being down and left from Camp IV you are usually treated to a view of parties sending (or cruxing hard on) the Great Roof. Unfortunately for me, the ledge slopes slightly downward towards the edge of the cliff. I felt like if I rolled over onto my side, I’d just keep rolling into space! A tight tether sort of night for sure.
After a night of mediocre sleep on account of the awkward ledge angle, I was up and ready to join The Nose. Brandon led the first few pitches. He cruised the Great Roof pitch, which was full of fixed garbage. Armed with a knife, hammer, and funkness, I was ready to clean up as much of that garbage as I could while following the pitch. I was surprised how many nuts and pitons were cluttering up the C1 corner section leading up to the roof. One after the next I was able to pop them out. There was a whole spider web of nasty tat connecting about 5 or 6 nuts in a very un-equalized fashion at the corner where you start to traverse out the roof. I removed the offending mess, leaving only two bomber nuts and a new sling for a lower out point. Once I reached the belay I looked on my harness and to my surprise I had cleaned a dozen or more pieces of fixed garbage off of the pitch! Of the pieces I removed, about half were rusty angles, and the other half were nuts. I was stoked to see the beautiful pitch in more pristine shape.
Nicky’s block took us up to Camp V and the rotten piss jug mess I mentioned earlier. What perplexed me was why the party who left them didn’t just urinate on the route like everyone else. Sure, it’s gross, but at least the rain will wash it away eventually, rather than leaving jugs full of urine at a popular bivy on the most popular route on El Capitan. After emptying and squishing them, Brandon cut open one of our empty jugs and put the nasty ones inside, where we encapsulated them with the clean jug halves and a bunch of gorilla tape so they wouldn’t contaminate the content of our haul bags as we packed them up and out.
I led two pitches to Camp VI. The climbing was fun, especially that final hand jam extravaganza pitch up to the bivy. There were haul bags blocking my passage to the ledge, so I asked the party ahead if they would mind me using them as holds. They were accommodating, and welcomed me to Camp VI, where luckily, they were not going to be spending the night. They had friends come and fix lines from the top for them to jug out on. More room for us seemed fine to me! It quickly became apparent that the guys on Camp VI didn’t really know what they were doing in terms of jumaring and general wall knowledge. The way they described their ascent up to Camp VI, it sounded oddly like a pirate guiding operation. Their experienced “friend” who they had just met was taking them up El Capitan. For training, the two inexperienced climbers had climbed Central Pillar and Munginella. Usually Washington Column or Leaning Tower are more appropriate El Capitan shake downs. Something wasn’t adding up. They were from the UK and travelling the world doing “Extreme Stuff” and creating video content for companies in the process. Perhaps in addition to possibly getting illegally guided up El Capitan, they were also filming up there without a permit too? The whole situation was quite bizarre, but didn’t strike me as suspicious until I saw them jugging (very slowly) away from Camp IV. What irked me more than them most likely breaking some park regulations was the fact that they had clearly not put in the time and practice to climb the route in good style.
Once Brandon joined Nicky and myself at the ledge, we unloaded the bags and started setting up camp. To our delight, there was a bunch of dried Monkey Flower seed to collect right there at camp! It was so easy even I could do it! To help out with flower genome research on El Capitan with no prior schooling or background in Botany was a real treat. This whole patrol, between the Monkey Flower and Bat research, was for sure the first of its kind. It’s my hope that park scientists and Climbing Management will be able to collaborate on future projects, as park scientists might not always have the prerequisite climbing experience needed to collect samples first hand. In our case we lucked out in that Nicky, in addition to having a science background, is also an experienced wall climber and fun to be up there for multiple days with to boot! As the sun started to set we were able to pick up on multiple bat frequencies, making Camp VI the motherlode of the scientific aspects of our patrol.
As the climbing was rather easy that day, none of us were particularly tired at 6:30pm when it got dark. It was great to shoot the breeze for a couple hours. When you are laughing and getting along with partners on night three of a big wall climb, that’s a good sign that things are going relatively smoothly. Although I had climbed with Brandon a bit previously, I had never roped up with Nicky and had very limited past contact with him before the climb. It’s great to make new friends in the park, even cooler to become pals up on a wall.
After a decent night’s sleep, we packed up and began the last four pitches to the top. Lots of garbage on the way. Following Brandon up Changing Corners, perhaps the crux pitch of The Nose, I removed a couple more rusted out pitons. Higher up on the pitch there were bolts to the left of the corner with tatty rope hanging off each one at such a distance that one could monkey up the ropes instead of climbing the actual corner. Out came the knife and I chopped all of it off. A pitch later I took over on lead. I led us to the “Wild Stance.” To my surprise and disgust, as I reached the Wild Stance anchors, a pitch from the top of the best rock climb in the world, I found a haulbag with a static line hanging from the two bolt anchor on an equalized sling. In addition to being obnoxiously in the way, what horrible etiquette! The most likely purpose I could see for a static line right there was that a high level free climber rapped in to work pitches and stored it there. The lack of regard for other climbers was astounding! Not only did we now have to haul this rope up with us, but we had to haul it over the last pitch to the top where it slabs out. Brutal! I led us up over the top in no time, but the haul was quite rough, as the low angle top out created quite a bit of drag.
After shuttling bags to a safe un-roping point, we ate snacks, emptied the bags, repacked them, and started on our way down the East Ledges. A couple hours after topping out, we were back at the Manure Pile parking. This El Capitan patrol had been quite an undertaking when we tagged on the cleanup project, bat data collection, and monkey flower specimen collection. In addition to being my last patrol of the season, upon getting down, my duties as a Climber Steward were officially done. After volunteering for six months in Yosemite I was officially a dirtbag again. Cleaning up the face that I love the most in the park seemed like a suitable ending to one of the most rewarding six month stretches of my life.