We have finally made it to Yosemite and it is just as beautiful and spectacular as I'd ever imagined. We are still in the outskirts of the park in an area called Tuolomne Meadows. It's about 50 miles or so from the valley (which is what most people picture when thinking of Yosemite). This is still high mountain country with grand peaks and perfect granite to be climbed.
We chose one of the classic routes here in this area called Cathedral Peak. This entire trip we have been expecting all the routes we've been on to be over populated and zoo-like with tons of other people climbing the same thing as us, fortunately we have practically been the only party climbing most the routes we've been on. We had a suspicion that Cathedral Peak would be different, with this in mind we got an early start to avoid the crowds. It was a fairly short hike in, probably less than 3 miles and we ended up being the second group at the base of the climb.
Not only is this a popular route but it's one of the tallest points in the area that serves as a perfect "lightning rod". There were predicted thunder and lightning storms for the afternoon so this gave us an incentive to not be on top when they rolled in. As we began climbing more and more and more people began showing up. Including ourselves, there were about 7 people climbing all together at the same time trying to be mindful not to get ropes tangled and interfere with eachother. It was rather funny watching a few of them get into mis-communication messes. There was a party who agreed to solo the route, then some of them decided they wanted a rope after they were already a good distance apart from eachother. Watching this scenario work itself out gave me a laugh and also made us feel pretty competent as an apline rock team that we have our stuff pretty dialed. The day ended up being perfect and we summited after about 5 pitches of incredible rock.
We downclimbed off the summit and found a nice ledge to have lunch on where we got to see many marmots scrounging and climbing around.
In just a short scramble we headed over to Eichorn's Pinachole which is beautiful striking tower next to Cathedral Peak.
Sam snapped a few pic's of me which nicely highlites how incredible crooked my head is. Every climb I put my helmet on the exact same way and after Sam starts giving me a hard time for what a dork I look like I adjust it, but straightening it up just feels awkard and naturally it goes back to a crazy-wonky-crooked style.
Eichorn's Pinachole was 2 pitches at 5.4 with spectacular views from the summit.
As we were on our descent we looked back up and counted atleast 7 other parties only half way up the route with big black ominous clouds breaching them. We didn't wait around to see if they made it and booked it out to the car. (Which thankfully still had not been eaten by bears!)
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