Trip Report – The Shield, July 2020

The Route

The Shield, 5.6 A3, a classic El Capitan route, famous for its long and sustained thin headwall cracks. One of the most exposed routes on El Capitan.

The Stars

Gena Wood AKA Squirrel: a Yosemite Climbing Ranger with years of experience and a badass bigwall track record.

Harry Keane: a youngster from Northern California and a Yosemite Climber Steward, one of the chillest climbing partners you could imagine. The Shield would be his first route on El Cap.

Matt Hoffman (myself): Yosemite Climber Steward with a decent amount of bigwall and aid climbing experience, excited to test himself out on a harder route on El Cap.

Featuring guest star Brandon Adams: Yosemite Climbing Ranger who is just too freakin’ psyched!

The Objectives

Patrol the Shield, explore Quixote Ledge, clean up trash on route and at the summit, have as much fun as possible, and don’t overfill the poop tube.

All smiles on the Big Stone! Climbing Ranger, Gena Wood with Climbing Steward, Harry Keane

When Gena suggested that we do a patrol of The Shield I was instantly in. I had previously completed an ascent of The Salathe Wall as well as an in-a-day ascent of The Nose, and had already been thinking about The Shield as something to climb this season. Harry was equally excited, despite having never climbed any Yosemite big walls. Should he be nervous about his first El Cap climb being one of the more difficult trade routes? Gena assured him that it would be great fun and he had nothing to be concerned about, just get some practice jugging and the rest would come naturally. Between our scheming and our start date Harry had a chance to climb the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome, which gave him a good primer for what was to come.

Day 0

We loaded up our haul bags to the brim (and over) and humped our loads to the base of El Capitan. Our plan would be for Harry and myself to climb the Freeblast, while Gena and Brandon so generously would be hauling our heavy bags up to Mammoth Terraces, where the Freeblast finishes. So today we bring most of our gear for this vertical backpacking trip up to the base of the Heart Lines for tomorrow’s hauling. We retreat to El Portal to spend the night at Gena’s before our big day tomorrow. I’m already exhausted and we haven’t even begun…

Day 1

We bring the rest of our water and our food to the haul lines and Harry and I take off on Freeblast! This route is a 10 pitch 5.11 which makes up the first major block of The Shield and many other El Cap routes. We have a wonderful time and enjoy doing some of the last free climbing we’ll be doing for a few days, while Gena and Brandon are toiling away and working hard to bring our supplies up to Mammoth Terraces. After some minor delays and a heroic effort from Gena and Brandon (who isn’t even going up with us, he’s just helping with the hauling!!) we meet up and finish the last bit of work to finish up our first day. Brandon has descended, and Gena, Harry and I are finally together. With our portaledges set up on Mammoth, we go to sleep a bit nervous, looking up at all of the rock we have left to climb above us.

Day 2

Harry and Matt setting up camp below the Shield Roof

We all have some real-deal climbing to do today, but thankfully nothing too extreme. We each make light work of our pitches, except for me when I repeatedly whip on the Silverfish Corner because I can’t get a camhook to stay put. Otherwise all goes very smoothly and we finish our day below the Shield Roof pitch. Here we are at a completely hanging belay with no natural ledge or stance, and must set up our camp in space with only the shear wall as a brace. This was truly one of the most amazing camping experiences of my life, in a beautiful place and an extreme position. We enjoy our dinners and the sunset and slip into a peaceful slumber.

Day 3

Our goal is to get to Quixote Ledge, a feature in the middle of pitch 22. It is nebulously described with the following: “good bivy for 4, bad bolts, belay takes baby angles.” Brandon had told us that it is an awesome natural ledge with sketchy hardware; we packed a bolt kit to see if we could get up there and improve the situation. With many pitches of sustained aid climbing ahead of us, we take down camp and begin our long day. Things go very smoothly, yet are time consuming due to the delicate nature of the task at hand. Gena crushes her pitches, Harry breezes through his and now I must take on the infamous “Triple Cracks” pitch! It goes surprisingly well and is much more mellow than I had anticipated, in fact I’m giggling with joy because the climbing is so fun.

Harry and Gena posing on Quixote Ledge

Since I’m feeling so great I decide to short-fix at the anchor and begin the next pitch while Gena and Harry clean and haul behind me. They catch up, things are going great, and I short-fix again at the next anchor. Finally, I see Quixote and traverse out to it; I’m so excited to see what secrets this mythical ledge may hide. Lo and behold, the topo was quite accurate: I find a beautiful ledge ~45 ft by ~5 ft with a good amount of flat space and indeed quite outdated and sketchy bolts. Thankfully I am able to build a safe anchor in the crack that takes “baby angles” using modern offset cams and totems, as well as backing this up to some of the better looking of the sketchy bolts, and bring my team up to this awesome ledge. With much excitement, we pick our ideal spots for the two beautiful shiny bolts we have brought up the wall with us and get to work hand drilling. It is with great pride that we placed these two new 3/8” bolts on Quixote Ledge, which is now a much safer place to bivy and is certainly a feature worth checking out!

Day 4

With most of the hard work behind us we set off to finish our route and reach the summit. Along the way we find a lot of old trash stuffed in cracks at Chieftain ledge and extract as much as we can. The following pitches go quickly and we find ourselves finishing the last arduous haul to the summit tree by ~4 pm. With a summit selfie we commemorate our incredible trip up The Shield, and briefly consider hiking down… “naah, let’s spend the night up here” we all agree. We have food, water, sleeping gear, why not just relax? It is while taking in this evening’s sunset and listening to some fine Central Valley tunes on Harry’s portable radio that I feel most blissful. What a life.

Day 5

We spend several hours on the summit picking up as much trash as we can find, we unearth many empty water bottles and loads of other junk that previous generations of climbers have either stashed, abandoned or wholly forgotten. I can’t rightly say what I would have done if this had been a purely recreational climb for me, but I doubt I would have gone so out of my way to pick up, haul up, and hike down so much trash on my back in addition to all the gear we already carried.

However, wearing my Yosemite Climber Steward shirt I felt a real sense of purpose up there, helping to preserve this place I love so much and helping install new hardware where so many others have done so before me. Climbing The Shield is awesome, but patrolling the Shield is a slightly different experience, and is one that for me carries its own special weight.

Through hard work and some good luck, I can say we wholly completed all of our objectives for this patrol! We explored and rebolted Quixote Ledge, we cleaned up more trash than we had anticipated, we laughed pretty much all day long every day, and perhaps most importantly we did not overfill the poop tube… thank goodness.

One of our new 3/8″ bolts (left) next to one of the better looking of the older sketchy bolts (right)

Matt hanging out below the Shield Traverse pitch