Despite the somewhat threatening weather report I headed up towards Yosemite on Friday. It was nice to catch up with folks in Tuolumne over an excellent dinner Friday night. Then Saturday I met up with Laura and Tom B to climb Conness via the North Ridge.
We started a little before dawn, but at least it was light. Things were pretty cold, but as long as we were moving it wasn't bad. In fact we had to stop to take off some layers once we got going. The sun was starting to hit the peaks as we passed Greenstone Lake - this made for some pretty scenic scenery. There was some fresh ice around the shallow bits of the lake, but mostly it was clear. Higher up we started traversing towards the col between North and Conness, but Tom wanted to head up N peak and we started up the scree towards that (a development that Laura was not pleased with - she'd have preferred the N ridge or one of the ice couloirs). The scree was unpleasant but fairly short lived and the views from the summit of North were pretty nice. Then we cut back towards Conness.
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I had climbed the N Ridge of Conness a number of years ago with some of the Tuolumne and Mobil crew via essentially the same path, so I had a vague memory of things but generally not specific route beta or moves. In general the climbing was mellow and fun on an arete with serious exposure on the left. There are a few rappels if you want to avoid downclimbing. Unfortunately the skinny 30M rope wasn't long enough for the first rap. Luckily by single rope rapping the last part we were able to get down (oops I thought it would be long enough). Then I untied the rope and downclimbed. The next rap was shorter. It was here that we were passed by a woman soloing along - it turns out it was Megan who I had climbed w/ before when she was on Tuolumne SAR. I belayed Laura up a short bit after the second rap. I tried to stay on the arete more while the others tried to stay with the easiest path. The views over the edge were quite impressive.
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On top we signed the summit register and enjoyed the views before heading down. Unfortunately we followed a promising looking path then traversed to a big cliff. We ended up back-tracking to head down the ridge. We were all quite pleased to find a bit of a path down the scree to Greenstone lake before heading back to the trailhead. It had taken a little longer than we planned, but was a very nice little trip. Then we headed down to Yosemite Valley, but that is for another trip report.
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spot track for the N ridge of Conness trip
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