North America, United States, California, Sierra and Yosemite, Various Activity

Publication Year: 2006.

Sierra and Yosemite, various activity. Climbing.com reported that Dave Turner soloed a new route, Block Party (VI 5.9 A4), on the southeast face of El Capitan. He fixed ropes for three days and spent 18 days on the wall, finishing June 21. The route shares parts of Tempest and the Pacific Ocean Wall, but more than half of the route climbs new terrain.

In Tuolumne Meadows in July and August, Mike Schaefer and Nils Davis established a new route, ground-up, on the west face of Fairview Dome. Their six-pitch route, named Retrospective, starts 40' right of Plastic Exploding Inevitable and has five independent pitches, ending at the U-shaped bowl. Retrospective shares the fourth pitch with a previously undocumented Tom Carter route, reportedly named Quasimodo. Davis says the climbing was “nebulous and delicate at best, requiring imagination when viewed from the ground,” but they found it surprisingly moderate, with only one 5.11 section. They placed 21 new bolts, including anchors, and replaced the six old bolts they encountered.

Just south of Matterhorn Peak in northern Yosemite, Dan Arnold and John Montgomery-Brown climbed a new route on the Middle Peak of Whorl Mountain. Their route, the North Ridge (III 5.6), starts with several hundred feet of scrambling from the low point between Whorl’s middle and north peaks, then climbs an obvious squeeze chimney and ten pitches along the ridge with spectacular positioning.

On Mt. Winchell (13,775') in August, Bruce McDonough, Jr., established Passion (III 5.8), perhaps the first route to continue to the summit from the west. The route begins in a shallow chute in the rightmost of three right leaning, diagonal, white-orange dikes. After crossing the West Chute route, the line continues up and right on steep slabs and varied terrain to a notch high on the summit ridge, descends 50', and heads for a ridge to the summit.