Did I ever tell you how I got into rock climbing? My grandparents would give me a yearly subscription to National Geographic every Christmas. One issue had on the cover, a photo of someone (Doug Robinson, I believe - taken by Galen Rowell) going across the Thank God ledge. It was the most outrageous photo I had ever seen and it changed my life. I will never forget it. Right then and there I decided I wanted to rock climb. I wanted to get good enough to climb Half Dome and go across the Thank God ledge. After reading that article I went to the library and looked for more articles on climbing. I found another piece in a much older National Geographic on Layton Kor's ascent of the Titan. It was the beginning of Kor hero worship that continues to this day. I read everything I could about climbing. I learned all the techniques without ever trying them. I learn all the knots without ever tying them. A couple of years later I was going away to college at CU in Boulder. I knew it was a major rock climbing center so I committed myself to learning to climb. Before I left for college I bought a rope, a harness, and four carabiners.

In my dorm, I taught myself how to rappel out my fourth story window from a book and using my four carabiners (just enough.) I then taught a bunch of my friends and almost got kicked out of the dorm before rappelling was officially banned from the dorms. My sister, who was now a sophomore at CU, set me up with a climber and we went out and did the classic Wind Ridge on the Wind Tower in Eldorado Springs Canyon just south of Boulder. It was, finally, my first rock climb. It was two pitches long and rated 5.6 and I did it in my tennis shoes. The weather was perfect and so was the climb. It was hard and challenged me, but I was able to complete it without falling. It was everything I imagined climbing would be. I was in love. I didn't need to be shown how to tie into the rope. I already knew. I knew about jamming, liebacking, mantling without every having done them. Soon afterwards I bought a pair of PA climbing shoes. I met another climber in my dorm and we became partners. I led the fourth climb I ever did and have lead 90% of the pitches I have ever done. This has definitely impeded my progess as a free climber, but I love the adventure of leading and I never had a steady partner who was better than me.

I talked with my friend Tom from Seattle last night and we confirmed our plans for Half Dome. We plan to top out around 1 p.m. on the 4th of July to a group of cheering friends! I hope to goes well. That wall worries me. I don't know why I told you all this. It is just that if I complete this Half Dome climb it will be an emotional summit for me. Very emotional. It will be two months short of my 10 year climbing anniversary. It will be the culmination of my ultimate goal in rock climbing. It will be the successful ascent of what inspired me to rock climb in the first place. It will also be success on a route that Fred and I worked so hard for and that meant so much to us. It will be for me, but it will also be for Fred. Fred was the best climbing partner I ever had. He died on April 25, 1987. He fell 800 feet off of the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral Rock when his partner took a leader fall and the anchors pulled. I was right above him, leading another friend. Fred was carrying a birthday cake for me. It was the day before my 25th birthday. I loved Fred.

I picked up Tom at the airport and noticed that he had a cough. Not a good sign, but he said it was nothing to worry about. We headed out to the valley and parked by the side of the road. We were hiking at 6:30 the next morning. I was feeling very strong and moved along smoothly. Tom was dragging a bit. We switched packs to see if it would help, but it slowed him even more? Nevertheless we made good time and were at the base by 11 a.m. You have to understand that Tom hiking sick is faster than your average healthy hiker.

I was pumped! The weather was perfect! NO ONE was at the base. Unheard of! This was too good to be true. I was anxious to start right away. We packed the haulbag and decided to leave the sleeping bags and just take jackets and pants. I fired up the first pitch (mostly free -- no aiders) of 5.10c. I was up it in just over 20 minutes. As soon as I got there Tom said he needed to lie down. I sat at the top of the pitch for about an hour and then Tom tried jumaring up. He got about halfway up (clumsily -- he doesn't have much jumar experience) and then decided he couldn't continue today. We descended and made plans for another attempt in the morning.

A couple of other climbers arrived planning on climbing Tis-sa-ack (an awesome A3+ route up the very center of the face) and we quickly made friends with them. They convinced us to just drag a pack from the second's harness and go much lighter. We started climbing at six the next morning and got to the top of the second pitch before turning back once again. Tom said he wasn't physically or mentally into the climb. This is a guy who doesn't like to turn back. He is just very stubborn about admitting when he is beaten, but he just wasn't healthy.

We made plans to go do other easier, less committing routes, but by the time we had hiked up from the base of the climb Tom was disillusioned again. He said he would be holding me back too much and that I should save my vacation days. He wanted to return to San Jose so that is what we did. We were home by 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. DAMN! Everything was going so PERFECT!

