Calaveras Dome, 10/19/02, with Marc C.

In what is now becoming a fall tradition, I went for a long route on Calaveras Dome, this time with Sonora local Marc C.. Realized about 30 miles into the drive that I had forgotten my shoes. Fortunately, I was able to warn Marc via his cell phone that I would be late at the meeting place, but my mistake contributed to a relatively late start. We roped up at the base of Silk Road (IV, 5.11) at about 11 am.

Clint has sorted out some of the history of this route on his website. He also has a topo there. While the link up called "Silk Road" that was discussed in Climbing 194 was done by Will Cottrell, many of the individual pitches had been previous freed as "High Times" in the early 1980's by Paul Crawford, Karl McConachie, Paul Obenheim, and Jay Smith.

The route links a series of left facing corners just to the left of Sands of Time. The position is interesting - to the right is Sands with its long and moderate appearing corners and spacious belay ledges. To the left is the "big wall" section of the dome with very few obvious free climbing possibilities.

Marc led the first pitch (10c) which involves stemming in a corner. For some reason, a slab route has been squeezed in between this pitch and Sands - Marc was able to clip one bolt on it to ease a slight runout. I actually did try to free the 5.11 slab on P2 but as soon as I skidded I just grabbed the draws and French freed it to gain a stance in the Sands corner. With lots of rope available I continued up P3 (10c) - a balancy move to switch corner systems was the crux. Marc led P4 which underclings an arch (10b) to gain a stance below the major feature of the route, a beautiful and clean 160' corner. It seemed to me that I took a long time leading this pitch (10b). The finger locks were nearly always very good, but I never did feel totally solid until the very end (probably because I had used up all the rack at that point and was forced to concentrate on climbing rather than on placing gear). I actually took an unexpected short fall at the start of the pitch. Marc quickly linked P6 and P7 (5.9) and I followed. However, at this point, we had only about an hour of daylight left. At this point, some 10d and 5.11 face climbing, and two more hard 5.10 corner pitches remain before the quasi-summit of the "West Timbuktu Tower" is reached. I began to really regret the late start and my casual attitude (i.e. just get as high as I can). With some more planning and discipline on my part, we could have done many more pitches. Retreat. We hung one rap going down, coiled our ropes in the day's last light, and hiked out by headlamp, vowing to return.

The next week Greg B. and Dave H. went for the route and were nearly annihilated by rockfall.