North Dome Gulley in Winter?

Thinking of getting up on the column this winter, and wondering if NDG is a feasible descent in current (kind of snowy) winter condition or is to be avoided. Realistic, or better to rap the route?

Do yourself a favor and rap.

The raps are pretty clean. I’d do em again vs walking off. 

Definitely rap if you can this time of year. The NDG will probably be relatively free of snow since it's south facing but the runoff is irritating at best and dangerous at worst. 

If you do a route that you can't rap, it's usually easier (especially with haul bags) to hike over to the top of Royal Arches and rap that route to get back to the valley floor. 

Ryan Never climbs wrote:

it’s gotta be longer to rap vs hike down the gulley. 

Idk mannnnn. Walking with bags down the gulley can easily take 4-5 hours. First time I did the gulley (no bags) was still probably 3.5 miserable hours in the dark back to the Ahwanhee.

Thought this was going to be about a ski descent

^^^ It might still be!  

lol, if you climb the Column the Gully will not be the crux - can be nice to rap but for folks thinking about the Prow the Gully is an option, for sure!

at a moderate pace, with backpacks (not worth doing much on the column in more than a day, IMO), the descent is 90-120min back to the car. Raps will be similar time investment. Wild card becomes snow/runoff, as KD mentioned. 

Walking off saves carrying a rap line, but it shouldn't be a huge hassle to bring a 6mm 60m... I might suggest leaving your pack at top of P7 and just tagging the rap line, as it will make freeing the last few pitches of SF a bit more mellow for the follower. For the Prow, same suggestion applies, though I have a hard time not wanting to top out the Prow, and may as well deal w/ walkoff, at that point - whereas rapping SF before the final choss/gully pitch is perfectly fine in my book. 

Christian Heschwrote:

(not worth doing much on the column in more than a day, IMO)

Lol, this is a ridiculous statement. Some of the best shorter moderate to hard aid routes in the valley are on Washington Column (IE: Afroman, Mideast Crisis via Planck's Constant Start, Electric Ladyland, Horni-Johnson, and Reanimator to name a few) 

I should have been more specific about this applying specifically to the popular routes. I don't understand how people "hone their bigwall skills" (as all the guidebooks state) by dragging a pig up two atrocious pitches (plus one easy pitch), camping on a huge ledge, and rapping back down, on a route that only has 40% of the pitches necessitating aid. The Prow is arguably a good choice but still fairly low commitment, IMO. I guess I can see it being worth hauling a ledge and a bag up... if you're into that sort of thing ;)

There's more to bigwall climbing than leading and cleaning pitches. Better on a shorter wall with fewer hauling pitches to figure out the things that people don't think about, such as: the difference in speed and energy between what it takes to just climb upwards versus climbing while also hauling, or how to deal with the things that go wrong when one is hauling, o the issues with rope management between the lead line and haul line, or the various pros and cons of how people choose to connect and release the pigs from the anchor, or exactly what can fit and how much it'll weigh. 

The other option would be to jump right into IAD climbing of those "intro" bigwalls and miss out on all the reasons that those walls are considered good for learning on, then feel like you've got it all figured out, and then to find out on a longer wall all these things that suck time and energy where more is at stake and flail (which is what I see happening to people on longer walls; it's seldom that people bail because they can't do the climbing, it's that they can't figure out the added aspects of the vertical camping or cleaning in a timely manner that matches the timeline they planned for based upon doing a bunch of IAD runs that were effectively nothing more than multipitch free climbs with a touch of aid here and there.)

I would be curious how people get that experience when almost none of that will occur on SF. The Prow, yes, to a degree.

Pretty sure I addressed those concerns in my post, which I stand by. SF is a crappy route to actually learn something for walling. If you want to have an easy time and not be overly challenged, yes, SF is a great route. As I accepted, the Prow would be a reasonably good route to learn on, as you have to haul every single pitch. Doing a route where you only haul for a couple hours of easy climbing isn't going to force many people into uncomfortable/challenging situations, which is where much of your "good" learning will occur. If the OP's goal is bigwall practice (he's more than capable of doing the prow in 8hrs), then that route would fit the bill, or perhaps even one of the more challenging routes that you mentioned.

SF is a crappy route to actually learn something for walling. If you want to have an easy time and not be overly challenged, yes, SF is a great route. 

Perhaps for y'all wall gods standing among mere gym climbers, SFWC is an easy route to knock off in a day, but in the three times I've been up there, I've seen ten people (yes, 5 parties in 3 days) bail due to some form of realizing that walling is hard/not fun. So they must've learned something that they couldn't have learned looking up from the ground.  

Christian Heschwrote:

I would be curious how people get that experience when almost none of that will occur on SF. The Prow, yes, to a degree.

