Cathedral Peak

Cathedral Peak 10,941’
Sierra Nevada – Rock Climbing
Total Time: 13:00
Distance: 7.4 miles
Elevation Gain: 2600′
Crux: Class 5.6
Pitches: 7
Protection: Cams BD 0.4-4, set of nuts and hexes. Cordelette anchors, no bolts.
Trailhead: Cathedral Lakes, normally full services in Tuolumne
Companions: Holly, Colin Pickles

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The southeast buttress of Cathedral Peak is one of the finest Alpine climbs in the North America. With 800 feet of sweeping granite, the climb provides six pitches of technical climbing culminating in a pinnacle summit just large enough for several people. The views from the summit are 360° looking across Tuolumne Meadows, higher Sierra peaks to the south, and Yosemite Valley to the west. It’s climbs like Cathedral Peak why I decided to get into rock climbing in the first place. So I was quite excited when the group agreed to try and summit the peak via the Southeast Buttress route as the main event for our climbing weekend. We slept in Tuolumne Meadows Campground and woke up early, getting to the Cathedral Lakes trailhead at 7:30 AM. Our packs were already packed from the day before and we quickly started down the trail, passing several groups of other climbers and backpackers on our hike in. The unmarked turn off for the Southeast Buttress route is about a half mile down the Cathedral Lakes Trail, and can be easily missed as I had on my first visit when I climbed the peak via the standard fourth class Mountaineers route.

Prepared on this outing, we identified the turn off and began to follow the creek towards the saddle between Cathedral Peak and Echo Peaks. The trail wastes little time gaining elevation, climbing up through pine forest on granite slabs. We took a short break on some exposed slabs and enjoyed our views of nearby Unicorn Peak and Tuolumne Meadows behind us.

As we approached the Southeast Buttress, the trail steepened considerably and Colin dropped back, not acustommed to the high altitude hiking. It took us roughly 2 hours on the approach to reach the base of the buttress, finding only two other groups on the route so far for the day.

A twosome was just starting at the first pitch and with no other climbers behind us, we took our time racking up and sorting gear at the base. I started up the first pitch once the twosome ahead of us were both at the first belay station, a half-living pine tree sticking out of the granite slabs. The first pitch, at least as shown in the Supertopo, traverses left under some overhang slabs that easily take protection. It then acsends a ramp system into a crack that leads to the pine tree and belay ledge.

The party ahead of us was still at the ledge, so I built an anchor off to the side and backed it up to the half living tree, waiting to bring up Colin and Holly until the party had climbed on. By this time, a queue was beginning to form at the base of the route with at least three other parties roping up. Luckily on this route, there are so many variations the groups were able to begin climbing off to our right, a 5.7 variation. The second pitch of climbing trended towards the right and another pine tree belay station. I used a series of parallel off-width cracks for the start of the pitch before traversing right beneath the pine tree belay. Normally the second pitch would cut right earlier than I had, however there were groups starting to attempt a pass one another (although cordially) on these early pitches. I again reached the belay station too early and built a gear anchor to give the team head of us time to vacate before bringing up Colin and Holly.

The third pitch of climbing started up a series of broken cracks with outstanding jamming, liebacking, stemming or any other technique you would want employ. I traversed slightly to the right at an alcove as shown on the topo, and up a dirty broken ledge to just below a chimney system that denotes the start of the next pitch. There were two teams at the base of the chimney already, so I had to build an anchor a bit lower than I would’ve liked, just above the broken ledge system.

