The DNB (By John Long)
Tim Schneider
(Posted w/o permission This article appeared in Climbing Magazine #118, Feb/Mar 1990)
Classics
DNB
DIRECT NORTH BUTTRESS, MIDDLE CATHEDRAL ROCK, YOSEMITE VALLEY
By John Long
-----------------
When Will Tyree invited me to climb the Direct North Buttress (DNB) on
Middle Cathedral with him, I had been climbing for exactly six months.
That didn't matter to him, though, because I was from Southern California,
where all those ghastly face climbs are. I didn't tell Will I hadn't climbed
any of them. I also didn't tell Will that, aside from The Trough (5.1) at
Tahquitz, the longest climb I had yet accomplished was a two-pitch route
on Arch Rock. Nor did I tell Will that he'd be doing most of the leading
because I didn't know that until the fourth pitch, when I nearly lost my
mind. This was before sticky boots, before EBs even. We wore Robbins
boots -- shit-kicking, case-hardened, mortar-proof Royal Robbins boots.
And we didn't carry a single nut on the rack. All iron. It was spring of 1970,
and the DNB had the reputation as being the hardest long face climb in
Yosemite; to our knowledge it had only been free climbed twice. The night
before the climb we slept in the woods below Middle Cathedral, ostensibly
to get an early start, though I suspect Will wanted to keep me under tight
reins so I couldn't duck out. I slept well because I didn't know what I was
getting into. I was 16.Will roused me before daybreak. Ten years my senior
and vastly more experienced, he was not named Will Tyree at all; that was a
moniker he'd poached from astrology, numerology, white magic, or some such
pile in the cosmic junkyard that was so popular back then.
As we ate a spare breakfast of gorp and Rye Crisps, Will gazed up at the
last visible stars and said everything looked right. I never did learn his real
name. A short steep march through the pines gained us the base, with the
great bulk of Middle Cathedral rearing high into the dawn. We skirted 100
yards right to an abrupt left-facing chimney system on the very prow of the
North Buttress. As Will uncoiled the ropes, I gaped up and saw the top of
the monolith--seemingly in the stratosphere.
"It's ... it's a ... pretty big cliff, Will," I stammered.
"Yes. Very big."
Will was to lead the odd pitches. The topo showed a mantel on the third
pitch as the hardest technical bit, and since this climb was Will's idea and
all, we both felt he might as well lead the crux.
I followed the first lead, and the half-gallon water jug hanging around my
neck made chimneying a real bastard. So I was glad to start leading the
second pitch, glad until I ran into the oily off-width slot about 40 feet
above. Thrashing and cursing, I didn't exactly admire the fixed ring-angle
peg 25 feet below and was certain the 5.7 rating on the topo was baloney.
"Just layback it," Will yelled up. I did, and got the spins as I groped to the
belay stance 50 feet above. As Will followed I gazed up and couldn't reckon
where the route went at all. There wasn't a chimney or a crack or anything
but a dinky layback flake, and that ended after 30 feet. Will arrived and
gave me the water jug, a Clorox bleach bottle. After we took our first sips
Will admitted he should have rinsed the bottle out a few more times after
finding it in the Camp Four dumpster.
He surveyed the wall above: "This is where Arnold backed off, that little
chicken shit." Then he laughed so loud I swear I heard it volley off El
Capitan, a mile across the valley. I thought Will had been gazing at the
moon too much and, looking up, knew that whoever Arnold was, he was no
fool. Will had tried this climb three times in the last month and each
partner had backed off at this very stance. But just now Will scared me
more than the climb and anyhow he was already halfway up the flake.
When the flake ended Will fulfilled my worst fears by traversing dead left,
directly onto the bald face. He got to the crux mantel, fell a few times, and
finally pulled up on the bolt to a wee belay stance. I could look straight up
and across at him and see gray sky between his chest and the building-like
wall, which just steepened and soared out of sight above. The sight of him
dangling out there in no-man's-land gripped me to the bone. Will slugged in
a piton and the rope came tight almost immediately.
"On belay, John," he called.
Meanwhile, hanging at my belay with 1800 feet of uncertainty overhead, I'd
finally gained that threshold every aspiring climber confronts, at which he
perforce determines once and for all if he's really cut out for this type of
work. I could bail off and go back home. or I could press through the door
and into the beyond, where the game is not simply fun, but for keeps.
And, even terrified as I was, I didn't want to go back home. I'd worn my
bright blue Robbins boots to school just so I could field questions about
them and admit I was a rock climber. I'd studied guidebooks while on the
toilet. Unless I unclipped from that anchor and started laybacking I knew
it had all been charades--but I couldn't unclip. Then stubborn conviction
kicked in--I was a rock climber, goddammit ! Maybe not a bold one, but I
wanted to be one, period, worse than anything else in the world, and
though my knees were clacking like wood blocks I unclipped and started
up the flake. I didn't even try the impossible-looking mantel, but simply
yanked up on the bolt. When I got to the stance and saw its one anchor
pin--a baby angle driven straight up--I grabbed the rack and raced for a
good crack about 30 feet above. After blasting home three pitons, I told Will
he'd better lead this pitch, lowered back down to the belay, and stared at
the baby angle. "Are you with me, John?" Will asked. I could tell how much
doing the route meant to him, but to his credit, it didn't mean so much that
he'd drag me along by the ears, against my will. I took a sip of bleach and
told him yes, I was with him. It was just that I didn't have very much
experience and the climbing was so steep and scary. But if he'd lead I'd do
my best to follow even if I had to hand-walk the rope. We still had what
seemed like about 10 miles to go, and the only way we'd succeed was if a
real climber took over, a climber like I wanted to become, a climber like Will
Tyree. I told Will he was on belay, and he cast off.