Your orig post before you edited it mentioned the horrible hauling on the opening pitches. Where does one get good practice with horrible hauling slabby pitches and over bulges and through constrictions? Probably on those opening pitches you said were horrible for hauling on. 

Where does a team learn the pros and cons of how they attach and release their haul bags from an anchor? Probably on those opening pitches when they run into issues as they try to do it. Probably not something one will learn with no haul bag or a light bag that is easily listed such as would be on an IAD attempt

Where would a team learn about the issues that come from crossing the lead and haul line? Def not while IADing a wall where the weight on haul line is non-existant. Or a myriad of other random issues that arise  you need to approach a wall as a wall climber not as a freeclimber with etriers. 

The point is that the opening 3 pitches on South Face and the other routes off of dinner are perfect to actually show an aspiring wall climber what to consider on a larger wall and allows them to go back and work on those thjngs. You don't need a bunch of pitches for that you just need a route with a slabby traversing pitch followed by moving a belay along a hand line followed by hauling two more pitches where the bag and the rope constantly get stuck. 

How many *good* aid routes have opening pitches as crappy to haul as SF WC? The lesson I would learn is "don't do routes like this." I just feel there's easier ways to learn that lesson, but YMMV. Which of the pitches on SF WC do you "release the bags?" None that I'm aware of. If I offered you $20 to come up with 5 routes that would better teach those lessons, I bet you could give me 20 routes in 2min. Not saying there's zero lessons that will be learned, just that there might be other routes where you'd learn more. Again, Prow seems like it would offer more of those lessons on every pitch, over a 2 day time period, which seems like an efficient use of time, instead of taking 2 full days to do 6 free pitches and 3.5 aid pitches. Really only a couple fully free pitches on the prow, so you're getting over 80% value, if aid lessons are what you're going for.

Christian Heschwrote:

How many *good* aid routes have opening pitches as crappy to haul as SF WC? The lesson I would learn is "don't do routes like this." I just feel there's easier ways to learn that lesson, but YMMV. Which of the pitches on SF WC do you "release the bags?" None that I'm aware of. If I offered you $20 to come up with 5 routes that would better teach those lessons, I bet you could give me 20 routes in 2min. Not saying there's zero lessons that will be learned, just that there might be other routes where you'd learn more. Again, Prow seems like it would offer more of those lessons on every pitch, over a 2 day time period, which seems like an efficient use of time, instead of taking 2 full days to do 6 free pitches and 3.5 aid pitches. Really only a couple fully free pitches on the prow, so you're getting over 80% value, if aid lessons are what you're going for.

True, one can get around the haulbag docking procedures but it still works well to practice the systems (and I had many new climbers get befuddled by the process which made it easier to assist the than on other routes) 

And I could not come up with more than a couple routes that are short and easy enough aid-wise to fit the bill that south face and skull queen provide. Besides those two, there's west face of leaning tower (but even that one has some of the hardest C2 in the valley on the opening pitches after the bolt ladder) There's Lost Arrow Spire Direct but the approach is horrendous. Same with reg route on half dome. Maybe Gold Wall but I haven't done that one so idk. There's really aren't other walls that offer what South Face and Skull Queen offer in easy aid, short, and easy approach. The Prow requires a portaledge unless one is going to deal with crappy sleeping situations and the new wallers  that can benefit from South Face/Skull Queen don't often have portaledges yet. 

Christian stand down - you're way outta line here.....all kinds of fun can be had bigwall climbing, and the suggestion by anyone, anywhere, that there is a 'perfect' way to bigwall climb goes against the ethos of the sport - the Belgian guys trying to free the Dawn Wall just hit me up to borrow gear, even though I only lead 5.9 and they are doing 5.14d.....how crazy is that? ....ours is a sport without limits, and we celebrate that, Kevin good man here to be like, oh no, Yosemite always cool, lol

Gully is wide open right now.....might have spring flowers next week, so warm, lol

Kev, I'll give you that the sleeping situation for SF and SQ are an ideal way skip owning/obtaining a ledge for your first practice outing. However, for me personally, if I want to learn something, I'd prefer to practice that something for 10/10 pitches, not 3/10, at least in a perfect world.

Sloan, where did I say there's a perfect way? I think there are probably more efficient routes to learn on, where you'd be able to practice those skills for a large majority of the route, not 30% of the route, and I stand by that. Feel free to convince me that it's wiser to practice hauling by only hauling 1/3 of the pitches you climb. I feel strongly that I'll learn faster by hauling every pitch I climb.

Thanks for the conditions tip, Eric, and those who provided relevant advice. Locking thread due to the off topic nonsense about walling style.