This has bothered me so much that I am immediately trying another attempt. I am in a wedding this Saturday, but I plan to leave for the Valley at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. This time I am going with Lou. He has a lot more big wall experience; he is faster; and he is healthy. We will hopefully be up it by Monday night. This wall must be climbed. Soon. This time we will be going with just a day pack. The weather must remain good. I can't wait...

The Northwest Face of Half Dome is not a difficult climb by today's standards. It was done over 30 years ago by the great Royal Robbins and company. Recently Bachar and Croft climbed the route in a little over four hours AFTER they did the Nose earlier that day. But it is a classic climb. Still climbers from all over the world flock to the valley to climb it. Frequently you will have to wait a day or more at the base to get your turn to climb it. It is not a place to go for solitude. But these crowds are proof of the climbs indisputable status as a "must do" climb. For me it holds a far more special significance.

SUCCESS!!!!! I still can't believe it, but Half Dome has been climbed. Lou and I topped out at 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning. We spent two cold nights on the face -- the last one a mere 200 feet from the top. After five attempts, my loftiest climbing goal has finally been achieved! There is so much to tell. Where do I begin? I guess the beginning...

Lou and I met last Tuesday to decide what to take on the climb. I mandated a light, fast ascent. Two gallons of water, a couple of sandwiches, a hat, warm socks (should have taken down booties instead), space blankets for shelter was all we would bring. The weather looked like it would hold. It had to hold.

We planned on leaving early Sunday morning. I was in a good friend's wedding on Saturday night and couldn't leave any earlier. We planned to drive out to Yosemite, hike into the base (8 miles, 4000 vertical feet), and then climb up to the bivy at the top of pitch 11! It was an ambitious goal, but what the heck.

Sunday morning Sheri woke me at 4 a.m. She had already made me some sandwichs for the climb and promised to return my Tux while I was gone. What a good little Mac Monster. After a quick breakfast I was out the door and heading for Gilroy by 4:25. After picking up Lou in Gilroy, I hop in the back of my Saab for some sleep while Lou hammers into the valley. Lou does a superb job of driving and we are parked at the trailhead by 8:15 and hiking by 8:45. We move quickly up the trail, stopping only once for a drink and to use the Little Big Wall Climber's Room (i.e. bathroom stop.) At the shoulder of Half Dome, where we leave the trail and descend 1000 feet to the base, we stash our packs, put on our climbing shoes and harness and pack our small pack which the second will carry for the climb. We also cache a small supply of food under some rocks (for which the Yosemite varmits said thank-you and ate everything but the plastic bag.) Continuing down to the base we arrive at 12:15 p.m. Lou is in awe of the magnitude of the wall, but I don't give him any time to contemplate it.

One of our big concerns was that there would be other climbers in our way. Since this is one of the classic rock climbs in the entire world it is sought by climbers from every corner of the globe (a globe doesn't have any corners!) We were hoping that by starting on Sunday afternoon we would have no one in front of us. But, then again, most people who attempt this wall don't know what day of the week it is. No one is at the base! I scan the wall searching for signs of life...nothing! Awesome! We quickly fill water bottles (since I was in here the weekend before, I knew the spring at the base of the Dome was running -- this lightened the loads on the hike in considerably), lay out ropes and I am climbing by quarter to one. I was just up this pitch a week ago (when I attempted the wall with Tom) so I move quickly. Lou is slower. It takes awhile to get your rhythm when cleaning a pitch and Lou took a couple of pitches to find the beat. Also the pack was quite heavy for it contained two gallons of water along with the rest of our gear.

The next pitch is also familiar to me and it goes smoothly at 5.9. We had agreed earlier on that our strategy was to climb as fast as we could with as little energy as possible. This was the only way we could finish before our supplies and stamina ran out. What this means is that we weren't concerned with freeing any pitches. Throughout the climb I would unabashedly grab slings whenever possible. I pulled up on slings on even the 5.5 pitches. Of course, I did free climb most of the route for it was the fastest method, but if I was ever tired I immediately hung from a piece with my trusty fifi hook (invaluable on an aid climb!)

