Matthes Crest

This is not climbing. This is tight-rope walking at 10,000 feet.

No, that doesn't even do it justice, because at least with tight-rope walking, the rope straight — not a series of spires and shelves that involve gymnastic maneuvering to traverse.

Matthes Crest is a mile-long horizontal climb along a crest-line in Yosemite's Tuolumne Meadows. Two of my coworkers, Amy and Bill, who are avid climbers, invited me and another coworker, Walt, on this trip Saturday. We, in our naivety, thought it sounded like fun. Fun is maybe not the right word for what the trip ended up being, but it was incredible.

We drove drove to Yosemite late Friday night and camped just over Tioga Pass. It was not so much camping in the traditional camp fire and marshmallows way as it was just to make our morning drive shorter. We got up at 4:30 a.m., and rolled into the car, serving up bagels and cream cheese by headlamp light. That might have not been so bad, had Amy's dog Ruby not rolled in something dead before getting in the car with us.

We started the hike in the dark. The first hour is on a trail, but we eventually branched off and slogged through slot canyons with streams frozen in mid-leap and over steep granite mountains. We watched the sun's first rays bounce of jagged peaks lines and light up Cathedral Peak like a spotlight. Three hours and several thousand feet later, we arrived at the base of the climb.

There are two pitches (to oversimplify, rope lengths) to get to the top of the crest. Coming over the first spire onto the ridge line was the strangest combination of vertigo, fear and exhilaration.

There are a few things you have to sacrifice when you take a trip like this:

Personal space: Which is worse, to have to sit with your face in someone else's butt? Or be the one whose butt is getting close inspection? These are the questions you ask yourself when huddled on a square-foot ledge with three people.

Cleanliness: My hands were caked in dirt after scrambling up a mountainside to the beginning of a climb. They then turned black after feeding the rope through my hands while belaying Bill as he climbed. I still have dirt under my fingernails. Yet, this didn't stop me when I dipped into my trail mix.

Beauty: I wore my hat for a total of 24 hours. In that time, sweat matted my hair to my head. Sun screen was my make up. By the end of it, I had holes in my pants and dirt painted down my sleeves.

Your dignity: I crawled on my hands and knees across stone slivers. I laid on my stomach with my arms and legs wrapped around a beam of rock while my coworker tried to free a piece of equipment caught awfully near a compromising place. I sang as I inched along the edge of a drop-off to my left and clung to holds on a wall to my right. This is a good climb for those lacking humility.

The technique we used to climb this is called simul-climbing. Basically, I was tied to one end of the rope, with Bill on the other. Amy and Walt pared up. We all climbed at the same time, moving the crest with the leaders 100 feet ahead of us. They lodged equipment called nuts and cams into cracks about every 30 to 60 feet, which would ideally catch us and shorten our fall should we lose our footing. To be honest, I wonder if the ropes are really only there for our mental consolation.

Often, because we were both climbing at different speeds, I would end up with about 30 feet of slack on my end. Other times, Bill would climb faster than me, and the rope would go taunt, pulling me along at a clip that was not exactly comfortable. (Although comfortable was relative up there)

Communication was basically useless, since the acoustics on the top of a wind-swept ridge are not so great.

We ended up having to bail off early because we were running out of day. That involved repelling one-by-one 200 feet to a tree sticking out of the rock. After the four of us got down, we waited with baited breath as Bill attempted to pull the rope from the tree above that it was looped around. It was stuck.

He had to climb back up and rig a new system to rescue it. After one-more rappel, we still had 200 more feet of loose shale, rock and granite to navigate before reaching the real ground. Then we raced the sun up over a mountain to a lake where Amy knew the way from best.

The last two hours were hiking in the dark. In total, it was a 14-hour day. The pizza and burgers we lusted after on the two-and-a-half-hour drive back ended up being a pipe dream for me, since I only managed a shower before falling into bed.

This may be the hardest, but most rewarding, thing I've ever done athletically. Not many people see a 360 view of spires, mountain ranges and lakes like that from the top of a narrow crest. I probably won't do it again, unless I forget how painful it is, but I'm glad I did it once.

Lesson learned: Sunglasses and camera are essentials, both of which I forgot.