By Greg Murphy
Oh ya, Chan and I headed back up to climb an El Cap route together. I guess it took 2 years for the memory of our parched experience on Horse Chute to fade. The usual late Friday night departure started us off. The conversation on the drive up, usually concerning the gear, route, etc., took an unexpected new turn - we discussed cribs, basinets, baby clothes, the advantages of cloth vs. paper diapers, etc. Apparently, Chan is taking his pending fatherhood a little more seriously than anyone would have thought.
We chose a moderate objective, Realm of the Flying Monkeys (VI, 5.10 A3) on the west face of El Cap and started climbing on Saturday at 7 am. I guess it's almost redundant to relate that we got about 3 hours of sleep and were up at 4am for the approach. We thought that this route would give us a comparatively mellow day and allow a return to the Bay Area that night. The route includes lots of free climbing mixed with aid and the occasional plant. While the climbing is moderate, the route finding is not. Geesh, I spent most of my leads in the middle portion of the route confounded and wondering which way to go. We kind of forged along the path of least resistance bending features in our minds to fit the topo. It was also quite hot. Again, it's probably redundant to mention that we ran out of water.
We topped out just about at dark for a 12h37m time - the second fastest of all time, good enough for the silver. We had been planning to do the new west face descent but painfully, yet safely, opted to go the familiar east ledges because of pending darkness. Painful, because we only had our climbing shoes and we (meaning me) would have to hike back to the start of the route (1.5 hours round trip) to get our stashed gear. It must have been the dehydration thing (and not age and total lack of fitness), but when we got to the car we were about as whipped as during our more usual 28h+ efforts. Nevertheless, the beer was still very cold and eating chips and salsa splayed out on the road at 10:30 pm was a pleasure. I went back for the pack the next morning and we headed home. Chan owes me for that one.
Greg