Day Two - November 11, 1999
I woke up before first light, sometime around 5:30am, because I knew I had another long day ahead of me. I stuffed away my sleeping bag and got everything else packed into the haul bag -- always seems to be a pain in the ass. Then I opened a can of fruit cocktail and ate a quick breakfast.

This was it. I was about to commit to my journey up the West Face of the Leaning Tower. It was now about 6:00am. I clamped my jumars to the rope that I had fixed the day before and headed up to the top of the first pitch. On my way up, I took out, or cleaned, all of the carabiners I had left behind the previous day so I could use them on the pitches yet to come.

Once at the second belay, I hauled up my gear and got organized to lead the second pitch. I knew that I could link pitches one and two with a 60m rope, but I only had one 60m (haul line) and one 50m rope (lead line). However, I was also told that I could link the second and third pitches or the third and fourth pitches with a 50m rope, so I headed up with the thought of linking pitches two and three.

The second pitch was basically a continuation of the bolt and rivet ladder of the first, but it had a short section of aid climbing in the middle. It was a rather uneventful pitch, but I decided to stop and make a belay rather than try to link the two pitches together because I was running low on carabiners. I set up my belay station by first fixing the lead line to the anchor, and then setting up the haul system with the haul line. Once complete, I rappelled down the haul line to the start of the second pitch, lowered out the haul bag, and then started back up the lead line, cleaning out the gear that I had just used to climb up with. Once back at the top of the pitch again, I hauled up my gear using an auto-locking pulley in combination with my jumars. This was the routine I would do seven more times before reaching the top.

(The next two paragraphs are more technical in nature and can easily be skipped if you are a non-climber and don't care...)

The overall solo-aid climbing technique goes something like this: (1) lead the next pitch of climbing up to an obvious belay stance with bolts or other protection (or until you run out of rope), (2) rig an anchor at the belay, fix the lead-line to the new anchor, pull up the haul line (which was tied to the end of the lead line), and set up the haul system, (3) rap down the now-fixed haul line back to the start of the pitch, (4) un-weight, unclip, and lower out the haul bag so it is ready to be hauled up once you reach the top again, (5) ascend the now-fixed lead line while taking out the equipment that was placed on lead, and then (6) haul up the haul bag once back at the top of the pitch.

The specifics of my solo-ropes and self-belay technique was to: (1) tie the haul bag onto the haul line with an extra 10m of rope hanging off of it to be used for lowering out the "pig" (this left another 50m for fixing and rapping, which also made it the same length as my lead line), (2) tie the lead line to the end of the haul line, thus making one giant 400 foot line that consisted of two ropes tied together, (3) stack all 400 feet of both ropes neatly on top of themselves into a rope bucket (bag) that is hanging off the belay, (4) fix the other end (the non-haul bag end) of the 400 foot loop into the belay anchor angled and equalized for upward pull, (5) clip into the now-fixed lead line with a Gri-Gri, and (6) tie in "short" to the lead line about 20-30 feet out in front of the Gri-Gri (and then re-tie this knot every 20-30 feet while on lead -- this was my "back-up"). If there was a short pitch, I could simply pull the rest of the lead line up, and the haul line would be tied to the end of it. OK, enough with the specifics of solo climbing, let's get back to the story at hand.

The next pitch of climbing was deemed "C2" with some fixed gear. That meant that it was some of the hardest aid climbing on the whole route, but that it also had some fixed gear that was somewhat permanently stuck in the crack. Most of it turned out to be easy climbing with my protection feeling mostly secure. However, there was a thin section with fixed gear that had pulled. It was here that I decided to first use my cheater stick to bypass a few hard moves. This allowed me to clip a piton about four feet above my current location. Using a cheater stick is always an ethical dilemma for a climber, but the beta I heard was either bring some "heads" or bring a cheater stick. It certainly saved me time and a possible leader fall, and also helped me keep my sanity while on route. (It was clear in the end, however, that these sections could probably be done with hooks and really small wired nuts).

After continuing up the crack system, I reached the third belay. It was a nice ledge that allowed me to take the pressure off my harness for a few minutes. Thank god! I was already starting to get bruises on both of my hips. Anyway, I managed to back-clean several pieces on the last 80 feet, and decided that I would be able to continue all the way to the "Ahwahnee and Guano Ledges" which were at the top of the fourth pitch. This would allow me to link pitches three and four together.

Skipping this belay saved me time by avoiding the logistics that come with setting up and breaking down another anchor. Sure enough, I reached Guano Ledge in no time. As it turns out Warren Harding named the ledge appropriately: many birds and bats have made homes in the cracks above the ledges, thus making it a natural bird outhouse -- everything on Guano was sprinkled in dried (and not-so-dried) bird and bat dung. Nasty! Harding named the Ahwahnee Ledge after the local Native Americans.

"Warren Harding named the ledge appropriately: many birds and bats have made homes in the cracks above the ledges, thus making it a natural bird outhouse..."

From there I set my new anchor, rigged the haul system, and rapped back down to the top of pitch two. This cycle was starting to become routine and monotonous. I then lowered out the pig and headed back up to clean the pitch. Once back at the ledge, I hauled up my bag and decided to take a break because I had made my goal for the day and my arms and legs were a little weak. My plan was to sleep on the ledge just to the left of Guano, dubbed the Ahwahnee Ledge, for the night. But I still needed to fix a pitch or two above in order to get a jump on the following day's climbing. If I didn't, I thought that I might not make it in one shot the next day.

It was about 1:00 PM at this point, and I knew that the sun would be showing its ugly face soon. Since the route goes up the west face, it is completely in the shade until early afternoon. Once the sun comes over the lip however, the entire wall acts like a giant solar panel in a mean way! Because of this, I thought it would be a good idea to take a 45-minute break while I still had shade left. This would allow me to have some food, water, and a needed rest before setting back out to complete the next two pitches in the scorching-hot sun.

After lunch, I headed out to fix the next two pitches. Since I was going to rap back down to the ledge to sleep, I would not have to haul the bag on these pitches. So I headed out on the next lead after grabbing my headlamp just in case it got dark before I finished. The pitch traversed up and to the right, and required awkward aid climbing (C2) and even what seemed to be a "free" move or two. I took a long time to lead this pitch, maybe even as long as two hours! It required the use of many small to medium-size stoppers that sometimes looked real dicey.

At one point I got my smaller camming device -- a blue "alien" -- stuck in the crack in a big way. I knew that I might need it again on the same pitch and on the rest of the climb (not to mention that it was expensive), so I spent nearly 20 minutes to get the damn thing back out -- I almost gave up. Good thing though, as it turned out, I used it two more times on that lead alone! Cleaning the pitch didn't go much faster either, as it required some funky maneuvers to get the gear out while traversing to the right. I had to clip my top jumar over the next piece every single time (on this pitch and almost every other), and in a couple of spots, I had to lower myself out on a "bite" of rope that was pulled through a fixed piece of webbing.