Trad climbing - Prep for Snake Dike

There doesn't appear to be a lot of classes in Northern California on learning the principles and equipment for trad climbing. My ultimate goal would be to learn how to prepare for Snake Dike and cross that off my bucket list when the air quality gets better. Any tips are appreciated.

Hanah Kim wrote: There don't appear to be a lot of classes in Northern California on learning the principles and equipment for trad climbing. My ultimate goal would be to learn how to prepare for Snake Dike and cross that off my bucket list when the air quality gets better. Any tips are appreciated.

You only place gear on the first and second pitches if i can remember correctly. Once you hit the dike its basically a solo. My only tip is to hike alot. Its not dubbed snake hike for nothing.

Hanah Kim wrote: There don't appear to be a lot of classes in Northern California on learning the principles and equipment for trad climbing. My ultimate goal would be to learn how to prepare for Snake Dike and cross that off my bucket list when the air quality gets better. Any tips are appreciated.

Snake Dike has only one pitch where you’ll need to place one-three pieces for protection. You can climb a few climbs at Swan Slab to get used to placing gear. 

The rest of Snake Dike is just slab climbing. Climbing a few slab climbs in Tuolumne or Glacier Point Apron and you’ll be fine. 
As for learning to place that gear and general slab leading, just look for climbs you can safety setup a toprope on. Then mock lead the route while your partner belays you on TR. (for learning the concepts of how to place, there’s plenty of online resources online you can view to understand the concept then test it while on TR) When lowering off the climb after finishing mock leading on TR, you can test your placements by placing a sling on each piece and bounce testing it to see how good your placements were. Take notes and repeat. 

Be advised Hannah that you should be comfortable with full pitch runouts on 5.6 slabs with no pro before going up on the route...I don't want to over sell it but you are a long way from home (4000' elevation gain and 5-6 miles just to the base) once you start the route. It is a common site of accidents and a variety of epics. A bit more of an experienced trad slab leader's route, albeit not hard. Just heady.

Most of it has already been said I'll repeat.

The trad aspect is minor.  Decent cardio fitness and comfort at LOOOOONG run outs on unprotected slab.  It is barely about climbing skill simply being able to be comfortable with the head game because you are almost soloing.

patto wrote:It is barely about climbing skill simply being able to be comfortable with the head game because you are almost soloing.

Very true. Keep in mind (except for the first two pitches) if you keep your head together you won’t fall, but if you let the lead head get the better of you then Snake Dike can be the scene of epic two hour pitches of leaders freaking out over moves they did in hiking shoes on the approach. 

Don't forget the Crux: the last 1,000 feet of slab walk to the top.  Like everyone said, it's more cardio and soloing for this approach and climb.  The rewarding views were amazing.    

Get up early, beat all comers to the route (having GPS maps of the approach helps a lot, missed the turn initially), be comfortable essentially soloing 5.7 slab. The left variation on the first pitch is good and the granite really is grippy, you just have to trust your feet. That being said, there is deck potential on pitch 1, so your strongest leader should take it. Once you hit the dike it's easy, just keep it together and do not fall no matter what. The approach plus the descent were real lung busters!

Hike, hike, and hike some more.  If you want to do it in one day its a 6-8 mile hike in and a 10-12 mile hike out and that doesn’t include what feels like an additional two miles of slab.  

The crux of the route is actually the crowds on the descent. Best time to climb is in the spring before the cables go up.

Go get comfortable on slab.
Bring a lot of water and baked beans.
Don’t bring to much gear.
Hike early.

Not trad advice necessarily, but do what you have to do to get calves of steel.  Also, we brought a water filter (how luxurious) and were very happy to have it once we hit Little Yosemite Valley on the way back down.

Hanah Kim wrote: There doesn't appear to be a lot of classes in Northern California on learning the principles and equipment for trad climbing. 

Just to remind everyone that this is the actual question asked by the OP. Less Snake Dike and more how do you go about learning the principles of trad climbing. 

Hanah Kim wrote: There doesn't appear to be a lot of classes in Northern California on learning the principles and equipment for trad climbing. My ultimate goal would be to learn how to prepare for Snake Dike and cross that off my bucket list when the air quality gets better. Any tips are appreciated.