The third pitch is a relatively easy 5.8 pitch. One short lieback section and a 20 foot hand crack constitute the difficulties. This pitch puts us at the base of one of the hardest pitches on the route. This next pitch starts out with some A1 up an arcing crack, then a reachy bolt ladder and finally a long, strenuous 5.9 hand crack. This brings up an interesting issue. Since the second is jumaring the pitch, he has a completely different perspective of each pitch and a different thoughts about pitch difficulty. Loobster found this pitch easy.

Now we are hearing voices...uh oh! Where are they? I finally spot them way up the wall on pitch 15. No problem. They are well out of our way.

The next two pitches have short 5.9 sections followed by 5.8 - 5.6 climbing. Each pitch is quite long and by the top of the sixth pitch we are about 700 feet up the 2200 foot face. The route is 25 pitches long, but there is a lot of devious traversing above us as the route winds its way out onto the sheer face and then back left to avoid the massive summit overhangs.

The climbing has gone well. We had agreed to lead the route in blocks instead of switching off every pitch. By blocks I mean that the leader will lead a number of pitches in a row before switching leaders. The advantage of this method is that the leader can rest while the second cleans the pitch. He is fresh and ready to go when the second arrives at the belay stance, while the second is quite tired from his efforts. I led the first six pitches.

As I pull onto the large, sloping ledge at the top of the sixth pitch I hear more voices. Shit! Two climbers. Up on pitch 10. With a haul bag. They are moving slow. Worse, I bet they are planning on bivying at the top of pitch 11. OUR spot! I yell up to them and confirm the worst. I know there is only room for two at that spot. We must stay here for you can only bivy at the top of pitches 6, 11, and 17 (Big Sandy Ledges). It is only 5:15 p.m. We would have made it. Now we are faced with another night on the wall. It is unlikely that we can get off the next day -- it is 19 difficult pitches to the top. Damn. Will we have enough food and water? We didn't plan on this, but thought we could stretch our rations if we had to. Then the real horror of the situation hit me. Here I was stranded on this ledge with nothing to do and almost four hours of daylight left and I didn't bring a book to read! Arghhh! I always tell myself to never go anywhere without a book to read and here I am making the same mistake two weekends in a row (had to read one of Tom's books last trip -- that is the book I forgot!) I'd have to talk to the Loobster…curses!

Along the route I found many water jugs left on the route. They had all been empty of course, but now as I reclined back on the ledge to watch the climbers above I reach for a jug to use as a headrest. To my amazement it is full! One gallon of beautiful, delicious water! Rejoice! What a party we will have tonight! Totally wrapped up in the decadence of the situation, I wash my hands with the water! At the start of the climb I had an extreme dry skin condition on one hand. I knew it would be a problem and had brought some cream to try and control it. This cream works much better on a hand that is clean from dirt and sweat so the extra water for hand washing was much appreciated. Despite this, higher on the climb three of my fingers would crack and bleed.

Dinner consisted of a bagel, some cheese, one and a half cookies (our complete supply! -- bring more next time), and a scrumptious Power Bar. The later is suppose to be a performance increasing, highly scientific, nutrious fuel. I don't know if it increases performance, but it sure decreases morale! The things taste like hard, chewy dog shit (now how would I know that?) Lou would break a tooth on one of these gruesome bars before forsaking them for the more satisfying hunger pangs. I learned earlier.

The night was uncomfortable and cold. We put on our long sleeve shirts, paper thin jackets, hats, socks, laid down our short, 1/8 inch thick pads (merely packing material that Lou had lying around that made an excellent, although very minimal, sleeping pad), and our space blankets. The space blankets would have probably worked better if we could have kept them wrapped around us better, but they are so light that the slightest gust of wind blows them off you. These were the blankets that were wrapped around Sheri and I as we completed our first and only marathon last December. I thought they might come in handy some day...

I slept maybe two hours. I had four hours the night before. Today (Monday) would prove to be the toughest climbing day of my life and it would be done on minimal sleep and food (But plenty of water!) The weather for the entire climb was perfect. Heck, it could have been warmer at night, but during the day it was great. Not too hot, not too much sun due to the north face nature of the route, and not too much wind.

As I start up the first pitch of the morning (in the lead again) which is a devious "5.5" that is wrong on our topo and actually closer to 5.7, I hear a tremendous sound. It is whistling sound that quickly builds to a roar! A huge rock must be falling above us. Last weekend when Tom and I were in here we heard similar sounds, though not nearly as loud, as fist sized rocks plummeted toward us. One landed about 20 feet from me. It was terrifying because you can here this whistle and you know a rock is coming, but you can't see it and there is no place to hide. You simply put your hands over your head and pray. If I ever caught someone tossing a rock off the top of Half Dome... You could easily kill someone by doing such a thing. Anyway not that many rocks fell on us that weekend. One sound that confused me was a much softer whistle and then a dull thud. With rocks the whistle is louder and there is a large crash on impact. Upon hearing the noise I looked around bewildered until I saw a small chipmunk. I won't go into the details, but it was definitely dead. Lesson: this wall shouldn't be soloed. Even by chipmunks.

