Well I learnt my lesson todat...again! 6 months of feeling more stressed than I have ever felt don't just melt away by being in a different country...even on a climbing trip! 

Lee and I got up at 4.30 yesterday morning had breakfast, packed our lunch we had made the nighht beffore (bagels and snacks...today I am over bagels and cream cheese...bring on the vegemite and sourdough toast!) and then we hiked uup to the West Face of El Cap. Its about an hour approach from the meadow/ bridge under El Cap, so add on the 45 minutes to walk from camp 4, plus time wattching a coyote stroll past us, spying Ben and Jake rapping down from lung ledge to startclimbing free rider, and early morning fatigue and we were racked up ready to  climb at 7.30. The   WestFace is a cool lookinng line....not much crack climbing, really facey, suupper super technical moves...and then my brain switched off and I forgot how to climb.I nearly forgot how to grovel.....This is the route I have been day dreaming about...I even hiked up the base just to look at it for fun...(who walks up dangerously loose....ok a fairly well walked rock covered path, fixed ropes, tree scrambling and a litttle bit of chimneeying just for fun!!!)

 

I have to confess I cried...there I admitted it on blog....You know when someeone else leads and you are hopping from one foot  to tthe other so eager to pull on and plug your own gear in...and in yyour head your saying...I should have llead this pitch instead of the next one...is he at the belay yet..." and then you do pull on and find you've lost your "climb"....a little like losing your smile....by the end of pitch 2 I was frantic with worry for my "climb", we are running out of time, lee and ben are on zodiac again next week for 6 days then we have a coupple of days left and the hot weather is coming...and I was so so so bummed that this route that is my zodiac, the route that I froth about to myself in my head when the guys are waffling on in camp...freerider this, salathe that...nipple pitch blah blah...was  slipping under my suddenly slick feet and over chalked fingers..f###***kkk.....I got to the belay at the top of pitch 2 shaking with cold, my ability to problem solve gone and myy confidence and abilityback in camp 4 in my warm sleeping bag,  frustrratted and pissed off and really just (as the americans say)" not feeling it dude". So we called a tearful retreat...(can you believe it, after getting up at 4.30 and packing more chocolate than you see in coles at easter), yep we rapped down, hiked back to the meadow where we slept in the sun for a coupple of hours and watch ElCap TV. I decided that my "climb" may have been hungry so we looked for him in  the mt room restaurrant at the lodge . (He wasn't therebut the food was great, don't bother ordering entree or eeating heaps of snakcs before you go like lee did in case the serves were small, they are huge and they bring you free bread..yum!) So we decided to try and find my "climb" on half dome today and tomorrow. The approachp is thhree hours and we are sleeping at thebase tonight so I had betterr make it up more than 2 pitches or I am swimming back to australia.

 

For more serious climbing news...ben and jake are making great progress on free rider covering the first 12 or so pitches of the 32 yesterday and were sleeping on hollow flake ledge last night...more updates as news comes to hand!

 

As for me and the west face, we have a date when the boys get off zodiac...I can't leave without getting to the top...its the most amazing looking line I have ever seen (tthat I am perhaps capableof climbing..cause zodaic looks amazing too but I will never have the guns for that one!)

 

P.s. the first 2 pitches of wf were superb...