Marilyn Gomez on Yellowjacket summit by Timmy Williams

The “hidden gully” first pitch is mostly 4th class with a few 5th class moves, and fairly benign. A short 50 foot section of the second pitch contains the only honest 5th class rock on the route. The third and last pitch is the spire. It involves a few 4th to low 5th class moves up onto a ledge about 12 feet from the top. Then a couple of difficult to protect 5th class moves takes the climber to the bolts on the top. Once the first leader reaches the top of the spire, s/he sets up a top-rope and lowers off Because of the limited space on the top, the remaining climbers top-rope the pitch.

No matter how easy a climb, you can always take a fall. Over the years any number of climbers have been chewed up and spit out by YJT. Usually, the short, “easy” second pitch seems to trash the unwary. (“The only pitch of honest fifth-class rock,” did I mention that!?) If you fall anywhere on the lower part of the second pitch (below the snag) then you wind up sliding down the face and don’t necessarily hit anything significant until you bottom out. But if you climb up and over on the left then you’d run the risk of hitting a good-sized flake. That would hurt. But remember, it’s not the fall that hurts, but the sudden stop. In recent years one fellow fell and broke his hip (he had to be helicoptered out). Another climber fell and injured his back. Fortunately both recovered completely and are still climbing. However, I don’t know whether they’ve gone back to YJT.

Despite knowing the climb and its history, I didn’t worry about falling; I’d climbed it a number of times before. This jaunt was to get yet more Basic students a summit - no big deal. A beautiful day beckoned for just another uneventful, if not boring, climb of YJT. That attitude was my first mistake.

We hiked the long approach to the first pitch, “the hidden gully”, and roped up. The belayers anchored off to one side and out of the fall line because the lead climber could accidentally trigger loose rocks and debris fall. For additional safety, the second rope team leader closely followed the second on the rope in front to avoid hard hits from rocks. We climbed the moderately steep, narrow gully to its end (not far) and then moved either left or right to get up and out of the gully (a move providing much past entertainment, but that’s another story). Then the teams climbed/scrambled, with occasional tufts of grass for holds, to the top of the pitch. This belay was protected with a good-sized pocket in the rock and a tree for an anchor.

More loose stuff can rain down the route. The folks, waiting their turn, stuffed themselves into a pocket in the rock, fairly well out of the way. My belayer set up an anchor on the tree and watched for whatever came down. Above this belay station stood a rock face with knobs, edges, and various features on it with a crack of sorts and a good-sized flake on the left at ground level, set slightly away from the face. An old snag was about half way up. Above the snag, a large boulder formed a tunnel of sorts, with a large tree to the right of it. Just past the large boulder was the top of the second pitch. It all appeared as I remembered and didn’t seem very difficult.

To start, I climbed the often-used flake. It felt quite comfortable and stable. When the flake ran out I stepped onto the face, with one foot on the flake and the other on a decent edge, about 12 – 15 feet off of the ground. At that point it was time to get a piece in. I slotted a nut into a small crack. This placement was BOMBER! It was not going anywhere. I had the “gooooood” feeling that I could have hung battleships from that one.

I moved off of the flake and onto the face and worked my hands in the big crack to my left. After getting up about another 8 feet or so I felt the need to get in another piece. This time I placed a hex. I remember thinking to myself that this placement wasn’t so good. In fact, if I fell, it would pop, for sure. Unfortunately, no better placements were within arm’s reach and I wasn’t inclined to move about to see if I could get a better one. I rationalized that from here only two or three easy moves were needed to the bomber placement by the snag.

Following the placement, I took the option to go up and mostly right, on the face. That took me to a small dirt section and then a move up to the snag. Unfortunately, the holds moving across on the face weren’t the greatest. In just a short distance I realized that I was going to fall. I had a feeling of inevitability, knowing what’s going to happen, but knowing nothing can be done about it. Sure, I could’ve lunged for a nonexistent better hold, but the falling would only be hastened. Letting go with one of my contacts with the rock would have popped me off that much sooner. Why speed up the inevitable? Especially when the inevitable wasn’t going to be fun!

Well, sure enough, I popped off and started sliding. Thank God I wasn’t tumbling! The rope between me and my last piece, the iffy piece, didn’t have a whole lot of slack in it. It went taut very quickly. And, you guessed it, the piece popped out. “Imagine that.” I believe I remember thinking to myself, “This is not good!” But at that moment everything went into slow motion. And I mean slooooooow motion. Things got psychedelic.

The hex that popped and the two ’biners and the single runner attaching it to the rope started spinning, clockwise, very slowly, like the propeller of an airplane, and was moving down the rope, towards me, ever so slooooooowly. I remember thinking to myself, “This is really cooooool.” Strangely, the fall, what was below me, or what was at all happening was not in my thoughts, only that this fleeting experience was cooooool …dude.

Abruptly, reality caught up with me when I was slammed from the sudden jolt that ended the fall. Fortunately, the bomber first piece had held and the rope went taut. My lead fall ended with my toes barely touching bottom with a relatively gentle stop. I was unhurt, except for a few minor scrapes from the slide, nothing broken, no pain. I barely missed the flake and landed in the narrow gap between it and the face. If I’d have tumbled I would’ve slammed into it for sure. I brushed myself off, got back on the rock, and headed back up.

We resumed the climb. The remainder of it was uneventful. Everyone got a summit. We returned to the trailhead and headed back to Leavenworth for the celebratory beer and a burger.

My YJT experience clearly shows that every climb involves risk, even easy 5.4 leads. Every climb requires vigilance, even if familiar from repeated climbing. Place pro that will hold. You can not just assume that because you are a quick move or two from a bomber placement that all will be ok. While my lead fall experience felt very surreal, I do not intend to make light of the seriousness of a fall. I was fortunate to not be another climbing accident statistic. This somewhat bizarre experience is meant as a reminder to climb safe and climb smart.