But nothing we heard that last trip was anything like this. It was so damn loud! Abruptly the noise ceased and I reached a stance where I could look around. Lou says, "Well there's your parapente guy!" I scanned the face and found a small square parachute and a jumper suspended beneath. Before I could think further another whistling noise was heard and then another. Pretty soon three chutes circled near the face. These were BASE jumpers who had leaped from the top of the Dome. When the whistling started for the fourth time I was ready and could clearly see the jumper plummeting by streaked face of Half Dome. He fell in a perfect swan dive position and never tumbled. This isn't flying, it is falling. The fact that these four could jump and freefall 1000 feet is a testament to the verticality of our route. Those guys were crazy! But I couldn't help envying what a great way down. They did in a couple minutes what will take Lou and I over three hours of hard work...provided we make the summit.

The first three pitches of the morning go smoothly and bring us out onto the sheer face. The next is the famous Robbins traverse (named after the first guy to do it -- Royal Robbins). This consists of a bolt ladder and a pendulum. It takes me a couple of tries to reach the handhold at the far end of the swing. Here is one of only two places that the pack was hauled. Lou followed the pendulum after threading the rope through the slings. The next pitch (the 11th of the climb) would bring us to the bivy ledge we had hoped to reach last night. The other two climbers (Pat and Randy, we found out later) had already started climbing and were a couple pitches above us. This pitch involved a delicate 5.9 lieback to a crack and then a tenuous traverse. The exposure is now tremendous. 1000 feet of space beneath us and you can't see much of the wall below you because it is so steep. Lou had been doing a great job of cleaning, but now as we get into more traverses, the seconding becomes much more difficult. It is usually a combination of jumaring and free climbing. Except that the free climbing is with a pack on and protecting yourself by sliding along the jumars.

The ledge at the top of pitch 11 is rocky and only about two feet wide. It is long enough for two people but doesn't look much better than the ledge we had. It is much more exposed because it is so thin. We don't pause here at all, but push on after Pat and Randy. We know there is room for four of us at Big Sandy Ledges at the top of pitch 17 if necessary, but things are going so smoothly that we are entertaining thoughts of getting off this route today. But to do that we must pass Pat and Randy.

Pitch 12 is a long A1 corner that ends with a pendulum into an offwidth crack. Still in the lead, I am pushing the pace a bit too quickly. 80 feet up the pitch and 15 above my last piece of protection (aiding involves a lot of back cleaning so after I use a piece to ascend I pull it out. Every 15 feet of so, I leave another piece to protect myself against a fall. That makes for a 30 foot fall, but I was confident that I could handle the aid. A bit too confident), I place a #1 friend behind a semi-loose flake. It is questionable and I know it. I test it. Seems good. I stand on it. It holds. Great, so I pull the piece below it and as I climb higher in my aider...pop! Down I go in a flash! Totally off guard, I let out a yell. The acceleration always amazes me. Yank! I stop. Lou must have caught me.

The rope is wrapped through my crotch and around my leg. Nothing important is physically damaged on me. I wish I could say the same for my gear sling. I fell about 20 feet and I assumed that Lou caught my fall. Heck, the rope was tight around my leg, but it wasn't that tight. I wasn't to find out until the drive home that Lou never caught me. I guess it is obvious now, but at the time I didn't make the connection. As I fell a large stopper clipped to my gear sling fell into the crack and immediately wedged tight. This was a big wall gear sling in that it sits over both shoulders and straps across your chest in front. When the stopper wedged in the crack the gear sling wrenched my left shoulder upwards violently. This caught my fall, but not before ripping all the stitching out of half the gear sling. We were very lucky that none of the protection fell off the rack. If that had happened we wouldn't have been able to go up or down!

