I, like thousands of my climbing brothers and sisters, have dreamed of climbing the Nose ever since learning about the route, its history, and reputation years ago. Over the course of 6-7 years, I went from "let's climb it!" to "let's try to do it a few days!" to "let's do the NIAD!", and finally "let's onsight it!". Finally, we had our chance to give the big stone our best effort. So we racked up and started climbing Thursday morning.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my original friend and partner for the climb who was undoubtedly the catalyst behind us even being in the valley. We trained together and kept the stoke high over the winter in an effort to keep each other psyched, and strong. Unfortunately, he had to pull out at the last minute for personal reasons. I'm thankful for everything he contributed toward our partnership, and wish he could've been up there with me.

I was lucky an acquaintance of mine, Dean was also in the valley who was experiencing partner issues of his own. So we decided to team up for the Nose while our respective partners followed their hearts around the valley. A very lucky, and fortuitous turn of events for the both of us.


About 40 feet up Dean's right front gear loop broke unexpectedly (read: his harness was a POS) raining cams and stoppers down atop a few kids bivying at the base. Needless to say, he was super bummed. But before any negative energy could permeate our climb I lowered him to belay 1, pulled the line, fixed it, rapped down a full 70m rope to retrieve 4 cams, and jugged back up to allow Dean to start pitch 2 again! We lost a 0.5 and our large stoppers in the process, but the stoke was still high so we motored up the stove legs.



Regrouping at a quiet Dolt Tower I looked down to see this poor little mummified Bat.


Dean leading the pitch off Dolt.


The bottom pitches are supposed to be the crux, but even with our pitch 2 snafu we were on El Cap tower in 4.5 hours (Thanks Dean!). We had some great momentum at this changeover where I took the lead and passed 2 awesome parties on El Cap Tower/Texas Flake area. Seems like everyone was having a super good time on the Captain Thursday. Tons of smiles, laughing, and great climbing had by all parties on the nose.

The king swing went down 2nd try for me, and 3rd try for Dean on follow. We used the double swing method for our ascent where I chucked a coil of rope to him seconding the swing. That method worked super well, and was very fast. He simply jugged up to the last bolt on the Boot bolt ladder, went in direct so I could bring up all the extra slack in the rope, swung over, and viola, we were onto the next few pitches. The following 3-4 pitches were some of my favorite on the route. The 10c off Eagle had great climbing (bouldery!), and the Lynn Hill traverse was very memorable for me as I climbed almost the entire pitch self-belayed. We luckily ran into another party of 2 who were bailing upwards onto the Nose from the shield (via the 3D). They had jolly ranchers for us, and a couple extra monkey hoots to fuel our stoke upwards.



Taking a moment at triangle ledge for Hans. Sure would stink getting hurt up there. I'm glad he's ok for the most part!


Above Pancake we swapped leaders again where Dean would take us up above the changing corners. We were starting to get pooped here, but a friendly reminder to each other "leave no pocket snacks uneaten!" kept us from the brink of bonking. Dean crushed his leads up through camp VI where we passed our last party of overstokers. These leads were definitely physical, and Dean was waning in stoke but definitely not strength.


I took over above the fingers to hands pitch above the changing corners for the final C2 pitch, and bolt ladder. I turned on my headlamp, looked down the route before the sun finally went over the horizon, and started up the final 2-3 pitches. We summited together with a final time of 19:35.

Descending was fairly uneventful, and we even found some bailed water atop the area around the NA wall.

Overall I thought the Nose was fairly easy climbing wise. The C2 was either fixed or easier than expected compared to other aid I've done whether in the Valley, Zion, or locally in SLC. The free ratings were spot on for what we were used to.

 Overall camp 4 to camp 4 time was just a hair under 24 hours.
 1 rope, double rack to #4, single set of metolius offset cams.
 7 liters of water and 2000 calories per man.
 We dropped 4 cams total, 1/2 set of stoppers, and 1 biner :(
 Passed 5 parties