Eichorn Pinnacle- West Pillar Direct

Eichorn Pinnacle 10,776′
Sierra Nevada– Rock Climbing
Total Time: 10:16
Distance: 7.4 miles
Elevation Gain: 3000′
Crux: Class 5.10b
Pitches: 5
Protection: Triple rack of cams BD 0.5-3, plus a #4 and #5. Double length slings, 60m rope
Trailhead: Cathedral Lakes, full services in Tuolumne
Companions: Shelby Kincaid

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Eichorn Pinnacle is a stunning sub-summit of Cathedral Peak, a 70′ spire rising above Cathedral Lakes on the west side of the massif. First climbed by Jules Eichorn in 1931, it is often climbed as an add-on summit after the Southeast Buttress of Cathedral Peak via the North Face, rated 5.4 with two short but exposed pitches. When I climbed Cathedral Peak with Holly and Colin, we found the climb crawling with other climbers and waited in a clusterfuck of a line at the final summit pinnacle, and our team of three did not have the daylight to add on the extra summit. I always figured I would tag it the next time I was up Cathedral, but with a good start to my alpine season, I felt strong enough to take on the West Pillar, rated 5.9 by the standard route with a 5.10b direct variation. I teamed up with Shelby, having climbed with her earlier in the season on Mount Emerson. I woke up well before dawn, driving through Yosemite Valley in darkness and meeting Shelby in the Cathedral Lakes trailhead at 8:30 AM. My last time on the trail was climbing Matthes Crest with Carlos four years prior, and the trailhead had been moved to the visitor center, adding an extra half mile of flat walking each way. Once reaching the old trailhead, the trail cuts up steeply through the forest, quickly reaching the climbers trail for Cathedral Peak. There are two ways to approach the West Pillar of Eichorn. The recommended route in Supertopo suggests continuing on the Cathedral Lakes Trail and cutting cross country where it begins to descend to the lakes. But most comments on Mountainproject say the cross country is loose and sketchy and others suggest it may be best to follow the climbers trail to Cathedral Peak and skirt the base down to the start of the West Pillar. Since this would allow us to cache our gear at the base of Cathedral Peak and utilize the climbers descent trail we opted for this option, and turned off onto the climbers trail as it followed Budd Creek. We admired Unicorn Peak above, with Cathedral quickly coming into view as the forest thinned.

There were only a few parties on the Southeast Buttress when we reached the base, dropping our packs and racking up for the route. I switched into my rock shoes for the rest of the approach, not wanting to lug hiking boots up a climb with multiple sections of off width. There was an okay use trail along the base of the climb initially, but this quickly disappeared into sand and talus, and we found ourselves side hilling in loose scree. The granite apron of Cathedral Peak steeply dropped off to the west, and we needed to descend several hundred feet of loose and tedious sand before finding the start of the route, marked by a splitter off width crack shooting straight towards the summit.

I would hardly say our version of the approach was recommended, although I don’t have the approach from the Cathedral Lakes trail to compare directly. Shelby opted to take the first pitch, which from the ground looked fairly reasonable- offwidth but with little knobs and flakes on the outside to climb around it. While this sounded good on paper, placing protection still required gear deep in the crack, meaning Shelby needed to still cram her body into the off width to place the protection, making the pitch long and tedious, with only a few spots to rest. It took her about an hour to lead the first pitch, made more difficult by her large pack threatening to spit her out of the off width at multiple spots. She built an anchor at a solitary piton and brought me up, and I gave her props on the solid lead of an old school Yosemite offwidth. Going in, we had planned on taking on the 5.10b direct variation, with the second pitch of the regular route traversing to the right, and the direct continuing straight above the belay up double cracks to a beautiful 5.8 corner. This proved to be far more tame than the first pitch as I started up on lead, with ample gear placements and knob climbing around any tricky spots.

The corner thinned to fingers just before the next belay, probably closer to 5.8+/5.9 but short, and I reached another solitary piton and backed it up with two more cams to bring up Shelby.