Be friendly at the gym. Get a mentor or hire a guide. Read how to be grumpy trad books...Be prepared to spend the time. I won't take newbies out unless they have their own rack. There's a million people that would love to be guided up stuff with no commitment on their part. If they will buy their own rack I take them seriously enough to take them out once and take it from there.

Some great places to learn to place gear on easy terrain in the valley are the swan gully route just east of camp four, and the sunnyside bench regular route east of Yosemite Falls. These are about the lowest risk routes I know of in the valley. Prep for snake dike in particular, as others have said, is slab climbing. You get that a little on most all Yosemite routes, but highly recommend following delicate slab routes up in Tuolumne like South Crack on Stately Pleasure dome or Shagadelic on Medlicott dome. Put up a post describing your situation and that you are seeking a mentor. Then go on several trips with the mentor and clean his/her placements, follow their advice, learn to build an anchor/set up top belay, lead the easiest pitches of a route, etc.

Good luck!

Robert Liu said  " be comfortable essentially soloing 5.7 slab. "  I've never done the route, and with my 70+ yr old knees probably won't because of the approach.  I'd heard you basically soloed the dike section, but my impression of all I'd read and been told was the 5.7 was on P's 1 & 2 and did have protection (OK, PG or maybe "PG/R"), but that the super runouts above were more modest friction slab soloing, say 5.5-5.6.
How does the technical climbing on the dike compare to, say, the 5.7 slab pitch(es) of Z-Tree?  I know when I did that climb I was glad for the bolts every 30-40 ft or so.

Honestly the couple of delicate/polished traverses between the dike sections are 5.7+ IMO but decently protected (i.e a bolt within 15 feet or so). The sections that are super run out aren't more than 5.6, with most of that being 5.4 or so. But they are super run out (i.e one bolt for the entire 140ft pitch).

Slab leading aside, I cannot emphasize enough that you need to be in excellent hiking shape for Snake Dike. It looks like you live at sea level. If you do the route in a day you'll be hiking 12+ miles with 5000 feet of elevation gain (most of that in the five or so miles of the approach) with a heavy pack at altitude. Also, you finish the climb miles from where you started, so you will be carrying your pack up the climb rather than leaving it at the base. Put on your fully loaded pack and get on the stair climber or step mill at a slow/moderate pace for 3-4 hours, then go climb 10 pitches while carrying your gear and pack, then go for a nice 7 mile flat or downhill hike still with your pack. Actually, downhill is best because there will be lots of stairs on the descent for your knees to enjoy. Only eat what you've been carrying with you. (You can refill your water a couple of times along the way). If you can't do all that in a day, you're probably not ready for Snake Dike. I was not nearly fit enough when I followed Snake Dike. I had been doing hour-long incline treadmill and stepmill sessions 4x/week at the gym to prepare. Not good enough! The route took me and my partner 18 hours car to car, which was entirely because of my slowness. And I was a shambles afterwards. The next day I literally had to use my arms to lift my legs to get on the bus in the Valley.

Robert Hall wroteHow does the technical climbing on the dike compare to, say, the 5.7 slab pitch(es) of Z-Tree?  I know when I did that climb I was glad for the bolts every 30-40 ft or so.

On the dike itself, the climbing is very featured. On the technical traversing crux over to the dike the climbing is very different in its feel to Z-Tree (with Z-Tree having more sharp knobby features to use while the traverse on snake dike is much more polished true friction (but easy friction considering the grade) (Caveat: Last time I climbed either route was about a decade ago)

A great intro book for Trad is the AMGA single pitch guide book.  Learn your knots, hitches, blocks, anchors and reach out on Mountain project and see if you can follow/clean for someone and start cleaning and paying attention during the process.  

Go the Valley, the Meadows, the Leap, pay for a lesson and then practice what you learn.  If you don't trust the advise you get here, ask the the instructor for a timeline. Snake Dike isn't particularly hard but you need to more or less be comfortable soloing 5.6.  If you've never trad climbed before, I'd say you're a long ways from SAFELY doing this route.  Take a lesson and then just do some other climbs and dispense with this bucket list approach.  The Grack, West Country, Hermaphrodite Flake, NW Books, etc.  Snake Dike is a long route defended by a long approach and descent.  You want to have your system dialed before making that effort.