Yosemite from a Slightly Different Perspective, Pt. 3

I've taken three days now to describe the journey of my former student Kait and friend Ammon up the Mescalito route of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, one of the classic big wall climbs of the world. Their trip actually took ten days. As described in the first post, all their equipment, water and supplies had to be carried up the cliff with them (and everything had to stay with them; interpret this as you wish).

The cliff is 3,000 feet of vertical granite walls, broken up here and there by joints, fractures and cracks that provide the routes climbers use to reach the top. The second post showed our climbers in transit.

Our climbers were kind enough to take a look around and snap a few shots of the scenery as they got higher and higher on the face of the cliff. They provide us with a view of Yosemite Valley that few ever have the privilege to see. El Capitan forms one side of the "gateway" to Yosemite Valley. The rocks on the far wall are made of the same granite and display the same steep cliffs and climbing challenges. The cliffs are known as the Cathedral Rocks, and are the familiar spikey peaks that frame Bridalveil Falls when viewed from the west. They can be seen across from Ammon in the top picture (what was he looking at, I wonder?), and on the right side of the picture above. The two Cathedral Spires are just right of center in the picture above.

The cliffs on the left are composed of different granitic rocks where the joints and cracks are more closely spaced. They tend to form spires and needles rather than wide smooth faces.

As they get higher up the cliff, Half Dome comes into view. It is composed of another type of granitic rock, the Half Dome granodiorite. Like the El Capitan granite, the unit is not highly jointed, so it forms steep rock faces with broad wide faces.

The prominent spire to the left of Half Dome is called Sentinel Rock, with rounded Sentinel Dome above and to the right. Half Dome and Sentinel Domes get their rounded shapes from exfoliation, which happens as weight is taken off the rock by erosion. The rock expands outwards, forming cracks and fractures parallel to the surface.

The grassy area at the base of the cliff is El Capitan Meadow. It is a well-known tourist stop for people hoping to see climbers inching their way up the cliff. How fun to see the view that climbers have looking for gawking tourists! The meadow was once a shallow lake that formed behind a glacial moraine following the last advance of ice in the valley about 12,000 years ago. The moraines are easily seen while exploring the valley floor near Bridalveil Fall.

As our climbers approach the summit ridge of El Capitan, the true scale of El Capitan becomes apparent; the Cathedral Rocks, as tall as they are, are dwarfed in the view above.

Late in the day, the climbers reach the summit!

And take in a beautiful view of Yosemite Valley from the summit area....

Kait and Ammon, thanks so much for sharing your journey!

Remember, the copyright for all of these pictures belong to our climbers. Let me know if you need contact information.

Yosemite from a Slightly Different Perspective, Pt. 2

And we are off! Off the ground, off our rockers, and on the rocks. This is my former student on a ten-day journey up El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. Yesterday, we got a sense of the planning and logistics of a long climb on the big walls of Yosemite.
Kait and Ammon were following the Mescalito, which is route #14 in the picture above from SuperTopo (does that diagram look a bit like an LA freeway map?).
Rock climbers really are the ultimate geologists. Doing research on rock exposures is one thing, but it's quite another when your life depends on knowing the properties, and especially the weaknesses of the rock.
Climbers have to know a lot about the weathering properties of rock. On a face like El Capitan, climbing usually follows joints and fractures in the granite. Deeply weathered surfaces can't support or hold the gear in place. In some rocks (especially the Cathedral Peak granite), giant feldspar crystals (megacrysts) offer some convenient handholds and footholds, although the cleavage pattern of the mineral sometimes complicates things.
That's the "Nose" of El Cap below Kait.
El Capitan is one of the most extraordinary cliffs in the world because the
ganite is very solid with relatively few joints and cracks. It's actually been a long time since the cliff was scraped clean by glaciers, almost a million years. The two most recent glaciations reached the base of El Cap, but only a short distance up the cliffs. Moraines can be found on the valley floor below the cliffs. It is the effect of rockfalls and mass wasting that keeps the cliffs vertical (and providing "convenient" routes up the face).
That's the North America pluton behind Ammon. It's a darker rock that intruded into the El Capitan granite. From the valley floor, it looks vaguely like...North America. From this angle, not so much.
Thanks again for sharing the photos of your journey!
In the next post: The summit, and the view! Please remember, these pictures are the property of Kait and Ammon. Check with me for contact information.

Yosemite from a Slightly Different Perspective

It's a funny thing. Teaching at a community college in a dusty farming town in the middle of California's Central Valley has often meant that I have dealt with students who suffer from a serious lack of outdoor experience. There are few funds in the elementary schools for field trips, and for economic reasons as well as anything else, a surprisingly small number of my students have ever been anywhere beyond the city limits. This is part of what makes my teaching career so fun: I am often the person privileged to introduce these students to the incredible outdoor world of geology for the first time, whether on a lab trip to the coast ranges or Yosemite Valley, or an overnight journey to Death Valley, the Cascades, or the Colorado Plateau. In their eyes, I am sort of an adventurer and explorer who has done incredible things.

On the other hand, there are times when I really get put in my place. I found out one of my former students is preparing for a Mt. Everest expedition; my colleague and friend shares his photos of an African safari, and a journey to Antarctica; another posts his pictures of his research in the Honduras (including a storm that dropped feet of rain). I'm really not quite the adventurer I like to think...but the ultimate came this week, when a recent student posted shots of her 10-day climb up the Mescalito route of El Capitan. I've seen plenty of pictures of people climbing the big walls of Yosemite, but it puts things in a completely different perspective when you know one of the people involved.

There was a time, when I was 30 years younger and 100 pounds lighter that I dreamed of learning to climb vertical walls. It didn't happen, because I am kind of a wuss about hanging from ropes. Kait, on the other hand, is a bit of an adventurer. She was kind enough to grant permission to share some pictures of her journey. I'm sure you'll agree; these pictures are spectacular!

So, a bit about logistics first before some of the views. If you've ever flown anywhere, you may remember trying to pack a minimum amount of stuff to last you the whole trip. How many changes of clothing? What snacks for the flight? A bottle of water to keep hydrated on the flight? Climbing a big wall is a little bit different. What do you do if you will have no access to anything but one giant rock for 10 days?
No drinking fountains. No restaurants. Nothing. And you have to consider that whatever you choose to take is going to be hanging off of you the entire time.
There is the all-important water supply. Climbing in summer with southern exposure is gonna be thirsty work. There are the culinary details. Hot food is sort of out of the question.

And then there are the accommodations: a bit cramped, even confining...

But the view is nice!
And one must not forget the expeditionary flag!

In the next post, a room with a view! Please recall, these aren't my pictures; copyright belongs to Kait; contact me if you want to get in touch with our hosts on this adventure.