The crux of the direct route was directly above the belay, a short 5.10b section that quickly eased to 5.easy climbing above. Shelby started up on lead without hesitation, and was able to place a series of small cams through the lower half- making it look pretty easy by climbing it straight on without lie backing. She slipped at the level of her top cam losing the onsight, but quickly recovered and climbed above to what looked like a good rest stance from below. She was in the process of clipping a 0.5, a few feet above her last piece when her foot blew, taking a good 10-15′ lead fall, stopping only a foot or two above the belay ledge. We were both surprised by the fall with her having gotten through the crux, but aside from some good cuts on her fingers, Shelby was otherwise unharmed. She climbed back up through the crux once more, clipped her 0.5 without falling, and climbed up into the 5.easy territory to build her belay. Despite watching her beta, I climbed the crux in far worse style, attempting to lieback the entire thing but having my feet slip multiple times, hang dogging my way through before recovering at a stance where she had placed her 0.5 cam. Although disappointed in the moment, in retrospect, this route was the hardest alpine multipitch trad route I had ever done, so I can’t be too hard on myself for falling at the crux. Meeting Shelby at the belay, I swung back onto lead, climbing easy 5.5 double cracks to a spot where the pillar widened into a series of ramps and gendarmes, mostly class 4 and decidedly much more alpine in feel.

The topo was difficult to decipher in the more complex terrain, but I more or less aimed for the summit, trending too far right at one point requiring a down climb before building an anchor at the base of the final pitch.

The fourth pitch had been the only pitch of the route that had little meaningful climbing, and with Shelby having already led the two hardest pitches, I felt I needed to pull my weight a bit more and lead the last pitch. A third class ramp brought me to the base of a dual crack off width studded with knobs. There was reportedly a 5.8 ‘rib wrestling’ variation to the left, but I couldn’t spot it looking around the corner (it required an exposed but easy traverse out left to find). The off width above looked reasonable so I decided to go for it, plugging a #4 in the flake above my head before thrutching up higher. The inside of the offwidth was full of small knobs, just large enough to prevent me from bumping the #4 any higher without getting stuck. I was able to get a #2 into a constriction a bit higher, then had to fight around a narrowing and bulge to a slight widening above where I could rest. It took me a good five minutes to just catch my breath, panting as I stuck in a #5 before moving out of the 5.9 off width variation, the difficulty very quickly easing as I joined the standard 5.4 North Face route. The awkward 5.4 crack of the North Face route felt easy after all the offwidth climbing below and I ran out the rope stretching pitch up easy ground to the anchors just as a separate team rappelled off the summit. There was a ton of drag in the system bringing up Shelby, but she made short work of the last bit of off width climbing, topping out after taking a little over 5 hours to climb the 5 pitches. The views from the top were outstanding as expected, with peak-a-boo looks of Half Dome, Clouds Rest and Yosemite Valley to the west, the entire Clark Range stretched out to the southwest, Echo Peaks to the south, Cathedral Peak summit to the east and Mount Conness and Matterhorn Peak to the northeast and the domes of Tuolumne sprawled across the north. We had a nice break on top, signing into the old Sierra Club register bolted to the summit rocks, although finding the notebook inside only going back a few years.

After taking some photos we started the 70′ rappel off the north side, a combination of cord and tat through two old bolts along with a ring through a brand new bolt at the edge. I went down first, allowing me to get a great shot of Shelby rappelling the pinnacle back into third class terrain. We followed indistinct climbers trails to the northeast shoulder of Cathedral Peak, finding the signed descent trail back to our packs.

We split up the gear and began our descent down the climbers trail with beautiful afternoon light across Tuolumne Meadows and the Sierra Crest.

It was after 7 by the time we reached the trailhead, the outing being a bit more than both of us expected with the sustained hard climbing on all but one pitch. Shelby headed east back to Lee Vining while I hopped in the car to the west, stopping for a very late dinner in Oakhurst before getting home close to 10 PM.