Tribal Rite A4 5.5

Twelve Days of hard work and pure joy left me at the top of The Capitan. Here are some photos:

Ottowa Doug had soloed the route a couple weeks before - and so gave me some good beta (when it says "no cams on pitch", don't belive it...), an autographed z-ton, and those amazing green pants.


The New Dawn pitches were good, clean, and pretty straight foreward, but I still found myself with some mini-epic on nearly every pitch (forgetting the topo helped). Here's a loose-ass block... a pin scar suckered me into thinking it was solid. Just placing the stopper moved the whole block about half an inch.... Yikes!


The hauling wasn't "too" bad, except the pitch onto Lay Lady, which worked me soooo good. I spent half a day on the ledge just reading and staying out of the sun.


The pitches above Lay Lady mus be great free climbing, but had me puckering, racing the fading light without a headlamp, walking tipped out cams and pulling all kinds of shenanigans to get gear.


My only human contact was on El Cap Tower, when Clay and Corbin came racing by on the nose. Geat to see these fun-lovin bros!!!



I did a lot of laying around, just thinking and reading. This was the first big route where I felt completely comfortable being there. I didn't catch the summit fever, and enjoyed immensely simply patiently slowly suffering my way up the wall.


Some images from the Nose part - looking out from Texas Flake


An old bolt next to the Boot. I wonder if this was placed by Harding? It's right next to the crack in the boot.


Lots of wildlife and flowerage. The frogs come out of the cracks at dusk below Lay Lady, hopping across the face. A milipeed way up in the middle of nowhere - how do they get there? And perigrines, dive bombing like crazy, making the base jumpers look crude and oafish.


So what were the Tribal Rite pitches like?

Clean golden granite!


Open expanses!


Good corners!


An "easy" "crux" pitch


Early Light


Good ledges


Better views


Wierd pro

Good pro


And if that's not enough to get your lazy sport-dawgin arse up there, Tribal Rite even dangles a beautiful carrot in front o your nose!!!


The two unusual things that happened were some intense road construction or invasive plant removal or something at night - LOUD noise and crazy bright lights in the midde of the night actually kept me awake - I took to cutting little squares out of my sleeping pad and duct taping them into my ears to get some peace and quiet!


There was also a huge rockfall around gulf stream. I think I'll pass on that one....


Thanks to Tom and Doug and Gene and all the monkeys for the support and encouragement (and bright green pants)!!!!!

Is it really over????????


No, you fool! Once you finish that whiskey you've got two monster loads to hike down.....

Thank you sir, may I have another!?!?!?

 Zak Tourville