My first El Cap route was the Aquarian Wall. This was back in the old days. Not the old days (we didn't have to saw off stove parts for pins or use hemp ropes), but the medium old days: when you could count the ascents of Aquarian with a normal set of hands and feet. Frank Sanders, my partner, estimated that ours was the 13th ascent.

We were trying not to be uneasy. We'd done the short walls circuit:: Leaning Tower, Lost Arrow, Washington Column, Sentinel, etc,. and we were pretty certain of our abilities. But the Capt'n looked so big.....

I boldly fixed the first two pitches (all of 5.6 & A.1) with Layne, a member of our support/drag-stuff-to-the-base team. I felt good about this because I could pretend to be doing something while really dragging my feet. Layne had already done his wall, and I think he enjoyed being up in the big wall mode without having the pressures of having to go through the whole thing again. We had fun on a sunny afternoon and afterward had a couple of fixed ropes to show for it.

By the time we rapped off, Frank appeared with Fred, the other half of the support crew. They had carried up the rest of our gear. We were going to all sleep at the base. Fred and Layne would drive Frank's van back to camp when we set up the wall in the morning. We started to get set up for the night, and Fred reached into a bag and pulled out a plum; bottles of Gin and Tonic! Ice, even!! After a few G&T's, other trendy chemical amusements, much talk, and the dusk that obscured the Wall, the project didn't seem so intimidating. We went to sleep psyched to get an early start on the Wall. The Dawn cracked us on the head and so did the realization of all the things that we'd left in the car. So, after a quick sprint to the rig ( at trip which turned into breakfast at the Four Seasons), we realized an early P>M> start. We didn't get as far as we hoped the first day, but what the hell. The first few days saw us honing our technique and getting used to the idea of actually climbing El Capitan. One thing we had to get used to was the concept of Dowels. The one on Aquarius are like Friend trigger bars that are banged upward to beat on until they mushroom out. This makes "em easy to tie off, but Way Stressed and apt to shear. I expected every one of them to break. None did. On the third ascent, Bobby Rotert hadn't been so lucky; he fell and decapitated a whole line of them. This led to a discussion of whether to clip tied-off dowels to the rope. In the best case scenario, if one failed under body weight, one of 'em might hold and catch the fall. Or, if things were worse than best, as they so often are, you might have a long fall follower by the task of having to replace the whole ladder. These were the kind of thoughts that lulled us to sleep each night.

As we got higher up the route, the climbing got to be pretty comfortable , if not devastatingly fast. The Jagged Boulder Teeth, waiting to eat Frank, on pitch eleven, stand out in my memory. The sidewalk sized flake that pulled off in my hands on Coral Corner is hard to forget ,as well. It broke up our day , as we watched it tumble and bounce to the deck, two thousand feet. We received an ovation from other parties on the Wall. Frank, not wanting to be outdone, by my impromptu trundle, broke a home made Bathook on his next lead. This move had good epic potential, but the overcammed #4 Friend below him held it's position and his Fall. I couldn't let him get ahead of me in the epic ledger though, so I dropped my sleeping bag at the next bivy, a hanging one at that.

After five nights on the Wall we found ourselves sunbathing on Thanksgiving Ledge. It was midmorning and it felt great. With one pitch to go, we had it in the Bag. Leisurely we finished our food and water, and carried loads across the terraced ledge to the base of The Last Pitch.

Then it began to RAIN.......

It didn't seem like a big deal at the time. After all it was Yosemite in June; how much could it rain? It looked like it could really Rain alot when the groove the haul bag was coming up turned into a waterfall. It looked worse when water started pouring into the mouth of the haulbag. By the time Frank had jugged up to me, we were both soaked to the skin. I conceded that it could, indeed, Rain pretty hard. Veritable bladders of water were splatting all around us. The slabs were like a Slip'n Slide under a sprinkler. Going to the top in those conditions would be like being a cockroach trying to climb an inverted Wok in a dishwasher during the rinse cycle, only much Colder. The only thing for it was to rap back to Thanksgiving Ledge, which turns into a cave on its West end; indeed, something to give Thanks for.

We were holed up there for almost 24 hours. We built a fire with dead bushes and dried out our clothes. When the bushes were gone, we dug up roots to feed the fire. We put our bowls out, under the lip of the overhang, to catch water. We imagined food. Frank's soaked sleeping bag was as useful to him as the one I had lost was to me.

The next day it dried up enough to leave by mid-afternoon. Fortunately we met Rick Piggott, coming down from soloing Horse Chutes, and he led us to the rappel route. The descent, after what was now a week out, and a day without food, took almost Forever. Rick and his friend, who had come to help him carry stuff down, were acute observers and could tell that we were beat during the slow drudge across the top.

Maybe we didn't set any records, but we had alot of Fun. We learned how important it is to give each other lots of Slack, how the Most Important thing is to keep going, and Don't Get Bummed About Being Slow. It's also probably a good idea to avoid taking anything for granted, like " all right, we got it in the bag, Ahwanhee Brunch tomorrow".

The next day we learned about how good Tuna Pancakes are, but that's another story. Jay and Frank did indeed survive, to climb more walls, together; of note, west face, nose, shield and mescalito, on el cap

Jay now lives and writes in Vail, Colorado. He runs ultra-marathon endurance races and continues his search for the 5.14 offwidth.