Yosemite Beta 2.0 - Eichorn Pinnacle + Matthess Crest + Half dome + 3 other secret lines

Do you want to know how to do lesser known lines in Yosemite? We'll even show you how to do your mom in this episode of How Not to Highline. What do you think of your mom? Well, Trina's been bouncing her all day. Sterling's watching his mom get on your mom. Man, when I come off your mom, I get emotional. Your mom's a hard bitch to tame. You go out there, you walk all over your mom, you bounce her real hard. It's a lot of bush to get through to get to your mom. She's a tricky bitch to tame. She can't be settled down, you know? Terrible. Your mom's going to slap you in the butt. I'm about to go in your mom. What do you know? Safety first. Dude, your mom got me trembling. She's scary. Dude, thanks for taking pictures of me on your mom. So in case you haven't figured it out yet, your mom is one of our newer highlines that we recently established in Yosemite. And we're going to show you how to rig your mom in five other lesser known highlines in Yosemite. And by watching this 15 minute video, it could save you 15 percent or more of wasted time on your next Yosemite trip. That's a insurance commercial joke. You're not from around here. Now, we already did a video covering the classics Lost Arrow, Spire, Rostrum and Taft Point and the rules and how to get around and how to camp in our first Yosemite beta video. So if you haven't seen that yet, stop and go watch that one first. But I want to show you six other highlines that you can do to help alleviate some of the traffic from our most popular areas so we don't have more access issues from rigging the same ones all the time. So you can see the beta for every line we're sharing in this video and the other video on slackademics.com under beta in my section. And these are very detailed beta reports on where and how and how not to rig all these lines. Now, your mom is a great alternative to Taft Point. It's out of the way from the large crowds that are at Taft Point. It's got a great view of upper Yosemite Falls and pretty good view of El Capitan. It is 84 meters long, which is about 33 meters longer than the long classic line at Taft Point, which is 170 feet or 51 meters. So if you want something a little bit longer out of the way, it's only a kilometer past Taft Point. And Taft Point is only two miles from the road. And it's a relatively easy flat ish hike, considering most hikes in Yosemite are pretty burly. Now, technically, you're not far enough away from the road to legally camp. Just throwing that out there. It just happens to be a nice flat spot. And no, we did not put that fire pit there. Now, the limitations of your mom is that you can only do this line around six months out of the year because the road is seasonal. It's on Glacier Point Road and they don't plow it throughout the winter and they don't even open it till like late May or June sometimes. So if you're out of season, you're out of luck. When you see El Capitan through the trees for the last time before the trail veers off and you don't see it again is where you veer off the trail and head over to the anchor. Hi, Katrina. Now, this is important. Once you get to Taft Point, you continue up the Pahono Trail. And if you go too far, you'll end up in the middle of the woods and you won't see any of the cliff at all. And if you turn to go towards the cliff too soon, you'll just get to these other crappy gullies that aren't really worth highline. So you come up on this gully, little bit of bushwhacking. And here is a beautiful spot that is flat. There's no visitors from the park that congregate here. It's kind of good to be by yourself. The highline anchors are just right here. These are three fixie triplex bolts with the M12 hangers from Bolt Products. So you can thread your rope directly into there. Yes, that boulder is bomber and it just goes to the tree right there. And it is about five meters off level and 84 meters long. Now, drones are illegal there. So we just use tag lines thrown from both sides. And then I went down and tied them together to be pulled up. And that's how we got the line across. OK, so I walked down the gully and it worked. The gully is pretty steep. Feels a little sketchy, but I made it. So I connected the two tag lines after they threw it. It's better to throw more into the gully than further out because it dropped so quickly. You can see here that it's pretty steep. Now, going up this is a lot easier than then than coming down it. But if you throw somewhere in here, it's OK. But if you throw where the anchor is, the anchor is right here, especially if it's on the other side of this tree. You can see how it drops. But yeah, you just connect two separate tag lines after having them thrown down and tie them together. I'm going to head back up now. OK, I'm almost back at the top. This is a pretty steep. Feels like a 412B. That was a climbing joke in case you don't climb. So that was steep enough that I'm going to, when I go back, take two climbing ropes with me, probably my eight millimeter ropes. Nothing big. It's not a full rappel. I probably wouldn't even use a harness or rappel device. It would just be really nice to hang on to a rope when you're going down some of that loose stuff. So you don't pull a rock on your foot while you're trying to hang on. So here is the 84 meter line. I am in the middle of it. One place you can throw the tag line off is these rocks here. And then you would throw it down up into the goalie. And then on this side, I believe you can throw it up here or off of this rock. That tree is really nice tree and our 10 meter rope wraps around it twice easily. So we have two ropes on there for redundancy and it's padded. We left a water bottle over there for if we get thirsty. The view, it's really scary holding my phone out here. But the view is pretty cool. Capitan slightly hidden behind that. But it depends on what angle you're getting. Direct exposure is is 100 meters. And