This trip marks the fourth time that I’ve come to Yosemite with the express purpose of climbing the NIAD (Nose In A Day). The first three were marked by issues outside my control that kept me from even trying.
In the fall of 2021, I slipped a disk in my back a week before the trip and spent most of the week laying in the meadow with a spotting scope while my friends sent. In the fall of 2022 a huge snow storm hit the Valley as Kenny and I were driving out for the trip, shutting down climbing on El Cap. This spring, all of that snow melted while we were there, turning the top half of the wall into a river.
So, we came back again in the fall. I’m nursing the ankle injury, so my cardio is a bit low, but I’ve pretty much been climbing for five months straight and I’m feeling great on granite. Kenny has been back in SLC doing fast linkups and getting ready as well. Everything looked great, and then Congress nearly shut down the government.
Kenny held off on driving for a day to wait and see what happened, and he hit the road as soon as he heard that the shutdown was not going to happen. By the time he arrived a two-day rain storm had started. But eventually that cleared, and we drove to the meadow to see the route dry for the first time in a while. Everyone else apparently had been waiting for the route as well, and there were eight parties on the first nine pitches. Basically, we were fucked.
But, there were still things that we could learn for an attempt later in the week. By doing a run to Dolt Tower (the first 1/3rd of the route length wise and 1/4 time wise) we would learn how to do the lower pendulums so we could do them in the dark for a super-early start on the next go. And we would learn how long the full route would take us, since you can multiply your Dolt time by 4 and come very close to your total time.
So, we woke up at 3:00am and I was leading the first pitch by 5:00. At the end of each pitch, I short fixed and started climbing again while Kenny jugged with the pack. We got to Sickle in 1hr 15min and we passed a party that had been jugging the fixed lines while we climbed. Another party was just above them. I talked shortly with their second, and kept climbing up toward their leader.
I ran out of rope in the middle of the pitch, and while I chilled in the dark a massive meteor burst into a streak of blue, green, and orange flame above Middle Cathedral. It was an incredible sight to see during a brief rest in a place that was surprisingly crowded given the pre-dawn hours. For a moment at least, I felt alone and in awe of where I was. The moment passed.
Kenny got to the anchor and popped the knots, so I could climb again. I caught up to their leader at the anchor above Sickle, clipped a couple leaver biners above their mess of gear, and swung to the next crack system. Kenny followed the pendulum, untied, pulled the rope, re-tied, turned off his headlamp, and we were on our way once again.
I made another pendulum into the Stove Legs, short fixed at the anchor, and cast off again on self belay. The short fixing cycle repeated for the next two pitches, and then my body decided it was done. Fifty feet off the anchor on the last pitch below Dolt, my left arm cramped—the whole thing, all at once, and so completely that I could not twitch a muscle without enduring extremely painful spasms from my shoulder to my fingertips. Luckily, I had been alternating between free climbing and pulling on gear, and I had just placed a cam which was clipped to my daisy.
I slumped onto the cam and made involuntary moaning noises so terrible that when I finally stopped Kenny thought I had passed out. After 15 minutes (yes, I timed it), I could finally make a fist without the arm locking up again. I thought it may be dehydration, so I slid my already empty water bottle down the tag line for Kenny to refill. Another 5 minutes passed while I pounded most of the bottle and finally started moving again. For the rest of the pitch, I bumped #4s one over the other on dasies, stopping every few moves to let more cramps subside.
Finally, I pulled onto Dolt Tower, fixed the rope for Kenny, and sat down on a boulder. Kenny came over the lip and I looked at the watch. Even with the time lost to cramps, we made it there in 4 hours and 12 minutes. According to NIAD math, this is a 17-hour pace (16 without the cramps). We looked above us and saw six parties (some in groups of 3 or more) between our belay and the top of Texas Flake, which was only three pitches higher. Cramps or no cramps, we were done. No way did we want to pass all those people.
Kenny and I chilled on Dolt for about an hour before we decided to rap the 1000 feet to the ground. On the way down, I experienced cramps nearly as bad as the ones on the way up. It was clear that I had driven my body well past the point of a quick recovery.
So, what happened? Dehydration was probably a component, but not the whole issue at all. I drank a lot the night before, drank a half liter in the morning, and drank a half liter on route before the cramps. We were only a little over three hours in at that point, so it seems unlikely that more water would have solved it. I think a bigger issue is that the way you climb to go fast on the Nose is not really the way that you climb for anything else. There’s a lot of grabbing gear, tat, etc, smearing your feet on blank granite, locking off, and repeating. It’s a very upper-body-heavy style that’s pretty much the opposite of what I’ve been doing all summer. The other thing about speed climbing is that you don’t stop to belay, so you never rest. You just finish the pitch, pull up the rope, tie it off, and start climbing again until your 1000-foot block is done.
Now that I know what to expect, could I train better and get it done? Probably, but I don’t think I’m going to. I put a lot of mental energy into this goal over the last couple seasons, and honestly, I just don’t care anymore. It wasn’t fun in the way I thought it would be. Short fixing and back-cleaning cams for a 100ft at a time is an interesting novelty, but it’s not the way that I really like to climb. More than that, it’s super stressful to know that your whole day can be shot to shit because of other parties. If Kenny and I had kept going, we still would have had to climb through six parties directly above us, and another two higher on the route. That could easily turn a 17-hour climb into a significantly longer suffer fest.
Maybe if I find myself back in the Valley again, with a partner capable of doing a NIAD, and I look up at the Nose to see two parties on the wall, then I’ll give it another go. But I’m not going to spend anymore mental effort thinking about this thing. Time to move onto types of climbing that I actually enjoy, not the kind that you’re supposed to do because if you’re a “real climber” you need to be able to say that you’ve done a NIAD.
