Another quick update. Again, tomorrow is going to be a huge day so I only have a few minutes to do quick post. Tomorrow we’re going to do the Snake Dike (5.7R) on Half Dome and we’re getting up at 4am and we have about 15 miles of hiking to do along with the climb.
Since we’re doing such a big day tomorrow we did a “short” day today with only 5 pitches and about 600′ of climbing. We did some climbs at an area called Five Open Books which is just to the left of Yosemite Falls. We did a warm-up 5.6 called Munginella and then did our first 5.9 here in the Valley called Commitment which had a wild roof/layback crux with a spectacular layback corner up above as well as a fantastic hand crack on the first pitch. I was lucky to get both the hand crack and the crux pitch! Although the first pitch had a nest of biting red ants in a section of the hand crack that swarmed me while I was leading it, not so fun!!
We found out that we can only stay in Yosemite for 7 days total during the high traffic season of the summer. That definitely messes with our plans, especially since the Tuolumne campground isn’t open yet. We’re going to be scrambling to figure how to make this work but there are a bunch of Forest Service campgrounds just outside the Valley, so we might be able to get something there and just make the commute each day. It won’t be ideal, but at least we can salvage our second week.
Sorry, no pictures today because I’m having problems getting the netbook to read the cards. I’ll try to get something up tomorrow if we get in early enough.