My friend Doug was in the Valley for a few weeks, so he and I hatched this plan to climb the West Face of Leaning Tower, at what ultimately seemed like the last minute. Doug was one of the people that taught me to climb in WI, back in the early 90s. He has tons of experience caving and free climbing, and wanted to break into big walls. We spent a day at the base of El Cap so that he could get used to the equipment that he was going to be borrowing from Tom, and get some practice in on easy aid lines, and then we set off for the route.
Our original plan was to fix the first four pitches (to Awahnee Ledge, with two 60m ropes) on the first day, and then bivy at the base before firing up the rest of the wall on the second day. We abandoned that plan because Jacqueline kindly told us that there is a resident bear who hangs out near the base of Leaning Tower and is not above digging through climbers packs in search of food. In typical Yosemite bear style, it has learned that there is OFTEN food in haul bags or backpacks, so it doesn't need any further olfactory temptation to rip into a bag and just check out what is inside. $200 haul bag - bear bait. Fantastic.
Our modified plan was to not take a haul bag, but instead return to Hans' cabin for the night. This made our preparations more straightforward, since there was no need to pack dinner, sleeping bags or other camping supplies, and would even allow us to take a shower between climbing days. This made climbing the wall so pleasant, and the logistics so simple, that I'm not even completely sure that I should count it as a big wall.
The short roof move on the first pitch turned out to be quite a bit more complicated than the C1F rating given in the Supertopo book seemed to indicate. Doug set off, and after trying a couple of different things, ended up lowering back down to the belay. I was a bit discouraged because Doug is pretty innovative when it comes to gear, and if he couldn't find anything... Some guys at the base told us that another party, who had planned to do it in a day, had turned around earlier that morning because they weren't able to negotiate that move though the roof. Still, at this point, having carried all the gear and water to the base, there was nothing to lose by trying to go up there and look around on my own, so up I went.
This climb is steep! At first I thought that I might be able to batman up the rope to Doug's high point, but I was hanging out so far away from the wall that that attempt resembled nothing so much as a long series of chin-ups. It wasn't long before I realized that it would be much wiser to simply re-lead the bolt ladder instead. The roof is pretty tough on that first pitch, but after much cursing, I was eventually able to lead it using a small cam hook before being able to reach into the thin crack that is hard to see from below the roof. We were on our way!
In contrast to the moves on the first pitch, Doug had no trouble with the C2 on the 3rd pitch. We had to wait a bit for Edwardo and Ettie, the party ahead of us, but we made it to Awahnee Ledge just as the light was going golden, rapped, and walked down in the dark. My contact lenses were giving me some trouble late in the day, so I ended up having to rely pretty heavily on Doug to find the trail down. It worked out alright in the end. We had a late dinner and a quick shower before going to bed.
The next morning, my contacts were still bothering me, and it took me forever to get them to feel even marginally comfortable. We didn't get a particularly early start, but by the time we jugged up to our high point the day before, we found that the party ahead of us was still climbing pitch 5, the first pitch off Awahnee, where they had spent the night. Fortunately, they were incredibly nice about letting us pass. We waited for Edwardo to finish leading, then Doug set off, cleaning Edwardo's gear as he went. So, when Doug short-fixed p5, and passed him, Edwardo was able to continue up as well. I cleaned Doug's gear on p5, and both sets of gear on p6. Because p5 goes up diagonally to the right, and p6 diagonals back to the left, that means that rather than having to traverse, Ettie was able to jug straight up to the belay, which was all for the best, because she had seemed tired and a bit overwhelmed the day before anyway.
The most interesting part of this whole maneuver, is that while we were waiting on Awahnee, we got some real close-up encounters with some of the cliff swallows who were nesting in a crack just above the ledge. They would meet up in their nest, start getting it on, and then fall, in pairs, stuck together 100 feet from their nest onto our ledge, bouncing off us, our gear and the ledge we were standing on, before flying off, regrouping, and repeating the whole process again 5 minutes later. Sometimes they would end up lying on our ropes for a few moments, stunned and disoriented-looking, before they flew away. It seemed like a terribly painful way to procreate.
After that we moved smoothly up the unrelentingly steep terrain to a beautiful summit, and started our descent. The chimney/gully system behind Leaning Tower is fairly straight-forward to find, but darkness overtook us before we had rapped more than a few times. My contact lens problems made my eyesight unreliable, so Doug set off first, down the rappels to locate the next rap station, and then I followed. We must have missed one station in the dark, but Doug found a good flake, so we left a sling and continued down into the darkness to the base, and eventually to our car.
Although we found more than one occasion to regret our late start on the second day, and there were a couple of strategical errors along the way, over all it was a fabulous adventure up a beautiful route. Before I started to aid climb, a friend told me that 'fun' activities fell into three categories; those that were fun, while you are doing them, those that are fun immediately after you finish, and those, like big wall climbing, which require a period of rest and forgetting before they are considered fun. But on this route, I had fun all the way up.
