|
Two thousand feet long and graded at 5.7, Snake Dike is one of the easiest and most spectacular routes to the top of Half Dome and is undeniably a classic Yosemite rock climb. The route was climbed ground up, in a day in July of 1965 by Eric Beck, Jim Bridwell and Chris Fredericks with only a few bolts placed along the way. Today multiple parties climb the route nearly every day during the busy seasons, sometimes with enough traffic to put a party on every pitch of the route
Snake Dike was the first route I climbed in Yosemite in April 2015 with my close friend. We were sixteen years old, on a break from school visiting the Valley with his family. The forecast had shown the day to be cool and overcast. We started hiking from the Happy Isles trailhead at dawn, making our way up the Mist Trail to the base of the route by hiking around Liberty Cap and past Lost Lake. The enormous expanse of Half Dome’s south face in the morning light was deeply intimidating at the time. Approaching the massive formation via its lower angled shoulder felt like sneaking up on a slumbering giant.
The route’s reputation for full pitch length runouts kept us on edge as we tiptoed our way up the first pitch. To our delightful surprise we found good gear placements, just enough protection to keep the very moderate climbing feel reasonable even with our beginner experience.
The third pitch friction traverse was exciting, but a bolt in the middle of the traverse kept us moving and up onto the dike itself. The dike seemed to stretch upwards forever! We cautiously made our way upwards, placing our hands and feet with care as the rope ran out farther and farther between leader and belayer.
Just as we were strung out on one of the longer runouts, thunder began booming all around us. We looked at each other with wide eyes and started climbing faster to try and get off the massive slab. We raced up the remainder of the dike as the thunder grew louder and the skies darkened. Hiking up the endless slabs after coiling the rope away kept our calves burning.
We tagged the summit, took a few photos and ran down the cables as our hair started to stand on end. Right when we got to the base of the sub dome we saw a signpost with warning signs for lightning strikes. As we walked under the first trees, snowflakes started to fall. We savored the long walk back down the trail to the valley, light in step from having been atop Half Dome for the first time by climbing it via such a beautiful route.
—
This classic moderate but runout route has been a scene of controversy for years. First ascensionist Eric Beck, after having established the route, admitted that the route would benefit from a few more bolts being added. The first ascent team simply didn’t have the time or the bolts when they first climbed it to equip it the way they would have.
People have been discussing adding bolts to Snake Dike for a long time, and every time a serious accident occurs on the route the conversation is reignited. This Spring, Yosemite local Erik Sloan took it upon himself to add bolts to the route. He posted this message to Mountain Project on June 7:
“At long last Half Dome's iconic Snake Dike route is being retrobolted. Woohooo! I’ve done the first three pitches - but that still leaves a lot to do! I will post an updated topo of the route here and on the route's page in the next few days. What a great route I’m so excited to see this become a modern classic - and for all the whiners worried that there are not enough runout slab pitches left in Yosemite don't worry - there are still plenty! If you want to contribute monetarily you can paypal me at erik@yosemitebigwall.com or Venmo erik-sloan If you want to get involved with the retrobolting efforts please email me erik@yosemitebigwall.com Best, Erik Rockclimbingyosemite.com”
After a few friends of mine climbed the route on Sunday June 7th, they returned to the Valley to report exactly how many bolts Sloan had added to the route: six bolts on the first pitch, several on the second pitch and nearly a dozen bolts on the third pitch for a whopping total of thirteen bolts on the pitch. There had only been two protection bolts and a midway anchor on the pitch previously. I was stunned by the degree of such a heavy handed rebolting to such a classic route… how could Snake Dike “become a modern classic” by being turned into a sport route when it has already been a cornerstone of long Valley moderates for decades? Let alone Sloan’s comment that “that still leaves a lot more to do” - how many more bolts will he add?
I got in touch with first ascensionist Eric Beck to inform him of the current situation and hear his thoughts. Upon hearing how many bolts had been added to his route he said:
“Even the most beginner beginner doesn’t need that many bolts.”
Beck explained that “The first ascent was done round trip in a day from the Valley and we put in single belay bolts, two protection bolts, and one off route bolt where we tried to go up and right but changed our minds.” And that was all they needed to establish a surprisingly easy long rock climb to the top of Half Dome.
Beck went on to talk about how following the first ascent he urged others to add a few bolts to his route. Steve Roper made the second ascent of the route, and Beck had implored him to add a few bolts. Roper doubled all of the belay bolts and added a single bolt to the long runouts. That’s the way the route has stood since 1966.
When I asked Beck how he felt about the rebolting and if he wished the excessive bolts to be removed he stated: “I don’t like what you’ve told me one bit. Whether it should be ripped out or not I don’t know, that leaves a mess”. He sounded pained by the amount of impact to the rock. If any bolts were to be removed, it had best be done by someone who knows what they are doing and would be able to appropriately patch the rock without damaging it any further.
He continued to say “I wish he were to have talked to me. A couple years ago I was speaking at Oakdale and I put in a plug for more bolts on the route but I never imagined that anyone would do what Sloan has just done.”
Yosemite is a place of longstanding tradition and strict ethic. This is a part of what makes climbing in Yosemite so unique and special, and some things are worth preserving. Typically, the team to make the first ascent has authority over how their route is maintained or altered.
On this, Beck said: “The first ascent team ethic is pretty well established here in California. There were three of us. Bridwell is dead and Fredericks has vanished from the climbing scene, so there’s just me. I thought my suggestions to add a few bolts were conservative but perfectly reasonable. We would have done it ourselves if we had had more bolts and more time.”
When Beck was talking about wishing for more bolts to be added to his route to make it safer for the beginner climber, he wasn’t intending for a vast number of bolts. Only a few bolts here and there, where appropriate: “When I advocated for more bolts, I was thinking pitches with one protection bolt would get one or two more, and that was it. I thought that anyone who knew enough about climbing who would go up there and add bolts would have enough reasonable discretion to know what was appropriate, but evidently I was wrong about that.”
Before letting Beck go, I asked him if there was anything else he wished to add. He thought for a while, before saying this:
“I was proud of our first ascent effort. It was a party of three, we did the whole thing in a day and we didn’t need to hike in the dark either in the morning or the evening. I think that’s the way most people do it now.”
If I had hiked up to Snake Dike eleven years ago, sixteen years old and full of uncertainty and trepidation and excitement, only to find a shiny bolt every bodylength, the experience would not have been remotely the same. All of the magic of doubt and discovery would have been gone, and instead the certainty of the endeavor would have taken the life out of the adventure.
It’s remarkable that three climbers simply walked up to the side of Half Dome in 1965 with a handful of bolts, climbed to the top of one of the most iconic formations in the world, and walked back to the Valley all in the daylight. That experience in and of itself and the nature of its expression are worth preserving, so that the same experience can be had by others for years to come.
It’s one thing, and a worthy one, to want to create closely bolted routes for beginner climbers. It’s another to overwrite the creation of the first ascent team entirely. Adding a bolt here or there to make the route more reasonable is one thing, but adding a bolt every six feet is not the same. We as Yosemite climbers owe it to this place to preserve its natural resources by damaging the rock as little as possible, continuing the legacy and history of its routes, and striving to rise to the multitude of worthy challenges offered here instead of bringing them down to mollify their hazards. Certainly, Snake Dike would have benefitted from a few more bolts being added in key locations, as Beck has urged for years. But adding this many bolts is a step too far. Surely we can land on an appropriate middle ground here, that keeps in mind the safety of the climbers enjoying this phenomenal route and also respects the wishes of the first ascent team and protects the remarkable history of the manner in which it was established.
|
