Yosemite Part 2 - Guide Cracks on DAFF Dome

Day 1 - 09 September 2012 - Woke up. It was cold. Really cold compared to where I came from back East.  It was probably in the upper 30s or so.  I was glad I brought cold-weather gear.  However, the temp came up nicely after an hour or so in which Mitch and I ate breakfast and figured out where we would climb.  We were off by 0730 to explore.




We headed down the road looking for the parking area for DAFF Dome.  That's the "Dome Across From Fairview (Dome)".  We passed what we thought is the parking area but decided to keep driving down to Tenaya Lake.  Mitch was there about 6 years ago and wanted to refresh his memory a bit.  Cool.  Directly next to Tenaya Lake is the road and directly next to that is Stately Pleasure Dome.  I immediately recognized it from the photos on Mountain Project.  We checked out a few routes and were pleasantly surprised to see that there was only one party on it.  This place was supposed to be crazy crowded and always busy. Huh...good sign.  We decided to save SPD for later and headed back to DAFF.  We parked, racked up our gear, and headed up the trail to the Guide Cracks area.

Looking up at DAFF Dome from the parking area

The Guide Cracks are pretty short, but fun.  From right to left they're graded 5.5, 5,7, 5.8 and 5.8.  The real climbing on each is probably about 25-30 ft, although both 5.8s have some tough moves on slabby (low-angle) rock up top.

Mitch on the first 5.8 crack. Tough, but short.

 A good day of climbing on the Guide Cracks was almost spoiled when Mitch got the rope stuck after pulling it from the final climb.  It got caught in a crack at the top of the block you have to climb.  We had the majority of the rope on the ground so we tried every trick we know to retrieve the rope without having to leave the ground. 

Nothing. 

I didn't really feel like leading the 5.8 route so I decided to do something that in retrospect was probably infinitely harder and riskier...but more fun!  I decided to lead up the 5.5 crack, traverse over to the crack above the block on the 5.8 line, downclimb to the block, free the rope, and then reverse the route.  The first half went easy enough.  Traversing over the 5.7 and the other 5.8 route was fairly easy as there is a decent angled ledge.  However, to get to the 5.8 crack involved smearing my feet on polished low-angle slab with gear about 2-3 ft to my right...meaning if I fell I'd take a nice swing back right.  I found some crimpers down low and sloper holds up and further left that gave me something positive for my hands as I made the dicey traverse to the crack above the block.  Whew...solid hand and foot jam.  Slammed some gear in and reverse crack climbed down to the block.  The rope was really stuck pretty good.  I pulled out about 10-15 ft of rope and dropped it safely to the ground.

Now the hard part...reversing the traverse.  Why was this harder? Because that low-angle polished slab was facing in my direction when I traversed over.  As I go back, it was off-camber from me...meaning it faced away and made it much harder to get positive pressure on it.  I started into the moves once and then went back to the crack to rest.  This was hard and scary.  Being on this side of it also meant I was about 5 ft or more from my next piece of pro.  Not a good fall zone.  But it was time to go climbing.  Dialed it in, two quick breaths, and with some fancy footwork and timely weight-shifting I managed to get back over cleanly.  Moving further back right I decided to just climb up the rest of the 5.5 to the anchor chains and rapped off to clean the rest of the gear.  Whew!

Our minor rope fiasco on the Guide Cracks. The orange-colored rock (right where the yellow line makes a 90 deg turn) is the polished low-angle slab.

 After this minor fiasco we moved down a little bit to the Alimony Crack, which Mitch led.  From the top of this we were able to rap down to another two-bolt anchor and set up a top rope on some harder, thin face climbing on the low-angle slab.  This stuff was seriously balancy.  Amazing climbing on the smooth, low-angle slab face.  Leading this would be scary, but doable...but not today.  The bolts are like 15-20 ft apart and the climbing is consistently hard, but positive.  Good shoes make a difference here but so do strong calves and good edging and crimping technique.

After doing this a few times I was beat and ready for a wonderful dehydrated meal back at camp.  But before that we stopped off at the small store and grab a Haagen-Dazs ice cream bar. Yum.

Day 1 in Tuolumne was done.  I was definitely tired, but felt good, especially considering the elevation.  I was climbing strong and ready for whatever fun adventures were coming our way.  And tomorrow, they would just get bigger and better.




*A word on crack climbing.  The 5.7 crack on the Guide Cracks was my first climb in Yosemite and what a great line.  Crack climbing is something that I thought I was pretty good at up until about a month prior to the trip.  I realized I wasn't all that good at it and needed to work at it.  Admitting I wasn't that good at it was step 1...let go of the ego!  I then worked at it when I could in the gym.  I also watched a couple videos on You Tube that really helped out.  Wild Country has a great series of videos on crack climbing that gave me some good pointers and really emphasized some things that have stuck with me like tucking in the thumb on every handjam and rotating the elbow down and in to the rock on fingerlocks and jams.  In addition, a few videos from Jay Smith's Splitter Camp were great.  I'd love to take his class sometime or just climb there on my own.  His methodical process of crack climbing kinda rings in my head when crack climbing now, especially the phrase "hang straight-arm".  A good straight-arm hang combined with a good foot jam now feels like a great rest to me.  I was diligent in my crack climbing at Yosemite and would climb cracks purely using crack technique even if face holds were available.  Why? Because face climbing is already a strength of mine.  I needed more mileage on crack technique.  So I used my tape gloves every chance I got.  As you'll see, it paid off, cuz by the time we reached the Valley I was feeling pretty good leading a sustained 5.8 and 5.9 crack.  But I have a ways to go to climb harder cracks confidently like I want to.  That will come with time and hard work.  I encourage all my climbing friends to do the same with whatever technique might be their weakness.