Cathedral Peak’s Southeast Buttress
A couple weekends ago, I took to Tuolumne Meadows with Gabe and Ryan. Ryan just got back from a 2-month work/play trip to Google Ireland so he was overdue for some sweet multipitch trad climbing.
We decided to climb the Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak, left route variation. It’s one of the most popular climbs in Tuolumne due to the quality of the rock and its fairly moderate route of trad 5.6 (*****). Here’s the SuperTopo:
The plan was to get up at 4am from our campsite and head to the Cathedral Lakes trailhead. From there we’d hike the a couple hours to the base. If there were no other parties, we’d get on the rock for the quality 5-pitch climb to the summit.
Here is the first of several “capitan’s log” videos, this one is of us setting up at the trailead, debating who is the actual ‘capitan’ of this climb…and it appears that Gabe won that argument (for now):
The approach itself is pretty enjoyable as long as you don’t lose sight of the path and the sunrise on the surrounding mountains!
We brought a full rack with Gabe taking the main trad lead, I following up and cleaning the climb, and Ryan to boot. Here is the climb up close:
As it turns out, we weren’t the only ones on the climb. There were a big handful of other teams so the belay anchors got a little crowded, especially at the top. We stuck to the left side in order to avoid a few other teams (so we couldn’t do the “c” chimney variation, but maybe next time).
Here’s Gabe, getting his lead on:
Here’s a shot video I took of Ryan belaying Gabe on the 4th pitch:
During the climb, we ran into mr. marmot - what a cutie! This little guy somehow was able to scramble up several hudred feet up to our ledge…eyeing Ryan’s something something socks/shoes, shorts, what have you. At one point, I was climbing up and looked down at Ryan and the marmot was right behing him!
After the 4th pitch, we had to wait while other parties lead the final pitch to the summit. The ledge up there is very spacious, which is a good thing since it’s pretty standard to have to wait as other parties finish their climbs at this belay.
The actual summit topout is very exposed and cramped, a bit of a spire fit for max 4 ppl. I lead up first, enjoyed the summit, then downclimbed for the guys to do the same. Poor ryry was a little nervous as he took this summit vid:
The descent took a bit longer and was a bit more exposed than we would have liked but we made it back just fine.
Randomly, we met a guy on the trail down who needed a short ride (he just finished a 12 mile hike)…apparently he left his wife at the car in the morning and after a full day, he needed to get back to her and the car. Him and his wife were on vacation from Romania. Well of course we gave him a ride and sure enough we found the car and wife, who must have been real happy her man was back. Like I said, that was pretty random.
