Crack Climbing in Tuolomne Meadows, Yosemite | Anna’s Blog

AFC athlete Anna is part of the Young Alpinist Group programme, which is dedicated to supporting the next generation of British alpinists. In her blog, Anna shares her recent experiences with us.

Name and Goal of Trip: Tuolomne Meadows, Yosemite. I just moved out to the US, and have done very little crack climbing before, so I wanted to get better at this.

Primary and Secondary Objectives: We climbed a couple of classic multipitch routes on big granite domes, such as ‘West Crack’ on DAFF DOME, as well as some classic single pitch trad in Yosemite Valley.

What went well during the trip and what didn’t go as planned: I’ve not trad climbed much recently, so I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable I felt placing year and climbing above it. I was less happy with how much my feet and legs hurt when crack climbing!

How did you prepare for the trip: I went to a local gym with cracks. Unfortunately I managed to take a chunk out of the back of my hand doing a fist jam there, so I was wearing a blister plaster on that all weekend (this worked surprisingly well!)

Favourite food and snack while on the trip: Roast Turkey slices. My climbing partners turned up with a kilo and a half of it, and we ran out by the end.

Best or favourite moment: After coming down off a multipitch route on the first day, we walks up to a harder single pitch crack. I managed to protect the start, then spent nearly an hour falling off the first five moves. It was fun to just try hard and laugh about it. We eventually gave up and went for a swim.

Any lessons your learnt which you will remember for your next trip: Rockfax grade conversions don’t match up very well between limestone sport climbing in Greece, and granite crack climbing in Tuolomne Meadows, Yosemite!