The chimney system is notorious for being a bottleneck on the route, and although there is an option to climb a 5.7 pitch to the left of the chimney or 5.8 pitch to the right, the three of us wanted to climb the route in its traditional style on our first outing. We had to wait a bit for some of the groups to clear and I attempted to pass a twosome as they were re-racking at the base of the chimney. However since I had to start so low, the rope drag was significant by the top of the chimney and I was unable to continue much further, particularly given that I was leading on twin ropes. I built an anchor just above the top of the chimney, and brought Colin and Holly up to the chimney base to reset an anchor. Once they were secure at the base of the chimney I climbed higher, now free of the rope drag. I built an anchor on a wider ledge that would accommodate the three of us and brought the two up. Unfortunately since we had sort of broken up that pitch, I needed to build my final anchor with four nuts and one cam. Not exactly ideal. We were now no longer climbing the route in the traditional pitch by pitch sense, but needed to get to a large ledge that denotes the start of the final pitch. The ledge is large enough to hold at least four groups, and I followed more broken cracks and ledges up to the large belay station covered in loose blocks.

This large ledge was probably the only significant loose rock encountered on the entire route, and I made sure to radio down to Colin and Holly to be mindful when climbing through the section. The pair of climbers I had been following started up the final pitch, the crux of the entire climb with a dual crack system about 10 feet above the belay, followed by another hand crack leading to an exposed traverse to the base of the summit pinnacle. The follower of the team above us was new to trad climbing and struggled through the crux section, again causing a small bottle neck on this final pitch. Once she had cleared the first of the difficulties, I started up myself. The cruxes were easy to protect and again took pro nicely, with an additional piton halfway up the pitch for protection. When I reach the top of this pitch, there was no where to build an anchor due to the cluster fuck of climbers and four separate teams at the base of the summit pinnacle either climbing or down climbing from the top.

I had to wait a good 30 minutes before there was space for me to build an anchor to bring up Colin and Holly. The route at this point converges with the traditional mountaineers route with a final 15 feet of fourth class to reach the top of the summit pinnacle. Holly was quite displeased that I had soloed the section on my previous visit six years prior. I started up the last 10 feet, using a crack across the summit to build a top anchor. I brought up Colin and Holly as quickly as I could with several teams below us, and the three of us topped out on what we quickly agreed was the best climb we had ever done.

The views from the top were a as outstanding as I remembered, with Tuolumne Meadows to the northeast and Mount Conness and the Matterhorn serving as a backdrop, the high peaks of Yosemite to the southeast including Mount Lyell and Mount Dana, the Clark Range stretching to the south, Half Dome and Yosemite Valley stretching to the southwest, and Mount Hoffman and Hoffman’s Thumb to the northwest.

It was tempting to hog the summit to ourselves given the outstanding views, particularly in the low afternoon light. However there were two groups waiting to get to the top, and we still needed to downclimb the final bit of the route. Unfortunately, there is no rappel anchor at the top of the summit pinnacle, which would probably alleviate some of these congestion issues. Therefore I needed to down lead the final 15 feet of the route, then traverse to the west through a notch to reach safer class 3 terrain. The cams that I had placed on the initial ascent were left for me to clip in as I down led, and I placed one more cam on the traverse before dropping down to the ledges below, building an anchor off a tree. Holly came next, with Colin coming last, unable to free one of the cams which had opened in the flared crack. Ironically, it was the one that had gotten stuck on our climb the day previously in Yosemite Valley. While we were hoping to have enough time for Eichorn Pinnacle, the multiple bottlenecks and time lost during the down climb meant that going for the additional pitch and summit would not be reasonable. So we continued down the class three slabs, utilizing two rappel stations off trees to avoid some of the more exposed sections.

The descent trail around the shoulder of the Southeast Buttress was very well-defined and easy to follow as we dropped down back to our packs. The alpine glow across the peaks at sunset was otherworldly, with the low pinkish light cast across Yosemite’s high peaks.

It took us a bit over an hour to descend the climbers trail through the forest and back to our cars, needing headlamps for the final half mile. We took our remaining food out of the bear box then hopped in the car, heading down Tioga back to home. Although we had one more day of climbing planned, we were all quite exhausted from the 13 hour outing, and felt that a day of single pitch climbing the following day would probably be more reasonable than another multi pitch adventure. We got home around midnight and passed out, exhausted from the long day of fantastic climbing.