A big wall climb is generally a climbing adventure up a long route that (intentionally) takes more than a day to complete. As mentioned in my 2023 recap, I’m absolutely stoked that at the end of last year I finally completed my first big wall climb, the Skull Queen route on Washington Column. It’s a good beginner route because we only spent one night sleeping in midair, compared to the three nights I plan to spend on El Capitán later this year.

To give some insight into the experience, I thought it might be fun to share more details of how I led and hauled a giant bag up every pitch of the 1200 foot climb (365 meters in real units). I’ll also dive into the important questions that everyone afterwards asked me about the climb like “what if you roll out of the port-a-ledge while sleeping?!” and “how do you poop on the wall?!” Full disclosure, this post will likely have a lot of climbing jargon, but I’ll do my best to keep it understandable. 

Saturday, December 2nd

5:00am: Groggily try to remember why I set my alarm so frickin early and question my life choices.
5:02am: Get dressed, chug a liter of water, try to poop at the campground bathroom with only mild success, drive out of the campground, and park the van in an area where we can leave it overnight.
5:30am: Balance some giant bags on our backs and start walking in the cold, dark night. The approach trail is a half mile longer in the winter since one of the campgrounds with trail access is closed so that’s a bonus. Shiver and wonder why I’m doing this in December.
6:15am: Get lost in the dark, find our way, start walking straight uphill while the sun rises, continue questioning life choices.
6:50am: Finally arrive at the base of the climb and start organizing all the gear.

The haul bag comes up to Will’s waist when it’s sitting on the ground and is a beast to carry (and haul up the mountain).
Ready to start the climb and also worried about what I’m getting myself into.

7:25am: Pee for the final time on solid ground.
7:30am: Start climbing.
8:40am: Finish hauling the bag up the first pitch and wonder how I’m going to survive ten more (plus a bonus pitch I didn’t know about at the time). Basically, for every pitch I climb, I have two ropes hanging from my harness, one that Will is belaying me on and one that is connected to the haul bag. I need to get to the top of the pitch, make an anchor, and fix my climbing rope with a special knot. Then Will can ascend the climbing rope (the follower never does any real rock climbing in this case) while I use a pulley system to haul our giant bag with extra gear and supplies and food up to the top of the pitch with the other rope. When everything is at the top of the first pitch, we start again with the next one. It’s a process.
8:42am: Take some deep breaths and start pitch 2.
10:30am: Finish pitch 3, which brings us to Dinner Ledge. Definitely too early for dinner but we take a break for food and water, and I’m feeling pretty good about the current one-pitch-per-hour pace. Will gently reminds me that these are the three easiest pitches on the route and my ego promptly deflates.
11:00am: Look up at the Kor roof above me and squint until I find the bolts that will help me get over the intimidating feature. Focus on the rock in front of my face and start climbing pitch 4.

Making my way up and over the Kor roof and I am exceedingly grateful for the steep diagonal bolt ladder practice I did in Tahoe a few months ago.

12:30pm: Realize that I slightly screwed over my follower (Will) by not placing camalots close enough together, so as he’s ascending the rope, he falls back over the corner of this diagonal roof every time he disconnects the rope from a camalot and removes it from the wall (which is necessary because this is how we get all the gear back as we climb). It’s not dangerous, but definitely annoying. I feel slightly bad about it but then remember it’s my first day of big wall climbing and also I’m going to be hauling a stupidly giant bag up 1200 vertical feet and he only has to haul himself so he can survive the current mild inconvenience.
1:15pm: Get in the groove on pitch 5 until there’s a necessary bolt juuuust out of reach. Step a little higher on the top step of my aid-climbing ladder and stretch and barely clip it with a stiff quickdraw. Disaster averted.

Starting pitch 5 with a blind placement which was a bit of a kick in the pants but I survived. Also, Half Dome is a pretty fun background for most of the climb.

2:45pm: Start pitch 6. The official goal of the day was to complete five pitches, with a stretch goal of getting to the top of pitch 7. It’s still a couple of hours until dark so it looks like the stretch goal will be met!
4:15pm: After battling through a tree at the top of pitch 6, there is now one pitch left until it’s time to set up the port-a-ledge and make some hot chocolate. I look up with trepidation at the squeeze chimney that starts pitch 7 and start shimmying.
4:30pm: Wiggle for a while but make little progress. It’s hard. I get scared, cry a little bit, and lower back down eight feet to the start of the pitch. I wonder if I can actually make it up this thing.

This obviously isn’t me because Will was too busy belaying and coaching to take a photo, but that’s basically what climbing a squeeze chimney looks like. I had more stuff on my harness so my hips couldn’t really get into the crack which made the whole thing a fair bit sketchier.

