On June 11, 2016 our party of three
(me, CR, and GG) went up Cathedral Peak
and Eichorn Pinnacle on Cathedral’s shoulder, and then two of us wandered cross
country to check out the Echo Peaks next door.
It was a successful day, but we did get chased around by the weather all
day, and then finally chased out of the park in the evening.
GG, CR and I are all trying to
develop “careers” while mostly just wanting to spend time outside, which often
results in an uncomfortable degree of sleep deprivation. CR was all set to go out solo this weekend,
and GG and I decided late in the week that we both wanted to go too. The forecast looked really rosy on Wednesday,
but was turning worse as the week went on. We thought it would be classic
afternoon thundershowers, and as long as we got out early we could catch good
weather windows Saturday and Sunday. So
we left the bay area after the traffic died down on Friday, drove out past
Tuolumne Meadows and napped a few hours in a pullout east of Yosemite. On the drive out we discussed a few different
options for the weekend, and came to sort of a consensus plan: we would try to
hit a bunch of relatively easy climbs (for CR and GG) so that I could tag
along, and then do something a little more technical on Sunday, and see how I
did. I’m primarily a trail runner who
enjoys getting to climb when I get the chance, so I could always run around
while they climbed if it sounded a little too exciting for me.
After waking up at
3:30 we set out up the Cathedral Lakes trailhead around 4:30, and were
pleasantly surprised not to see anyone else on the approach trail except two
climbers headed back down while we were walking in. They may have been caught out on Cathedral
overnight? They were pretty tight lipped about it. It was a pretty morning, but
chilly, with wispy high clouds and a brisk wind.
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| Morning breaking, slowly |
GG led all the pitches up Cathedral, and then
I tied in with an alpine butterfly about 15 meters up the rope from CR. I was
sort of the princess on this climb, since I didn’t have to set gear, clean very
much gear, or belay. The downside of
this is that I was inactive at belay stations and got very cold. I had a long sleeve, a puffy, and a wind
jacket, and I struggled with whole-body shivers at 4 of the 5 belay stations. I
started singing, which may have annoyed everyone else, but did seem to help.
The wind was just unrelenting, and the sun was much less warming than
expected. It’s tough being the princess!
At the fourth belay were visited by a very cute marmot that I wanted to snuggle
with, but he would only snuggle if I fed him, and wilderness ethics have been
drilled into me for too many years for that.
If he was going to get our food he would have to steal it.
Other than freezing our asses off
it was a pleasant cruise up Cathedral, and it was very smooth after we got our
gear all sorted out at the first belay station.
It is such a beautiful mountain, and the views are incredible,
especially right now, while much of the high country is snowy.
The clouds were
starting to look more substantial, and the wind was serious business at the
top. The summit is small and awkward, so after CR tagged the very top for us we
headed down, walking off via the mountaineers route. On our way down we impulsively decided that
we should go up Eichorn Pinnacle too, which sits on Cathedral’s shoulder and is
just the cutest piece of rock!
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| Eichorn Pinnacle, seen from Cathedral's shoulder |
CR led
this one easily, but I found this single pitch 5.4 kind of tough with an
awkward, exposed traverse section, and I had my only real fall of the day
here. I might have to lead someday, but
being a follower has such serious advantages, like low drama, low consequence slips!
We rappelled off Eichorn (always
entertaining to a beginner) as expeditiously as possible since the clouds had
definitely rolled in now, and rain was apparent on distant peaks. The walk off Cathedral takes some time, and
involves quite a bit of slabby scramble, and it would be much less fun in the
rain. After getting back down to the
bottom of Cathedral we watched 3 separate parties just starting to climb up in
conditions that I would characterize as threatening. It takes all kinds… I can’t bring myself to
cast aspersions on beginners, since I am a raw beginner only saved from looking
like a fool by my more experienced friends, but let’s just say that some of the
folks that were headed up were going to take a very, very long time to make it
to the top. I hope they didn’t get rained on too much.
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| The Echoes in the distance, I think |
Now, the initial stated goal of the
day was the Echoes, which are a set of small peaks all clustered together,
numbered 0-8, next door to Cathedral, but we just couldn’t decide what the
weather was going to do now. CR and I
decided that we’d like to do some Echo reconnaissance, but climbing in the rain
is no fun, so we’d just head over there and scramble around a little. GG seemed pretty worn out, maybe because he’d
done a lot of leading, and maybe because he hadn’t slept any of the nights of
the past week, so he headed back to the car schlepping all our climbing gear,
and we travelled light cross country. Getting
up to the Echoes required a mix of clumsy walking across sun-cupped snow and
bushwacking through Manzanita, but it didn’t take too long, and about an hour
later we were in a dramatic little plateau with rock piles scattered around it.
The rock is more rose-colored than
on Cathedral, and there’s brightly colored lichen all over. You can look over
the backside towards Matthis Ridge and friends, and it was clearly raining over
there.  |
| bright lichens |
 |
| Storms in the distance |
We thought we didn’t have a ton of
time, so we decided to scramble up Echo #1, which is 3rd class. On the way up it was spitting rain a bit, and
at the top it seemed to be raining all around us, but not quite on us.
I said to CR, “We’re
now officially being stupid, we should go down” and she agreed, so we headed
off of Echo #1. By the time we got down
it looked a lot less threatening, and the other Echoes were so winsome that we
decided to go up one more. Echo #2 is
also 3rd class, and it is a very pretty pile of rocks. I made it 70% of the way up, and then got a
little chicken, but CR cruised on up to the top.
We considered traversing over to #2.5, but
there was a snowfield on the ridge between the top and us, so we traversed back
up to the top of #1, and headed down. The rain was threatening again, so we
decided, with a lot of regret, that we shouldn’t test our luck with more Echoes,
and we headed down. Every once and a
while I hear my husband’s voice in my head while I’m out goofing off, and he is
always reproaching me to be careful, so I try to listen sometimes.
We glissaded a bit down from the
Echoes, which was a nice break from fighting Manzanita, and headed down to Budd
Lake to check out the strange snow patterns on the lake’s surface.
It was the exact consistency of a
slushie, and very pretty. After snacking
a little on the shore we headed down to the car, on a hike out that seemed a
lot longer than the hike in. About 100
meters before the car the rain started to pick up, and we thought we were in
for it, but then when we got to the car it backed off again. Why is the sky so schizophrenic?
We went to grab dinner at the diner
on the east side of Yosemite, and while we were enjoying some good solid fare,
couple of beers, and some mighty fine pie we asked the very friendly staff
about the forecast for Sunday. It was
almost as bad a forecast as you could put together in June—continued high
winds, unseasonable cold, rain, thunder, and some snow at high elevations. The rain was already starting, and was
predicted to continue through Sunday night.
So… there wasn’t much point in camping out in the rain to not climb on
Sunday. We all piled into the car, started
driving through the rain, and got back to the bay 28 hours after leaving. It was a dang good way to spend a day, and sleeping in my bed that night was pretty amazing.
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