Cathedral Peak
September 2023
After a pleasant three day backpacking trip with Anthony, I was to meet Ben for some climbing to continue my week in the Yosemite high country. I drove to the spot we chose to meet at, ate some dinner, and went to sleep. Around 11p.m. I was greeted by a knock on my door. I rose to greet Ben and chat a bit about our plan. The weather was still unsettled, and afternoon storms we slated to roll in both days. We set our alarms for 4:45 a.m. and got some sleep.
After an early breakfast, we sorted gear and drove into the park. Wary of storms, we nixed our plans to climb the long route up Tenaya Peak and instead opted to climb a shorter, six pitch route up Cathedral Peak. I had a fair degree of confidence that we’d beat the crowds to this popular climb, but my confidence was shaken by there being three other parties sorting gear at the trailhead. We wasted no time in setting off on the three mile approach. Despite coming from sea level, Ben was able to keep up with me relatively well on the hike in.
Once at the base of the climb, we flaked the rope, racked up, and I set off on the first pitch of this meandering route. The rock was solid and route finding relatively straightforward. Ben took over on pitch two, which I was quite happy with since it seemed to protect poorly. He boldly cracked on, and made it up to a tree he could belay from. During this time, literally dozens of people began to appear at the base of the climb. The crowds were here and hot on our tails. People began ascending the route beneath us, left of us, and right of us. We’d have to climb quickly to maintain our lead and not get caught in a rat’s nest of climbers and ropes.
I took over on the long and winding third pitch. It boasted some dainty face climbing without much in the way of protection. Ben seemed happy that I led this pitch when he made it up to the anchor I built. He would be on the sharp end of the rope for the upcoming chimney pitch. Ben navigated this without much difficulty, while I followed up with lots of grunting, shimmying and discomfort. I do not like off-widths and I do not like chimneys.
The fifth pitch was quite fun and quite long but did not quite see me to the summit. I built an anchor maybe twenty feet from the true summit, hauled Ben up, and then he took over for the last bit. Before long, we were on top of Cathedral Peak. We shared the summit with some simul-climbers who were more like soloists since they built no anchors, utilized only hip-belays, and eventually told us they just brought the rope for Eichorn Pinnacle. We chatted with our new friends for a few minutes, took in the stupendous views, and eventually started making our way down. The down climb supposedly went at class four, but it proved to be fairly exposed, so we rappelled down most of it. An hour-and-a-half of scrambling and hiking saw us back to the car. It started to rain and thunder soon after.
We made some lunch and climbed a fun hand crack on Puppy Dome in the rain. Anthony and our other buddy Abe came up from the east side to join us for dinner and we all camped out together. The next morning, we took Anthony into the park, dropped him off at the John Muir Trail, and climbed for a few hours on Stately Pleasure Dome. Ben left, I loitered around for a while, and eventually drove back home. Thus ended my stupendous week in Yosemite.
