Spring conditions

Saturday, 27 March 2010

Well, we knew we rolling the dice by coming this early in the season. We are the only ones on El Cap at the moment. The spring snow melt off the top starts raining down on us at 4pm each day, making us retreat back to the portaledge and fly. Not to worry though. We get up early each morning and push hard until it gets too wet. Today we worked on pitches 9 and 10, roughly 5.12+ and 5.14 respectively. Pitch 10 is a beautiful seam lieback that you can clealy see from the valley floor. Each move is harder than the last for the full 100 foot pitch. I'm looking forward to trying this pitch some more, as it's my anti-style. Once the rain started, I worked on the cruz of pitch 8, which happened to be directly below the portaledge and remained dry for 30 minutes longer than the rest o the wall. This section, being short and powerful, felt great! Tomorrow we venture up to check out the last unexplored pitch on the route: the Molar Traverse. Wish us luck! We're psyched!

- Posted from the wall

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