Matthes Crest

I’ve always taken the position that I don’t like soloing. Matthes is often regarded as a soloist’s dream, which is partly why I had avoided it. But Jacob wanted to get on it badly enough to prepare for his triple crown dream that he was willing to rope up with me on it, so we made the ritual drive up to Tuolumne. The crux, as it turns out, was actually gaining the ridge itself. In typical Tuolumne form, everything looks like it could be the route, and so identifying the “correct” start is nearly impossible. We were a bit slow on the approach, and had little interest in spending a half hour wandering around and trying to match a fuzzy picture to what we were seeing, so we picked a spot that looked good and quested upwards. We encountered difficulties of up to 5.8 with some tricky routefinding before we popped out on the ridge. If we were this slow on the entire route, we would be in serious trouble. We popped out on the ridge, and I laughed. This wasn’t climbing. This was technical walking. Suddenly, I understood why people solo this. We simuled the ridge quickly and efficiently. I had been expecting a wild knife edge with 1000 feet on either side. The climber’s left