Photos and Reviews of Yosemite Trails, Climbs and Ski Tours from Yosemite Explorer

Well, I'm guessing that some genius climbers who were moving slow got benighted and decided to stay warm with a fire. Someone said they saw a fire up there on Monday night. Anyway, they started a fire basically at the point that the walkoff for the Royal Arches route meets the rim. Bad climber! No chalk!

I first noticed the smoke while out for a lunchtime walk to meet my sweetheart and then the helicopters came around 2:00pm. I didn't see any flames until someone roused us around 7:30pm to go have a look. I got some pretty decent pictures of the fire on top of Royal Arches (9 images), but there were a couple of times when it really flared up and i was not ready with the camera, so I missed those. I also missed the best of the firefalls. By 8:00pm there was a substantial fire on the ledges that were below tree line. We could see them clearly through the trees, but couldn't really get pictures and I didn't want to cross the valley to get a better look, but I think the Royal Arches climbing route was on fire. That's unconfirmed, just my guess as looking at it from Stoneman's Meadow. Good job dude!

So Hans and Yuji got me all psyched up to get back in climbing shape and I find that the easiest way for me, as a vegetarian and lazy cook, to get protein, is from protein powders. Most experts seem to think that the best protein powders are whey protein isolate (which is different from whey protein concentrate). The Hammer Nutrition folks say that soy protein is actually better if you are in the midst of an event, but mostly want it for recovery. The problem is that most protein powders are full of sweeteners, which I find yucky (I don't care if the sweetener is healthy or not, I just don't like it!).

It took me a while to get around to this, but Hans and Yuji did it! I usually find watching climbing to be incredibly boring, especially from a distance, but it was incredibly exciting as they appeared to be on pace, then behind, then ahead but by just a little bit. In the end, they broke the record by about two minutes. Bill Wright and Hans give the pitch-by-pitch account on speedclimb.com.

The title pretty much says it. Yuji showed up on Sunday night and, after 3 hours sleep, he and Hans did a recon on the Nose. It took them 4:48, but they spent a fair bit of time just hanging out on ledges talking and resting. The next morning, Yuji said he had "so much hurt" all over his body and was surprised at how much fitness he had lost after focusing on bouldering the last couple of years.

Anyway, they are up there as I write this, trying to climbing in 3:00 to 3:30 in preparation for a full-speed attempt on Sunday.

We'll see how it goes. Hans seems to be back in pretty good shape, but Yuji is climbing with an injured finger and thinks he may need to go home and rest it for a while before he can really do the record (which currently stands at 2:45).