4:50pm: Second attempt fail. I lower back down to the anchors and debate asking Will to lead the pitch instead.
5:00pm: Will tosses up a headlamp to where I’m inchworming in the beginning of the squeeze chimney, just in case it’s dark by the time I get to the top of the pitch. It’s nice to know he has faith that I will succeed, but also, yikes at having to set up camp in the dark.
5:15pm: Third time is the charm! I manage to squeeze up six-ish feet of this awkwardly small chimney crack by shoving my chest and feet all the way in even though my hips don’t fit because of all the gear on my harness.
5:45pm: Set up final anchors in the dusk and start hauling. I definitely needed the headlamp. Thanks Will.
7:00pm: After much kerfuffle with the haul bag and the port-a-ledge in the dark, our campsite is set up and ready to go at an airy 700 ft above the ground.

This is what we would have looked like if we had set up camp in the daylight, but alas, it was already dark. This image is from the G7 port-a-ledge website. All of my photos were actually taken the next morning after sunrise.

7:05pm: Lower myself down below the port-a-ledge and pee for the first time while hanging from my harness. Hope I didn’t pee on anyone down below. Wonder if guys ever have that thought when peeing off of tall things. Anyways, I’m clearly dehydrated since this is the first time I’ve peed since mid-morning.
7:10pm: Decide to chug some water. Wonder how much I’m going to regret that later.
7:20pm: Boil water in the jetboil and use it to rehydrate some backpacking food pouches. I suddenly realize how hungry I am and how little I remembered to eat today while I’m waiting the required 15 minutes until the food is ready. Mine is some sort of Mexican-flavored quinoa and black bean and bell pepper bowl and I am very happy. I dig in while the quinoa is still crunchy because I can’t wait any longer.
7:50pm: Drink hot chocolate on the port-a-ledge (which doesn’t yet have a tent around it) and look at all the lights in the valley below. Feel smug.
8:10pm: Snuggle into our sleeping bags on the port-a-ledge. For the record, we sleep with harnesses on and tied into the main anchor with a length of rope. We pull the tent sides down around both port-a-ledges and belatedly I realize that I should really pee once more before bed.

Snuggling in the tent (photo taken the next morning). I would like to emphasize to the parents that we wear harnesses when sleeping and there are ropes attached to us at all times.

8:15pm: Wiggle my way off the port-a-ledge and out of the tent. The port-a-ledges are hanging side-by-side, and I was on the inside one closest to the wall, so once my weight is gone, my port-a-ledge immediately flips up and Will swings on his port-a-ledge towards the wall. It’s a mess. I hear lots of mild cursing from inside the tent as I lower myself down to pee. Wish I could just pee easily off the side of the tent like he can.
8:45pm: It takes an annoyingly long time to reset the port-a-ledge, partially because Will has to exit the tent and he’s already cozy in his sleeping bag, but we finally finish. Sorry I’m the worst.
9:00pm: Will is zipped up into his sleeping bag and sleeping in a puffy jacket and pants while I’m in a sports bra with my sleeping bag half-unzipped because I turn into a nuclear reactor at night. Biology is weird. Anyways, we set alarms for 6:30am, turn off headlamps, and go to sleep.

Sunday, December 3rd

2:00am: Wake up with a strong need to pee as well as a weird pain in my ribs and realize my port-a-ledge has folded in half longways like a taco, partially pinning me inside. Wiggle free and roll over to see if I can get comfortable. Dread having to wake up Will since that makes me a terrible partner twice in one night. Decide that if it’s at least 5am, I can deal with it for another hour. Reach for my phone and realize it’s only 2am. Curse softly and roll over towards Will to wake him up.
2:10am: This time we know what will happen when I unweight my port-a-ledge and we have a plan. As I exit the tent, Will wiggles himself over to my half. His part of the port-a-ledge still flips up as he unweights it, but it’s a much easier fix when the outer ledge flips up and not the inner one.
2:15am: Lower myself down below the port-a-ledge to pee while Will adds air to the port-a-ledge to fix the taco situation.
2:20am: Climb back into the tent, this time with me on the outside port-a-ledge. Thank Will for his patience and go back to sleep.
6:30am: Alarm goes off and it’s already dawn but the sun hasn’t risen above the mountains so it’s still cold outside. Try to convince myself to leave my cozy sleeping bag but it’s a tough sell.

Waking up and taking off the tent and looking out at the valley at dawn was one of my favorite moments.

