van could make it up the snowed in road. On Wednesday, we headed up to the Buttermilks and made it to the boulders after only getting the car stuck in a snow bank once. Instead of a few hundred people swarming the area, the snow had kept the human population down to a dozen or so. I concluded my break in Max’s hometown, Ojai, nestled in the foothills between Santa Barbra and LA. With two relaxing days of sleeping and chilling under my belt, I caught a ride off of Craigslist’ rideshare up to San Francisco and arrived back in Colorado Springs in time for some beers. -Hayden Miller
Steck-Salathé IV/V 5.9 The Sentinel, Yosemite Jeremy Roop (’06) and Mikey “Meat Truck” I don't mind wide cracks. I would even venture to say that I occasionally enjoy them. There is something gained by thrashing around in their deep recesses. I have to imagine new ways to combine two appendages into an awkward jam, an experience unrivaled on even the most aesthetic splitter handcrack. That said, at the beginning of this past summer, on the first day of a week-long vacation in the Valley, I found myself standing on the small ledge directly below the infamous "narrows" of the SteckSalathe. I was looking straight above into the most incredible and unfathomable wide crack and I have ever seen, and I was scared. As is turns out, the narrows are quite aptly named. The pitch is a bombay chimney that starts as a 10 inch slot in the back of a roof and continues upwards for nearly 60 feet, slowly narrowing along the way. More of a vertical spelunking adventure than an act of rock climbing, the slot is in fact so intimidating that on the first ascent of the route, Steck and Salathé opted to avoid it completely, placing several bolts to aid their way around it. It wasn't until a few years later that Royal Robbins braved the slot and eventually squirmed his way through, freeing the Steck-Salathe. Since Robbin's day, many a valley climber has successfully passed through the Narrows and the pitch now carries a fairly innocuous 5.9 rating. Reminding myself of this fact (and ignoring the fact that everyone knows 5.9 in the valley has the potential to be damn hard), I forced myself to take one last full breath, turned my head to the side, and thrust myself up into the cool darkness. Fifteen minutes, a few scrapes and a cracked helmet later, I emerged victorious into sunlight. My partner Mikey however, a nearly 200 pound ex-football player who occasionally goes by the nick-name "Meat Truck" was not so fortunate. After thrashing madly in the depths below me for nearly an hour, the meat truck was eventually forced to admit defeat and he asked to be lowered to the bottom of the pitch. This was disappointing to be sure, but I can't say it was entirely unexpected. Before leaving the ground we had joked about the fact that Mikey wouldn't fit through the Narrows, but I was pretty sure it had been in the ha ha that would be funny but it wouldn't actually happen kind of way. Unfortunately, it just had happened. We were now well over a thousand feet up the side of the Sentinel, with five more pitches to go, one rope between us, and my partner's bulging pectorals wouldn't fit through the narrows. Luckily, as I contemplated the obvious “what the hell do we do now?" question, the meat truck came up with a solution. It was uncouth to be sure, but such shenanigans usually are. After a lot of untying and re-tying, two rappels, and several blind shoe throws around a chock-stone, Mikey somehow ended up tied to the bottom a top-rope that hung free on the outside of the slot. Thirty seconds of desperate lay-backing later, he joined me on the belay ledge, thereby completing our 60 foot, 3 hour pitch. Fortunately, the rest of the route flew by at a comparative lightning pace, and we summitted in plenty of time to enjoy the late afternoon sun bathing the Valley. Picking my way down through the slabs and bushes on the descent, I considered the route we had just climbed. For nearly 2000 feet it had remained very consistent. Wide, flaring, physical, and lacking in any sort of enjoyable or fluid movement. On paper, it sounds perfectly awful, and perhaps it really was, but I will still call it an absolute classic route. It was well worth climbing, but maybe only once, and definitely with a skinny partner. -Jeremy Roop
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