Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak
Trip Logistics
Cathedral Peak can be found in Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park. The approach is relatively short, and you get some good climbing for it. I will not re-hash the many different blogs, topos, youtube videos, etc detailing how one can get to and climb Cathedral Peak. The things that were helpful for us was knowing that the route was a bit of a choose your own adventure. Follow the easiest line and aim for the top and it tends to work out. A leader should be comfortable with a bit of a run out and be able to confidently climb up to 5.7, despite the lower rating. It took us about 11 hours car to car.
Trip Statistics
~3 mile approach
5 pitches if done perfectly (we did it in 7)
We brought a double rack of BD cams from 0.3 to 2, a set of DMM nuts from like 1 to 10s, and a bunch of runners. Some long 120 slings were helpful for slinging the occasional block and some of the wandery sections. A 60m rope was sufficient.
Trip Report
We arrived just outside the park at 11pm on a Friday in late June. After a quick sleep in the car we were up and at em at 4am with the goal of dodging the chaos on this ever so popular climb.
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| A view from the trailhead |
We were on the trail by 6am. We immediately passed a group of 5 or so folks on the way to Cathedral as well. They were a bit on the older side and they looked quite hardcore. Both Sam and I agreed that while we certainly would beat them to the base, they would certainly catch us on the wall.
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| Occasionally you will need to follow the cairns. |
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| Some of the surrounding peaks I do not recall the name of. |
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| First glimpse of Cathedral Peak. |
The final bit of the approach was the steepest part, so we were quite out of breath once we got to the base of the climb. We consolidated food and water into one bag, leaving the other at the base. We were on the first pitch by about 7:30 am. The first couple of pitches were fairly easy, with me doing them in my approach shoes. It was quite cold and windy to start the day so being able to stay in approach shoes for a bit longer was quite nice. At the end of pitch 2 we took a bit of a break and I dawned my climbing shoes.
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| Sam heading up pitch 1 |
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| Looking out from pitch 1 or 2, who knows. |
We followed the pitches "correctly" up to the chimney pitch. The most difficult part of this pitch was getting into it. My rack and my approach shoes added enough circumference to my hips that I could not squeeze myself in at the start. After a bit of squeezing and squirming I was able to get in and it was fairly easy from there on out. There are small cracks in the chimney making it decently well protected with normal size gear. Poor Sam had to dangle the backpack between his legs on the way up though.
I eventually departed from the chimney and quickly diverted us from the usual route. I went left, but I guess not at the right place. Eventually I built an anchor and bring Sam up. Sam exited the chimney, made a few moves and I immediately saw one of his approach shoes begin to float its way back down to the base of the climb. It felt like it fell for eternity, eventually landing in the second bush to the left from the starting point. At the anchor the remaining shoe was stashed in our backpack and we began to dread what would happen if we could not find the shoe at the base of the climb.
We continued to wind our way to the summit. Because of the wind and windy nature of the route I took, our pitches ended up a bit shorter. We eventually got to the base of the summit where two parties were already setup. One was climbing to the summit, while the other belaying their followers up. I built my anchor and began to bring Sam up. While Sam moved on up I had a nice chat with the group bringing their followers up. He was one of the folks in the group we saw at the trailhead. It turns out their group contained Timmy O'Neil, a former holder of the speed record on the Nose, an astronaut who had been on the ISS, and a climber who put up a few routes on the Hulk. They were all super nice and were very patient despite the traffic jam.
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| A view from the summit |
Sam eventually reached me and we did the final pitch to the summit. We accidentally climbed the 4th class descent chute (which frankly seemed to be closer to 5th class) and made the summit. As we planned our descent, the group following us gave us some great descent beta to get off the summit without down climbing.
First I lowered Sam off of the anchor down the 4th class descent chute. He then climbed heading right around the corner on easy terrain, leading eventually to a flatter spot where he could comfortably hang out without an anchor. From there we re-routed the rope such that it ran almost directly to Sam over the ridge. I could easily see him from the summit on the other side of the ridgeline. From there I oriented myself carefully on the opposite side of the ridge and took apart our anchor. Sam then lowered me down the 4th class chute. Once at a comfortable position, I began to traverse following Sam's path back to him. He payed out slack as I made my way to him. Eventually I safely ended up at Sam where we untied to begin the descent. The key here is that Sam and I were on different sides of this ridge line so no gear was really necessary to keep us on the wall while he lowered me. Enjoy the MS paint diagram of Sam lowering me off, as that may give a better idea of how it ended up working. The ridge is certainly not as flat as drawn, so there was no chance of us just "sliding" off the edge.
Once we were off the summit, we started to look for the 3rd/4th class descent down the ledges. After extensive searching (looking for 2 seconds and then seeing someone else's rap anchor) we decided that rappelling would make our lives a bit easier. We did a full rappel into a bush, and did some third class scrambling across the ledges heading to the right (NE). From there we crossed over the ridge and were able to easily find the descent trail.
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| Sam analyzing our many descent options. |
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| Eichorn Pinnacle in the background. |
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| The summit from the start of the descent trail. We had just crossed over the north ridge. |
After finding the descent trail, we took a long needed snack and water break and then began our on-trail descent. Poor Sam began in his climbing shoes, and then gave up and just went barefoot. At the base of the climb we ruffled through the bushes and Sam was able to find the shoe! We packed up our gear and headed back.
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| In retrospect I probably should have taken the backpack on the descent ... |
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| The Sam found the shoe! |
Overall we had a great time on Cathedral Peak. The climbing was fairly straightforward and the route finding was fairly not stressful due to the fairly straightforward climbing and abundant options. We were glad to have been the first on the wall and not to feel too rushed at any point.
Happy climbing!
-m
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