I reracked the gear onto a sling and attached some of the gear to my harness. The fall shook me up a bit and it took a while to straighten out the mess. Eventually I started up again, more carefully. At the top of the corner is a long sling. By clipping into the top of the sling and lowering off a ways I could pendulum into the adjacent offwidth crack and climb that to the belay. For Lou it was a different story. He jumared up the rope to the top of the sling and cleaned the biner holding the rope there. Then he climbed down the sling as far as possible to diminish the inevitable swinging fall. When he let go he pendulumed across and into the wall and tumbled a bit. "You okay, Lou?? "Yup." Onward we marched.

The 13th pitch is the infamous Undercling Pitch (which is no longer there.) It is only about 90 feet long and involves strenuous 5.9 hand jamming up a corner to where a huge chockstone juts out barring the way. Here you must each up underneath the chockstone and undercling out on this dead vertical wall. You only have to go a move or two and then you can reach over the top of the chockstone and pull yourself up and onto it via a mantel move. Left underneath the undercling pitch was a gaudy sling and a biner. Booty! I don't know why the party in front of us left it. Maybe it was theirs...

We now entered a long chimney system rated 5.8. I run two pitches together into one and catch Pat and Randy at the next belay. This chimney was a bitch! Very strenuous. A squeeze chimney sometimes, a wide chimney elsewhere. This was probably the most difficult pitch to follow. Chimneys are very difficult with a pack on. At one point, Lou had to remove the pack (while jumaring) and suspend it below him in order to get deep enough inside the chimney to remove the protection.

Now that we had caught up with the party in front of us, they agreed to let us pass them at the Big Sandy Ledges (the top of pitch 17). Great! But we still needed to get there. Pitch 16 is very, very long. It goes up a ramp that gets increasingly steep until it is vertical. Beautiful 5.9 jamming and stemming put me on a nice ledge with no extra rope to anchor myself with. I clipped in with a couple of runners. Again we found an abandoned water jug. This one containing two quarts of water. Since the quart bottle hanging from my harness was empty, I drank lustily from this jug while Lou cleaned the pitch.

Pitch 17 is the famous 5.8 double crack pitch, but it is very continuous without any rest...unless you hang from your trusty fifi hook! On this pitch I had a bit of brain lock. I was jamming with my left hand in this crack that was two or three inches wide and my right hand and leg were in a wide crack. The crack on the right was too big for any pro. The left crack was more like a square groove in the rock with a small crack in one of the groove's corners. I only thought about putting something in that small crack and thought it would be too hard to do so I kept climbing without any pro. Finally I was getting super tired and thought I was going to take a massive fall! What to do? What to do? Then, luckily, my brain starting functioning again and I remembered the big (2 to 3 inch) groove containing the smaller crack. Why don't you just stick a friend in there? It was so obvious that I can't believe I didn't think of it before. Brain lock! The only explanation I can think of is that it wasn't a normal looking crack. It was a square groove with a back to it. I must have been getting tired. It was the 11 pitch of the day. Thankfully it ended on the Big Sandy Ledges. I hauled the pack up this pitch also and Lou jugged up the rope to join Pat, Randy and I.

Big Sandy Ledges is a misnomer. Sure "Ledges" is accurate. It is a group of terraced ledges. Maybe even "Sandy" is accurate -- pulervized rock dropped by tourists from the top. But I have a definite problem with "Big." It is the biggest ledge on the route if taken in its entirety, but no one level is wider than 4 feet.

It was 2:40 p.m. I was wasted. Food. I ate the sandwich Sheri made for me. We chatted with Randy and Pat for a bit. Pat had been climbing for 17 years while Randy had only been climbing for a couple of years! I was glad to be in front of them. I didn't want any sophomore climber beating me up my Dome!

We had 7 1/2 pitches to the top, five of them very difficult. Would we make it? Doubtful, but if we could get the first five (all the difficult ones) done before dark we might be able to finish by headlamp. Pat looked at the pitch above and asked, "Do you have lots of small gear? This looks very hard."

It was the first of three pitches known as the Zig Zags. The most strenuous part of the climb. All are completely aid climbing. I was wasted. My hands were bleeding. I turned to Lou, "Lou, do you want to lead?" I can see the answer in his eyes. It is up to me. Lou, while an accomplished leader at 5.9 and some 5.10, hasn't led much aid. I started up this pitch at 3:15 p.m.