obviously it just goes down really steep after that. So perceived is pretty, pretty exposed. Taft point for reference is just right there. Yeah, you just hike about a kilometer past that and come over into this goalie. Now, before we get to the four other lesser known lines, let me tell you how you can get involved. Please make a beta video for your local area that I can share here on how not to highline. Share the rules, share how to get around, share the anchors and maybe even how to set up the line. And that way it helps slackliners get more value out of their trip while you get to share the rules to preserve the access for your local area. Another way you can get involved is to help translate our subtitles into another language. We already have English subtitles on our videos now. So all you have to do is click options and add subtitles. Click add another language. Choose the language, you know, just auto translated with Google Translate and then just go box by box and check to make sure that it's not too wrong. I'm a highliner, but I don't know where to highlight here. I don't know where the anchors are. I don't know. Maybe I can find someone to show you where not to. And then just save it and let me know that you did it. I'll approve it and give you credit in the description. And that way it'll help hundreds or even thousands of slackliners who don't speak English understand some of our more important videos. And even more importantly, my jokes. The other way you can get involved is to donate one dollar per episode. Thank you to the people who do support me. No, I don't make money with ads. No, I'm not trying to make a living at this or even make money. I just don't want it to cost me so much. So if you can get involved, go to Patreon.com and donate one dollar per episode if you love watching the stuff we're doing. Now for our next line, Tunnel Vision. It is in the literally in the first tunnel as you drive into the park via Highway 120. It's a long tunnel. And in the middle of the long tunnels, they have these airways or escape routes. I don't know what they're for, but if you're driving through slowly and you look to your right, you'll see this lit up short tunnel inside. OK, we just came out of the tunnel and you start hiking right here and you park right here to get to the far side. Once you're at the top, you can access the other side and get your tagline across via a fishing pole is usually how we do it. All of the bolts and all of the beta is on slackademics.com. This is a hundred and twenty foot or thirty five ish meter line. It is open year round. It is great when it's hot out because you can hang out in that little man tunnel. It's nice and cool in there all the time. Now the winter, it's kind of wet. And so are all the other rocks around it. But early spring, when everything else is closed, it can be a nice option. Now, the next line is also open year round, and it is at Sierra Point and it's named the Watcher. It is right at the beginning of the Half Dome Trail. The Verna Falls, Nevada Falls and Half Dome Trail are all the same. You just start at the beginning of the trail, head left up the cliff and you can get to the top of the Watcher. It's named the Watcher because you can watch the people at the bottom. That means you got to be pretty careful not to drop rocks and other things because there's people below you. Now, this one's challenging because it's rigged all natural. It doesn't need bolts. Therefore, there are no bolts. But Mitch Jacobs wrote a detailed beta report on how they rigged this line all natural. Now the Watcher does have great views of Verna Falls and Nevada Falls. But to get to the other side, it is a little sketchy. You will need ropes for all of that. And this does require quite a few cams. There are trees on the other side that you wrap. They're not very big. So you have to wrap several things. And then this one's pretty unique because you hold up the line with another tree at the master point. You can see all of this on his beta report in detail. And now for the two lines that are in Tuolumne Meadows, there's Icorn Pinnacle, which is on Cathedral Peak. And then there's Mathis Crest. Now, both these lines start at the Cathedral Lakes trailhead. And I don't like to take the traditional Cathedral Lake trail, but to shoot off left and do the climbing trail, which follows the river. And then I go up the descent for the climbers on Cathedral Peak, hop over the lip, and you're practically there at the one side of the Icorn Pinnacle anchor. Now to rig Icorn Pinnacle, you do have to climb Icorn Pinnacle, which is only a 5'4". It's pretty easy, but it's really, really exposed. And on the tension side, the side everybody's hanging out at, you have a few options. So we rig it off of this one boulder and another team rig it off of this bigger boulder closer to the edge. Now, when you are on top of Icorn Pinnacle, do not use cams. The little boulder that sits in this bowl shape up there does not like cams. We had our cams come out when it shifted. All you have to do is scorpion wrap, wrap, girth hitch, run ropes around rocks. That's all you have to do up there. And don't tension off of the bolts that are on top of Icorn Pinnacle. Those are for climbers. They get a little sensitive about us using their bolts. So just wrap your stuff. And if you need to back up your tails to those bolts in case you had a major problem, this is a beautiful line. But you do have to remember that you're on top of a mountain. There is often thundershowers in the afternoon. Sleeping on top of Cathedral Peak is not necessarily legal, nor is it logistically easy, considering there's no water and very, very few flat spots. One option I recommend is that you start very early from the car. Go rig the line. Go enjoy the line, but take it down the same day and then hike down to Upper Cathedral Lake. Not the lake in the photos, but the one just off to the left from there. Then I recommend that you enjoy that lake the next day. Mosey your way on over to the base of Mathis Crest. There is a flat section. If you go between the snow melting and the end of the season, there is water up there. Now, if you miss that narrow season to get water up there, you can always go down to the lake, but it's quite the hike. That's what's so nice about having a rest day is you can take care of stuff like that. Now, if you're going to go to Mathis Crest straight from the car, don't go down to the lake. You have like 400 feet of elevation loss. That's unnecessary. All you have to do is go around the Coxcomb Peak and then you end up at that camping spot. I just showed you a lot quicker. Now, I cannot stress enough that logistics for this line are very important. I like to arrive to Tuolumne Meadows, hike in their camp, and then the next morning, wake up at like two, three a.m. Get up there by daylight and start the five, seven climb on the one side and the super easy climb on the other and then try to be done by the time it starts raining. I have never, ever been up there without an afternoon thundershower. Not that it's never nice weather, but it's common. You don't really want to start your day at nine in the morning. Anyways, you go up the rock talus and you come up to what the climbers are repelling and you got to go up it. It's five, six at the hardest part. I don't free solo that kind of stuff. I don't climb often enough to do that. But this is all I take for a 200 foot climb. Now that only takes you to the notch. So then you have to climb a five, seven on one side, which I like to be belayed on. Some people have free soloed it before, but either way, you've got to take a rope up there in order to use as your tagline. And the other side is like a five, four D. That's another climbing joke for you, by the way. It's not that hard. There's really no point in having the leader be belayed. But if you are going to go up there and there is a rope that you can fix to the top, it's sure nice to have something to be connected to while you go up it once you're up there. That rope you went up there with is your tagline. And then you just pull over your webbing once the anchors are built because it takes two ropes to repel back down to the rock talus. We use one rope fixed to the notch. So we have access down there. And then the other rope is our backup line. So we don't have to take much webbing with us to build. The anchors is pretty straightforward. You wrap things with ropes and you pad them. What you wrap and how you wrap them is entirely up to you. On one side, there is a horn that is bummer. And I chose to lasso the big fin behind it as my backup on the side that we all hang out at. There are lots of options of things to wrap. What I like to do is wrap four individual things individually and then equalize or BFK that now you don't want any one of those to fail because then everything shifts or you're attached to a rock that's falling down the mountain. But it is a redundant way of rigging all natural. Now, the classic line is 120 feet or around 35 ish meters. But if you want to rig an 180 foot line or a 55 ish meter, you can just go across the fin on the other side and rig it to the corner off to the left. So now do you want to know how to rig the half dome line? Well, you're in luck because I made an entire video about it about a year ago. The link to where you can get a permit to climb half dome is in the description and in the beta section on slackademics.com. And please, please be careful to go up those cables. More people die going up those cables than climbers do going up the face. Now, I just pulled that fact out of my ass, but I have heard of a lot more people dying on those cables than I've ever heard of people dying on the front, the steep side of half dome. So please, please be careful and don't go up there in a lightning storm. Anyways, the quick version on how to rig that line is you wrap rocks in multiple places, equalize it on both sides. And that's it. So check out the video if you want to know what to wrap and how much rope to take. You can get it all from there. There you have it. You have six lines now that you can do to help alleviate some of the traffic from our more popular areas, and some of which you can do when the season is closed for all the others. If you want to share about the lines in your area, please message me about making a beta video. It makes it easier for everyone who's traveling to your area. And remember that we always make this look easier than it really is to do any of these lines. So when you get there, you're going to have an epic. Therefore, you shouldn't highlight. Hey, thanks for watching. But don't be an idiot and go rig your first line in Yosemite without at least inviting me. And also don't be an idiot and go rig your first highline by yourself without going with someone who knows what they're doing. Too many slackliners in the world today to go to try to learn all this stuff off of some guy from YouTube. Slackademics also has a group list of 1300 slackline groups from around the world. Please go find some slackline friends near you and swing by the church of slacklife.com if you haven't been yet. It's like the best part of a slackline festival. But online, share your stoke, share your testimony, get involved on our YouTube channel by filming yourself, telling us how you got into the slacklife and what it has done for you. I was aware that I was at that edge. I was desperate for change and slacklife really introduced me to something that could be different. Also, don't forget that we are translating the subtitles for our videos now. So check those out if you don't speak English as your first language. And if you really don't speak much English, you didn't understand anything I just said. But anyways, until you get a chance to check out our other videos, don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell button. Like and follow depending on whatever platform you're on. Cheers.