Cathedral Peak, as a chronology of poops

3 October 2021

prologue.

Yesterday R. and I climbed Cathedral Peak—a prominent glacial horn in the Yosemite sidecountry near Tuolumne Meadows with a moderate, five- or six-pitch, 700’ route up to the top. Compared to when I climbed it in 2020 with A. and G., it was less of a disaster… but more of a shitshow.

Here’s a chronology of the poops, as best I remember it.

Late Friday night we drove from Palo Alto and camped on Hardin Flat Road, just outside the park. Saturday we woke up at 4 AM, made breakfast, and drove to Tuolumne Meadows. We stopped at the visitor center to use the flush toilets. Then we went to the Cathedral trailhead to sort gear and pack. There was a row of porta-potties on the road by the trailhead, and R. decided to use them, once more, just to be sure. We hit the trail at 6:28 am. At 7:20, just as we were nearing the treeline, R. wanted to stop to poop again before we entered the alpine zone, so we did, and I pooped, too. “I’m two pounds lighter,” she said, walking back to the trail. She said that she had dug a really nice cathole, too, but had completely missed it with her aim. Sad!

We hit the base at 8 and started climbing shortly afterwards. At the top of the second pitch, R. said she desperately needed to poop. I got excited—it was almost exactly where I had had my emergency explosive diarrhea in 2020! R. pooping on a ledge meant that she could join A. and I in our pooping-on-the-cliff club! I gave R. one of my ziploc bags; she tried to poop in it; she didn’t aim well; she got poop all over the rock. Extremely watery. She was apologetic and embarrassed. I thought the whole thing was hilarious. And I felt vindicated for my own misadventures, especially because R. is literally the most outdoorsy person I’ve ever met.

The climbing continued. It was enjoyable, but long, in part due to lots of traffic and long waits. The views got worse as we got higher, ironically: thick smoke was filling the air. The upside is that that made it feel less exposed and scary. R. looked pretty glum the last couple pitches. She said she was fine, but that her diarrhea on the ledge hadn’t resolved her GI issues.

I made it to the summit! More or less! There was another traffic jam. Eventually I brought R. up, but she had to wait below the summit block for enough space to clear up. She shouted up that we needed to hurry, as she desperately needed to poop and wouldn’t be able to hold it much longer. The other people on the summit were being slow. (They were obnoxious and young.) Finally they got off, and I brought R. up. She looked miserable. “I’m fine,” she said. “I just need to get down to a ledge to poop.” Getting off the summit is a process: you downclimb 20 feet, and then traverse over and through a notch to the descent. I belayed R. down, and she built an anchor to fake-belay me down and over and out.

Then she yelled that she had pooped her pants. She couldn’t hold it anymore.

Oh my.

I downclimbed, led us over to the descent ledge, and belayed R. over. She stepped over the notch to join me and smelled terrible. She kept apologizing. We got off the ropes and walked down the slab. R. took off first while I was disassembling the anchor and coiling the rope. She found a nice spot under a bush on one of ledges to poop some more. She took ten minutes. “I’m trying to get as much out as possible.” Lots of great noises. She was making fun of herself for the noises. I guess she was in better spirits. She apparently missed, yet again, and got diarrhea all over the bush and the slabs.

We took the descent route that returns to the base of the climb—the actual descent route, which runs clockwise around the mountain, rather than the erroneous counterclockwise route A. and G. and I had taken in 2020. R. seemed in much better spirits. She was talkative and laughing about the situation. Even though, in her words, she was literally “marinating in my own poop.” She said that her underwear had held most of it in. But there was still a pretty big stain down the back of her pants. It went all the way down to the backs of her knees. She said that a lot of pee had gotten in there as well.

We finally got back to the car a little before 8. R. put a trash bag on the passenger seat, we drove to the flush toilets, and she spent 20 minutes inside cleaning herself. She threw away her underwear. It wasn’t a pair she particularly liked—it was Smartwool underwear in the wrong size. She brainstormed about how she’d be able to wash her pants and harness and climbing shoes. She was laughing about the whole thing on the entire drive back to Hardin Flat Road (and smelling fine). The weird thing is that it was totally idiopathic: she hadn’t eaten anything suspect, and has never had issues like this in the wilderness before.

epilogue.

As I dumped out all my climbing gear to re-organize it, I got another intense whiff of R.’s diarrhea. So I re-lit the candle she made me and gave as a Christmas present last year, since that seemed like the appropriate way to offset the smell.