7:00am: Finally start packing up. Turns out this is a process. We have to pack up the tent and both port-a-ledges, refill the water bottles we use while climbing from our stash at the bottom of the haul bag, repack the haul bag, resort/reset the gear that we took off of the harnesses to sleep, etc.
8:00am: Take turns lowering down ~10 feet below the anchor and pooping into a bag (not the same bag, to be clear). I’m slightly worried everyone in the valley can see my butt but honestly if they can find me on the wall that’s pretty impressive. This is the first time I have ever pooped in midair while hanging from a harness and it’s a little more logistically complicated than I anticipated but I figure it out.
8:20am: Stash our poop bags in the poop tube (a thick PVC pipe with caps at both ends that we hang below the main haul bag) and inhale an energy bar.
8:30am: Start climbing pitch 8 and realize it’s harder than any of the pitches I did yesterday.
8:35am: Put in a bomber first camalot but pop the second one as soon as I weight it and fall back towards the anchor. Spend another five minutes figuring out where in this chossy flaring crack to put a cam that I can actually hang my weight on. I settle on using the smallest cam I have and pray it doesn’t pop before I can get the next piece in.
9:00am: Finally make it out of the sketchy start to pitch 8 as well as the awkwardly thin crack that follows. Step up onto an otherwise blank face with rivet hangers and bolts in a ladder straight up to where I assume the next anchor is. Sigh with relief and charge forward.
9:30am: Realize I was wrong about the anchor location and I still have another fifty feet of climbing before I’m done with this pitch. Sigh with disappointment and charge forward.
10:30am: Finish hauling the bag up pitch 8 and start doing some math. There are theoretically only four pitches to do today, but they are all more technical than yesterday’s pitches and pitch 8 took me two hours. At this rate, we won’t be at the top until 4:30pm and will have to do part of the sketchy descent in the dark.
10:31am: Start boogie-ing up pitch 9.
11:55pm: Finish hauling the bag up pitch 9, pleased with my slightly faster pace. We are theoretically at the halfway point to the day, in terms of climbing pitches anyways. Spoiler alert: I say theoretically because I find out later that this isn’t true.
12:00pm: Start pitch 10.
12:15pm: Realize I picked the wrong crack and am going the wrong way. Lower back down to the anchor and restart the pitch on the correct crack.

Finally starting on the correct crack on pitch 10. In the upper right-hand corner of the photo you can just barely see the crack I originally started climbing and then bailed on because it was scary (flaring pods that had a lot of debris and I was having trouble placing good cams).

1:15pm: I swear I must be ten feet from the anchor but I can’t figure out where to go.
1:30pm: While standing on the very edge of a mini ledge and awkwardly bending over to hold onto a cam that’s slightly below me, I reach across with my foot to a crack ~6 feet away. I am now in a complete split but I can let go of the cam with my hands and shift my weight over to the new crack to put in the next cam and attach myself to it. There has to be a better way and I later find out that indeed there is, and Will found it on his way up. Oh well.
1:45pm: I can see the ledge I need to be standing on but there are no more cracks around to put cams in and I can’t figure out how to get there.
1:47pm: Remember I have a sky hook on my harness and stare at it for a few moments before gently placing it on the ledge and stepping onto it.
1:48pm: SKY HOOKS ARE SCARY

My sky hook placement looked more like the right-hand side of this helpful graphic from VDiff Climbing. So I’m basically just hoping it doesn’t slip before I can step up on it and get my next piece in.

1:49pm: Pull myself up onto the ledge and breathe a sigh of relief. Pitch 10 is theoretically the hardest one on the route and now it’s over.
2:30pm: Realize the pace has taken another dive but there’s only one pitch to go. Start climbing pitch 11, fast.
3:30pm: Finish hauling the bag to the top of pitch 11. It looks a bit dangerous to walk to the top from here so we decide to climb and haul one more pitch to be safe.
4:15pm: Last pitch is a breeze and we’re on the top in less than an hour. Eat a victory chocolate-flavored energy bar and start packing up.
4:30pm: Dump out FOUR LITERS (!!) of extra water that I just hauled up 1200 vertical feet but we didn’t drink. That’s four whole kilograms (9 pounds in freedom units) that I didn’t need to drag up this mountain. Are you frickin kidding me?!
(Side note/nerd alert: I did some math and the energy required to lift 4 kg up 1200 ft is equivalent to less than 4 calories. But that doesn’t take into account any friction of the bag dragging on the rock or the fact that my legs and arms were already dying so I’m going to upgrade that to 400 calories and eat some extra chocolate.)

On top of the world! And by the world, I mean Washington Column.

5:00pm: Finish repacking the haul bag and backpack we used for the approach and start walking down the North Dome Gully. The descent is 2.5 hours and we have 30 minutes to get past the sketchiest parts before dark.
5:30pm: Get lost, cliff out, backtrack, repeat x 4. The guidebook specifically says not to do this in the dark for the first time, so good thing I’m with Will who has done this descent at least five times. The first time we get lost and have to backtrack he informs me that’s he’s never gone down exactly the same way and loses the path every time. So that’s comforting.
7:30pm: Make it back to the van and plop down the bags and flop down and eat some chocolate. Success!