A new perspective

After vis­it­ing the place many times over roughly a year and a half and climb­ing there for nearly as long, the one thing that was miss­ing from my Bernal expe­ri­ence was actu­ally climb­ing up the whole damn thing. Well check that off my list in a most pleas­ant way. We picked one of the clas­sic and relaxed multi-pitch routes up. It was 6 delight­ful pitches on a beau­ti­ful, but very hot Decem­ber day. The only unfor­tu­nate part is that I can’t call it an orig­i­nal Dawn Patrol/Local Crag Sun­day entry because Sarah and I never climbed it together, as we should have before she left. Zero com­plaints about my cur­rent climb­ing part­ner. I love get­ting to laugh at him tak­ing a call at the anchor for pitch 4.

What a great day. So sat­is­fy­ing to finally say that I have climbed Bernal.

PausePlayPlayPrev|NextFullscreen

Bor­ing pic of the first pitch

Just get­ting started in the nice morn­ing light

Sec­ond pitch from the belay position

How I’ve missed multi-pitch and get­ting to use all my gear.

A ven­dor on the (cough) path wait­ing for the crowds. Using the path. How gauche.

First small pano of the day

Some early morn­ing cer­e­mony on the sacred monolith.

I for­get which pitch, but I had some time.

The real bird’s eye view

Slightly larger pano from mid-way.

Must be the third pitch

Happy at an anchor before it got way too hot.

Bor­ing pic of the fourth pitch

That’s right. Some­times you just have to take the call.

Fifth pitch

At the top

Very sat­is­fy­ing

Teeny tiny Bernal town

Rap­pelling all the way down.

We basi­cally did the left side of the wall to the arete and up.

• 1
• 2
• 3

left

right