Higher Cathedral Spire by Sam Adelman
Every since I learned that they existed, I’ve wanted to climb a spire. I remember the feeling when my friend Joe explained to me about a giant needle of rock, just thrusting out of the ground. Whether it was the idea of standing on a tiny surface (sometimes no bigger than four square feet!) in the middle of the open sky, or the idea of a multipitch rappel (I love to rappel), something about spires just stuck in my head. So, it is understandable for me to be excited, when I was in Yosemite, California, sitting around a table at Camp 4 (the climbers camp ground in Yosemite National Park), and I heard the reply to my oh-so-common question, “Aleksey, what are we going to climb tomorrow”, was Higher Cathedral Spire. Higher Cathedral spire is the taller of the two cathedral spires in Yosemite, and we were planning to do standard route, a 4 pitch, 600 foot, 5.9 up the back of the spire. Aleksey had shown us the spire the first day we got there, when we went sight seeing, and I knew it would be a perfect first spire. That whole night I could barely sleep due to my extreme excitement. Even when we were walking out of the van, the spire in sight, my enthusiasm still didn’t waver. The hike to the spire started out as an easy ascent up switchbacks through the woods. After about 30 minutes, we came to a boulder field, and the going began to get a little tougher. Climbing over 3-4 foot boulders at Aleksey’s “small backpack speed” is not an easy endeavor. I ended up falling to the back of our procession, and could barely manage to keep up with my other climbing mates. (As it was, we were all left behind by Aleksey.) After another 30 minutes or so, we entered another forest. This time, it was more light green and dense, with a jungle aspect to it. Though my heart was pounding in my head, I kept going, staring at my feet, forcing them to go forward. It was only after 20 minutes that I looked up from my feet, and realized that I had been left behind. Yelling at the top of my lungs, I heard Sam Watts’ reply, “over here”. For those of you who don’t know me, I can have a hard time following directions, and I ended up going the opposite direction from the climb. Nevertheless, I kept on in the wrong direction, until I pushed aside some leaves, and came to the edge of the back of the spire. What I saw was awe-inspiring. Straight in front of me was lower cathedral spire, separated by only a five hundred foot drop, and another 1000 horizontal feet. Surrounding that outcrop was pure blue skies. I could see El Cap to the left, and the rest of the valley in the background. It was like I had been stuck into a postcard. I must have stood there for at least 5 minutes, struck by the sheer beauty of the valley, before I realized why I was actually here, and turned around to join my friends, and start the climb.
We were all getting “suited up” for the climb (Sam Watts, Arnold, Mike, and I) while Aleksey had his last-minute smoke. As I was buckling my chalk bag around my waist, I heard Sam’s frantic voice calling, “Oh $&!#, I don’t have my climbing shoes.”
“You sure?” I asked.
“Ya, I must have left them back at camp.”
“Wow.” Was all I could respond. After a quick explanation to Aleksey, I began giving Sam the basics on Jumaring. Jumaring is ascending up a rope using a Petzl Jumar device. While not that complicated, it’s not exactly the thing you want to learn while climbing. We finally decided to give Sam a Jumar that he could use when the climbing got too hard, but that he would attempt to climb as much as he could.
With that decided, we began the climb… The first pitch went easily as a non-vertical 5.7 crack system. We decided the order to be Mike (since he wanted to clean), me, Arnold, and finally, Sam. The next pitch was where the climb became harder. The crack became vertical, and ended in a pretty tricky slopey traverse. After watching Mike do the hard moves, I made the pitch without much trouble. After coaxing of Sam through Jumaring once again, we started the third pitch. This pitch was a beautiful crack running up to the third belay ledge, and went wonderfully for everyone. Now came the fourth, final, and crux pitch. In my mind, this pitch consisted of three parts. The first was a series of “blocks” piled up to make jugs. The tricky part about this was that some were loose, and you had to be careful not to drop rocks on those below. Next came a difficult layback finger crack. This was the crux of the climb, and possibly my favorite part. Finally, there was another slopey traverse under a roof to a short dihedral. The first two parts went fine, but when I came to the traverse, I heard Aleksey’s voice from above,
“Ahh, Sam?”
“Ya, Aleksey”
“Umm, the rock is sharp here, and a Mike took out the directional, so don’t fall Ok?”
While this is almost the worst thing you want to hear while 500 feet up on a tower of rock, previous experience with Aleksey told me that the best way to deal with it was to just not fall. So I used the best technique to deal with scary climbing…to not think about it, and I climbed on. While I probably would have been fine if I had fell, it would have meant a ten foot swing and ripping up Aleksey’s rope, so it was a good thing that I made it.
After another hour or so, we were all there, standing on top of the spire. It was so amazing! To be standing on a tiny square of rock surrounded by the beautiful Yosemite Valley is a remarkable experience, one that I don’t think I will ever forget. On top of that, I had made the climb with out falls. I had done my first spire without falling!
All too soon Aleksey was telling us it was time to go down. As we prepared to rappel, I heard Aleksey’s voice asking me if I wanted to lead the rappels. This was too good to be true…not only did I get to climb a spire; I got to lead and set up rappels. I immediately agreed, and began to hook into the rope. Everything went well for the first rappel. When we got to the third belay ledge, I set up the rappel, and we decided to do two pitches in one rappel to save time. As I neared the first belay ledge, I began to run out of rope. Nothing was dangerous since I had tied a knot in the ends of the ropes, but I had to literally pull myself down, stretching the rope, to the belay ledge. Not wanting the others to have to go through all that work, I decided to tie the rope to the anchor, so that it would already be stretched out.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought of the fact that people still needed to hook into the rope. With all the tension that I had put in the rope, it was really difficult to put the rope into an ATC. After Sam came down and explained it to me, we fixed the mistake, but unfortunately we had already wasted a lot of time dealing with the rope. Luckily, when Aleksey came down, he wasn’t mad at all. On the contrary, as I was unhooking from the final rappel, I heard a thick Russian voice coming down to me, “In ze jungles, ze mighty jungles, ze lion sle-eps tonight. A-weeeeee-iiiii-eeee-iiiii-eeee-iiiiiii-eeee A-weeee-ummm-bum-ba-way…” It was Aleksey, singing In the Jungle at the top of his lungs. He was far from mad at me!
As we hiked back down to the van, I realized the experience that I had just had. While there was no real danger involved, or any huge ordeal that I overcame, I still learned a lot about myself that climb. It wasn’t just about doing my first spire; it was about realizing what I was capable of, and how much I had actually learned during my time with Aleksey. The fact that I could explain to someone how to Jumar, that Aleksey could tell me to lead a rappel, and I could know exactly what to do, and how to do it (with some minor exceptions), all of this I did without thinking, without realizing what I had accomplished with Aleksey. All those climbing trips, classes, camps, they were more than just a fun activity to do in my spare time, they were learning experiences. I learned so much without realizing it, that I didn’t apprehend what I had come to know. As if my own awareness wasn’t enough, every time Aleksey tells this story, he doesn’t remember how I screwed up the rappel, on the contrary, he says how proud he was of me that day, how good a job I had done.
