Skull Queen in Winter

KISSING THE HAG: WINTER ASCENT OF SKULL QUEEN February 16-18, 1996 Eric Coomer and Bruce Bindner (story by B. B. Bindner) Thursday evening: Rain slams into the San Francisco Bay area in buckets. Our mood is curiously, lightly fatalistic. This is a fine time to be rescued from a wall, optimistically assuming we survive that long. Laughter and storm shake the windows of the truck as we head Valleyward: Laughter tinged with a drop of madness. There is hysterical edge to our mood. Curtains of water make driving difficult, drowning the roads behind us as we motor into Yosemite. ******************************­***************** Friday: We hump the haul bags (Hog-en-Dasz and Piglet) to the base of Washington Column, under overcast but calm skies. Start climbing around 1 pm. The haul bags weigh in at about 115 pounds apiece: we are fully prepared to spend upwards of a week pinned to the wall in the storm waiting for our chances at the summit or retreat. I struggle and complain about the load, stopping every few feet to rest. Eric responds with appropriate encouragement: "Jeez, you're such a F*cking baby!" [nasally] "waaaa, waaaa, waaaah..." Laughing, we hoist the loads and continue. "Team Thrash" staggers onto Dinner Ledge (3 pitches up) by sunset after laboriously hauling the swine, one-by-one, up each abrasive pitch. Eric Coomer powers onward to fix half of the Kor Roof, descending by headlamp. Misty occasionally-terrifying splattering of rain clears off as we settle in for a bivouac filled with nervous tension: We're expecting the skies to deluge at any instant. ******************************­****************** Saturday: I gingerly lead up onto the Hag, Skull Queen herself, quivering up a full pitch of tiny aluminum rivets and prehistoric copperheads. Eric blasts up more overhanging blank granite to and through a nest of angry ants, arriving at a swaying, precarious hanging belay stance on the branches of an oak tree with nothing but sky below and above. The sky below ends at the distant, white-shrouded floor of a Valley covered in a winter wonderland where giggling children make snowmen, and where adults unload skis for a weekend of play. The sky above threatens our very existence with a dark, foreboding layer of cumulus, reminding us of Thursday evening's torrential precipitation. With the feeling of walking a plank, I grunt up a wide offwidth crack, mandatorily free-climbing a 5.10 section too wide for anything on our rack. Sno-sealed leather mountaineering boots, normally useless for hard free climbing,fit the crack perfectly, and a few whining thrashes see me to the belay. "Haul when Ready!" floats up to me from below. " 'Mother may I?' " I respond. "WHAT.....?" Above, the "Loose Cannon" Coomer hits his stride in double boots, combining the next two pitches in a single, weaving overhanging lead, dancing up the wild wall on cracks thinner than pencil lead, grunting and cursing the rope drag as he nears the belay, slowed nearly to a standstill by the friction of the rope through his pieces. "F*king HARD!" he shouts down. I respond with support and encouraging noises: "Waaa, waaaa, waaah!" "Team Terrified" arrives at the top of the 9th pitch of Skull Queen and sets up a hanging camp in the middle of a blank wall, on the Deck (our double-wide portaledge), getting dinner cooked and the fly set up just as the rain REALLY starts pouring down. Us hunkering, concerned, 1,200 feet of fresh air below us, drinking 1.5 liters of pink wine, while eating bombay curried potatoes, listening to tunes on the radio and the pounding of the storm queen splashing down on the walls of our tiny shelter. Neither retreat, nor ascent, will be possible if the storm continues with this ferocious intensity.... The rain stops about 2-3 am. ******************************­******************* Sunday: We wake to clear-ish skies and a vague weather report which guesses that the big part of the storm will hold off until evening. We leave the ledge and fly set up at the top of pitch 9. I slow-motion dream up the wall above camp on more tiny, mashed metal blobs in the blank rock, and finally pendulum across to a crack leading to the belay. Eric dog-paddles up a funky, awkward-leaning A3 corner on fragile rock. Occasional corn flakes of granite pop loose (as he weights his tentative pieces), to patter down onto the hanging tent of camp, 200 feet below, then disappear into the void. I follow, pushing to move as fast as I can, frustrated and amazed by the continuously difficult climbing of Eric's lead. A masterful pitch. My turn. A moment of truth wrenches my gut when a stopper pulls out of the crack below me. Insanity reigns as I look into the eyes of a possible 80-foot fall, then, shaking, tease a TCU off the rack and into the crack, not noticing the light drizzle beginning to fall. "Waaa, Waaa, Waaaah....." Summit: light sprinkles. We hurriedly munch a Cliff Bar, snap a few quick photos. Time to go, as the rain and mist insistantly remind us. Rappel down. Break camp. Pack Piglet and Hog-en-Dasz. Rappel the rest of the route with the bags strangling from the waists, rope stuck once for a horrifying eternity (Panic) but finally free as it starts-to-rain-and-get-dark-an­d-chillingly-gusty-windy all at once and Cannon with a headlamp that doesn't work as we rappel the last three pitches in the torrential wet tangly desperate hog-pulling night-fighting our way down to pitch black base stumbling tumbling pig-backed down slickery jumbled bouldery steep out to the truck at Awahnee Hotel by 9:30 pm as the rain pours down and women in formals and men in suits stroll by under umbrellas with arched eyebrows at smelly-filthy-drenched us, Rats from the abyss. END