I cleaned the baby angle with two blows and my knees set to knocking
again. But once I got moving, and felt the gentle tug of the toprope, I settled
in and soon realized why the DNB is one of the world's great rock climbs.
Steep and amply fitted with holds that, if not terrific, are good enough, the
route follows an almost invisible string of grooves, flakes, and thin corners,
all connected with steep face climbing on rock ranging from flint gray to
flame orange. Stray 10 feet off route and the way is insuperable; stay right
on line and the climbing rarely lags under 5.8, with the odd 5.9 and 5.10
section to remind you that you're on the real McCoy.
In an hour we gained the notorious undercling pitch, where Eric Beck had
broken his arm during an early free-climbing attempt. When I pawed up to
the actual undercling--a thin, razor-sharp flake leading dead left to Will's
sling belay--he warned me not to fall because his anchors were
"questionable."
Since he had called the baby-angle belay "fine," I reckoned he had no
anchor at all now. But I was feeling more and more like a real climber so
I shuffled straight across, feet up by my hands. When my foot popped near
the end, Will gasped. But I made it okay. His anchor: a knifeblade waffled
into a flaky seam down by his feet. Several pitches of superb face climbing
led to a nasty flare in which even Will struggled. That tenth pitch took us
to a big ledge system forming the lower right side of a U-shaped bowl, a
prominent horseshoe scoop running the length of the North Face. We were
well over 1200 feet up and relished the first opportunity in five hours to
kick back and relax. The sun beat down hard and we polished off the last
of the Clorox-water.
Will pulled out a crumpled photo of Middle Cathedral and we both smiled
to see how far we'd come, though half again as much rock was still
overhead. But the way was clear now: straight up a huge crack system
formed by the left side of Thirsty Spire, a colossal tangerine pinnacle
towering 1000 feet above and right. We talked about Frank Sacher and
Beck, who had made the remarkable first free ascent of the DNB five years
prior. Still, we figured that during the first ascent in 1962 Chouinard and
Roper must have been free climbing for the most part, since the hardest
climbing was out on the open face, in linking the nebulous corners and
flakes. There was little if anything to nail out there. The two had probably
just used the bolt for the mantel, as we had, and maybe tensioned across
the undercling. Either way, they'd bagged a plum.
We looked around and across at El Capitan, which someday I hoped to
climb. Will had, and assured me that I would, too. He knew the right things
to say, and his invitation to lead the next pitch was just what I needed to
regain confidence.
A long 5.7 pitch led to a cruxy 5.9 traverse into a bomb-bay shaft that rifled
straight to the top, and in which I set up my sling belay. Will set off,
jamming a grueling 5.9 hand crack deep in the corner above. Suddenly he
yelled "ROCK!" From my belay in an alcove, I glanced up to see a medicine
ball of granite ricocheting down between the corner's walls. I hunkered into
the alcove and felt the concussion as the rock blasted off the wall. Slowly
withdrawing my head, I saw a huge powder mark on the rock about three
feet higher. Will seemed almost more scared than I, and after checking the
rope for chops at the next belay, we started climbing really fast. But the
route never let up. Even the 5.6 chimney pitch was a polecat, and the 5.8 slot
on pitch 17 felt like 5.10--or as I imagined 5.10 to be. Finally we got to the
Catwalk level just left of Thirsty Spire, whose name we now realized was no lark.
The heat and bleach-water scorched our throats and our hands were cramping.
A fourth-class shoulder provided an escape off left, but despite our blinding
dehydration we scrambled another couple of hundred feet to the top.
Somehow Will found the summit cairn and a log- book inside an old can.
"Our best climb," he wrote. "My only climb," I told Will. If I wasn't a real
climber then, at least I knew I could have a chance at it. When we finally
stumbled back down into the valley I felt as if I'd been jogging in
Afghanistan for about two weeks. Despite the sling of pitons, the hammer,
and the Robbins boots arrayed upon me, I plunged straight into the Merced
river, swallowing, and didn't surface till my belly felt 10 months pregnant.
Five years later, Will Tyree figured prominently during the planning of the
first one-day ascent of El Capitan. He took down mine and my partners'
Jim Bridwell and Billy Westbay's birth dates, and figured out the day when
our Zodiac signs lined up in a power configuration. That same year I
climbed another big route on Middle Cathedral with Will. Then he quit
coming to the Valley and I never saw him again.
Middle Cathedral's Direct North Buttress (5.10c) is one of the finest long
free climbs in America. Climbers encounter virtually every technique
somewhere in its 2000 feet, though the most exciting sections entail steep
edging and smearing, plus a knack for finding the easiest line.
Questionable belays have been bolstered with pins or bolts. A collection of
15 nuts ranging from wires to three inch provides adequate, if not bomber,
protection. Most parties complete the route in one long day. Aspiring teams
should be fluent with minimal 5.10 terrain, sling belays, and route finding.
The leader should be, anyway.
Author's Note :
John Long (aka Largo) made numerous difficult first ascents in his heyday
as a member of the Stonemasters, an informal group of Southern California
rock climbers active in the 1970s and early 1980s. He is the author of
Gorilla Monsoon and How to Rock Climb, and currently works in Santa
Monica as a script writer and film producer.
--
tim schneider
ti...@hwcae.honeywell.com OR
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(602) 436-3078