Munginella
Sierra Nevada– Rock Climbing
Total Time: 4:40
Distance: 1.0 miles
Elevation Gain: 700′
Crux: 5.6
Pitches: 3
Protection: Double rack of cams 0.5-2 with singles of 3-5, set of nuts
Companions: Holly, Colin Pickles
Trailhead: Lower Yosemite Falls Trail, full services in the Valley
With the temperatures beginning to cool in the Valley in the late fall, I wanted to start to tick off some of the easier multipitch routes scattered throughout Yosemite. In the valley itself, aside from the recent adventurous outing on Church Tower, I had only led The Grack, with everything else being single pitch lines. High on my to-do list was Munginella, many climbers’ first multipitch in the Valley. Rated 5.6 and 3 pitches in length, it has become quite popular thanks to its short approach, reasonable walk off and location in the Five Open Books near Yosemite Falls. The short approach allowed us a later start after a long outing on Church Tower the day before, and we didn’t start up the approach trail until after 9 AM. We started at the Lower Yosemite Falls trailhead but almost immediately branched off into the forest near a marked ‘carabiner’ sign post tucked into the forest.
The approach trail was easy to follow and switched up through the forest, ending at some third class slabs about 20′ to the left of a large tree denoting the start of the route. A short scramble was required to reach the first belay at the large tree, although we roped up partway up the slabs to offer a bit of protection for the easy but exposed finish to the tree belay.
From below, the line looked gorgeous, following a huge dihedral system on the left with plenty of cracks and flakes for protection. I was intending on leading the entire route, and after flaking the two ropes and racking up, I started up the first pitch. Some low angled steps led to the first ramp, and I walked up it and placed my first piece of protection beneath a prominent flake. The crack angled up and towards the dihedral, offering protection where ever you could possibly want it.
I continued upwards, following a broken crack system past a tree which I hitched with a sling as another protection point before continuing past. There were a total of three trees growing along the route, with the second acting as the traditional first belay station. However with a 60 meter rope, you can split the 3 pitch route into 2, and I continued past to the crux of the first pitch, a slightly tricky face move that was well protected by a crack running up to the third tree. I built an anchor off the tree as well as a redirect anchor for belaying in the crack above, and started bringing up Holly from below. Despite the beautiful weather, we were somehow the only people on the route with no queue behind us, little urgency in bringing anyone up quickly. Holly cruised up the first pitch, and we quickly agreed the climbing was more enjoyable than The Grack, although our experience may have been a bit tainted by the summer heat. I brought Colin up next, and he straddled the tree belay as Holly and I sorted the ropes on a small ledge for me to start up the next pitch.
It seemed as if the second half of the route had a couple options, but I needed to more or less angle back towards the dihedral before traversing around a roof, finishing in a steeper corner up above. Climbing off the belay, there were no opportunities for immediate protection until reaching a flake about 10′ up and to the left. Colin commented that had I fallen before placing that first piece, I probably would have split him in two. I moved up into the corner, finding a piton tucked away a bit below the roof, which I extended with a long sling.
The traverse out from beneath the roof was a bit gritty, but I smeared the slabs with great hands and mantled onto a ledge where I found a second piton.
I clipped this second piton and again extended with a sling, climbing up easier ground to the final 20′ and crux of the route, a steep corner leading to the top of the cliffs. As I approached the final moves, the lead rope almost pulled me off the rock. The drag had gone from negligible to the equivalent of doing 150 lb squats with each step in almost an instant, despite extending all my pieces below the rope and having relatively scarce protection. I was surprised by just how bad it was, and pulled up some slack before starting up the corner, finding this final section to be quite a bit more difficult than the rest of the route. I locked off partway up to place a piece and pull up some more slack before slowly pulling the rope up to make my final moves to the tree belay above, the drag teetering on dangerous and some of the worst I’ve had in recent memory. I was a bit disappointed as I felt I had protected it well and extended enough to avoid the drag the route was known for… but apparently not.
I pulled up the remaining slack and radioed down to Holly that I might have a hard time feeling her climbing, and she should move slowly as she made her way up. She climbed out of site for a while, and radioed when she reached the roof. I expected the drag to improve as she rounded the corner to the second piton, but no such luck. I then heard a crackle on the radio-
“Ummm… I have never seen the rope do this….. It’s perfectly slotted in a flared crack but I can’t pull it out.”
My rope, a 9.2 mm 70 meter Edelrid, had popped through a narrow crack when I pulled it taught on lead, then ran through a flared area behind it. It must have thinned and stretched when I had pulled it. Holly couldn’t free the rope, unable to pull the rope taught enough and stretch it back through the more narrow opening. She was basically stuck.
I started running through the options. She could tie into the rope on a Figure-8 on a bight above the narrowing, then untie the original knot and pull it through. But when I tried to explain that to her on the radio, she didn’t fully understand it, and wasn’t in a great spot for me to feed out a ton of slack for her to use to tie in to. So instead, I untied my end of the rope and tossed it down for her to tie into. Once she was tied into both ends of the rope, I put both on belay, and she untied the original caught end, which I was then able to pull through the crack all the way up to the anchor. As she started climbing again, the change in the resistance of the rope was incredible. I felt a little better about my leading and that I had not directly created all the drag, although bad for Holly that the incident had put a damper on what was otherwise a fine climb. As she topped out on the cliff face, loose leaves and pine needles rained down on Colin, anxious to start up with another group just starting the first pitch. With the tow line running freely, I quickly brought him up the final pitch and the three of us moved away from the cliff edge for some water and snacks before the walk off.
There were two trails from the top of the cliffs, one leading directly up, and the other leading to the left. The beta unanimously says to take the ‘up’ path, and we walked another 200′ to the base of the uppper cliffs and start of Seliginella, a 5.9 multipitch that leads to the Upper Yosemite Trail. The trail hooked west at the cliffs then began to redescend.
We wound down several cliff bands then reached a grassy clearing flanked by slabs, the views across Yosemite Valley opening up for the first time since the climb. We passed a two bolt rappel anchor to be use when the remaining descent route was flowing with snow melt, and scooted down easy class three back into the forest.
A well defined use trail brought us back to the climbers trail about 100′ below the start of the route, and we continued our descent, having brought up everything with us in packs. We had lost some time with the stuck rope and it was already after 1 PM with the sun setting at 5PM due to daylight savings time. So we settled on some single pitch routes to finish the weekend, flailing at Church Bowl in some of the chimneys before heading to Oakhurst for dinner.