Yosemite: Nutcracker

With the park being closed for the previous 2 weeks due to the government shutdown, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get back to Yosemite before leaving for 3 months of externships.  Luckily the park opened a few days before we had planned to go. With school, rotations, managing the apartment and whatnot our only option was to make a day trip. Binh picked me up around 7am Saturday morning and we were in the park by 11 and racking up to climb Nutcracker. The park was much quieter than we had imagined. I sort of thought it would be extra busy due to the closure. The weather was beautiful, clear skies and temperatures in the high 50's.

The Nutcracker is a 5 pitch, 500' climb in Yosemite Valley that is named such because it was one of the first climbs to be climbed protected with nuts, which was done by Royal Robbins in 1967. Binh and I took 3 sets of nuts (and a bunch of cams) with and thought that we might try to do the whole thing with only nuts. This thought was scrapped on the first pitch.

I gave Binh the first pitch which included him jumping over a wide off-width section which he had climbed above and a horizontal greasy under-cling. I took the second pitch which was a walk up ramp which traversed to a platform where we caught up to a couple from Los Angeles. They were having a hard time and we waited around, allowing a team of four Polish climbers to catch up. After the LA couple had finished the pitch I lead up a few various small finger to thin hand cracks and ended up continuing off route setting a belay and then leading another off route pitch up some vegetative features to the crux of the route.

The crux was a semi-good protected corner that required a committing reach up to a huge ledge and then a mantle move to get up on top of the ledge. Luckily you can just watch me do it on this awesome video that the girl from LA took of me climbing it. The rest of the climb was some easier linking crack systems that took me to top out. It was a great climb and the views of the valley were phenomenal! At the top we met a dude from Texas who soloed up an adjacent route and had been living in the valley for 6 months. Nice guy.