Aid climbing is an interesting activity. It is so engaging, so methodical, so completely consuming of your attention that it didn't seem like I was working on it that long, but the pitch took me well over an hour. In the process I had dropped two pieces and luckily they both landed on the ledges below. This is probably the only place on the whole climb you could drop something and have any chance of retrieving it. And the chances that it would stay on the ledge and not bounce off are still small. Lucky again! Lou cleans the pitch quite fast and upon reaching the hanging belay says to me, "No way I could have led that pitch!" I know he could have done it, but I also know what it really means: I'm leading the rest of the Zig Zags.

It's five o'clock. The race against the sun is on! The next pitch is also slow going. I have to back clean a lot of gear in order to make it easier for Lou to clean the pitch. I work my way up to a roof and out right. Underneath the roof is another, identical gaudy sling with a biner on it! They can't be Randy and Pat's now. We are ahead of them. One stopper gets set hard as I stand on it. Lou can't retrieve it. Leave it! Let's get going.

The last Zig Zag pitch is the longest of the bunch. Up I go. I place a #1 friend into a crack too small for it and immediately knew I made a mistake. I tried in vain to get it out. No luck. Damn! I need this piece. I have never left a friend on a climb before and I didn't want to start now, but I was racing the sun. If it got dark while we were in the middle of the tough pitches it would mean a night standing in slings. The magnitude of that situation cannot be adequately described. I left it and hoped Lou could retrieve it (he couldn't.) The pitch ends on the infamous Thank God Ledge.

The Thank God Ledge pitch is known worldwide. A picture of it appeared on the cover of National Geographic and inspired a 16 year kid to try climbing. To try climbing in the hopes of crawling across that same 12 inch ledge someday. Twelve years later that kid slithered across that ledge, dropping off and hand traversing a 20 foot section where the ledge is only a few inches wide. Two thousand feet of exposure lay below. It is a surreal place. Emotion welled up inside me, but I didn't have time to contemplate further. At the end of the ledge there is a gap of about five feet to a 5.9 offwidth crack. In order to surmount the gap I had to lower off a piece (below the ledge) and pendulum over to the crack. I had to climb the crack (on aid) and remove all protection behind me so that Lou wouldn't have to repeat my manuever. Next I climbed a difficult 5.7 flared chimney with no chance for protection. Thus ended the Thank God Ledge Pitch.

Lou followed but not before leaving a #2 friend. Two friends left! I never understood before while people left friends, but now I know one possible reason: Darkness! It was now 8:45 p.m. Three pitches to go, one aid pitch which was next. The topo we were carrying indicated that the route went straight up. I could see a couple of fixed pieces, but it didn't look right. I could see more stuff off to the left. It involved a delicate traverse to get to it. I didn't have time to make a wrong decision. I went with my gut instinct and chose the route on the left. I worked left and then found a string of pitons and bolts which I quickly aided up. I had made the right decision! Lou followed and the sun set.

Darkness. I reached into the top of the pack Lou was wearing and extracted our headlamps. With headlamps you can see fine within a 10 foot radius but you can't see well enough to route find. The next pitch is a 4th class descent traversing further to the left. I started down it in the darkness. I went almost to the end of the rope before I found signs of our route. A piton. There was a three foot wide ledge here. The first suitable ledge we had seen since leaving Big Sandy. Lou followed. It was 9:45 p.m. I was completely drained. 16 continuous hours of difficult climbing, 17 pitches. The darkness was too complete. Our puny headlamps could not find the route. We would have to spend the night here.

I was so tired that I actually slept a couple hours. We split our last remaining sandwich and drank heartily. I curled up and spent an uncomfortable and cold night. My spot was flatter than Lou's spot. I should have offered to switch with him, but my exhaustion was so complete I coveted my perch, not even mentioning that I had the obviously superior spot until morning. Lou never mentioned it himself, yet it was glaring. He offered me the whole sandwich and I almost took that also, but couldn't do that. He had worked every bit as hard as I did. I said no, we would split the sandwich and he didn't argue. Lou is extremely tough. Tougher than I am. He had less food and less sleep and held up better than I did. In fact, I am just coming to this realization now. Lou was one hell of a great partner. We got along flawlessly even when we were both dead tired and tensions could have been running high.

Lou was reading off the time during the night. At one point I asked him the time and he said it was 12:40 a.m. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, I hear Lou say, "1 a.m.....(long pause) The hours are just flying by!" At 5 a.m. we started to get organized. By six I was climbing. I definitely would have gone the wrong way had we tried to climb off the night before in the darkness. The pitch was a delicate 5.7 friction pitch that ended a short scramble from the top. We topped out at 6:30 a.m. just as the sun was rising. I had lead every pitch.