Nancy
Fitzsimmons, Scott Kreider, and me Ron Karpel climbed Mt Starr
King in Yosemite via the Southeast face route. We followed the
description in previous trip report to get to the base of the
climb. It was a 5 mile track over trail, water, scree and rocks,
and finally climb over the middle dome of the Starr King massif
which is smooth glacier polished granite.
The
many descriptions of the technical portion were somewhat confusing.
It was all made much clearer once we started climbing. Reading
the description in Secor I now realize we climb exactly as he
describes, but I agree with other people that the route is harder
than 5.0. The technical climb starts at the end of a wide crack
in the face which provide a comfortable belay spot. From there
Scott took the lead and followed the open book feature to the
crux of the climb which is about 10 meter from the belay point.
The face at this point is somewhat steep, but the rock surface
is rough and provide good friction. A couple of steps of this
delicate friction moves lead to a large flake that provides a
good undercling and good protections (see later). From the flake
there seem to be several choices. Scott headed right through a
series of flakes that provide good protection, but the climbing
got easy enough at this point that only one or 2 were needed.
Another 20 meter of easy friction climbing lead to a wide ledge.
There was a rappel system attached to a chockstone which was hidden
from us until we were right on the ledge. Scott setup a belay
and got us up. I climbed second and left the one pro that Scott
placed under the flake to give Nancy better protection on the
crux. Nancy following, was unable to remove the pro, and we decided
to get it out on the way
down.
I
took the lead for the second pitch. After a few class 4 moves
it became a class-3 friction climb. I ended up pulling an 80 ft
runout to the next belay point from which we simply untied and
walk to the summit. After about an hour on the summit we walked
back down to the point were we untied. Although we could walk
down a bit farther, we all agreed that we didn't like to down
climb all the way to the first belay, and that point was the last
convenient place to setup for rappel. We couldn't find any rappel
slings, so we used our own. The 50 meter rope made it with no
problem to the ledge, and from there we setup a second rappel
to the bottom.
Almost
too late, Scott remember the pro that was left in the flake. It
was a no. 3 small Metolius so Scott took extra time trying to
extract it from the crack, but no help. The device was stuck solidly
and will not come out. Scott says that a crow bar and maybe a
good wire cutter may be helpful. If you are heading that way and
have a kind soul, please return it to Scott.
Ron
Following pictures contributed by Nancy Fitzsimmons:
