Climbing Fairview Dome, Regular Route
The Regular Route follows a crack/line up the tallest section of the dome, continuing all the way to the top. This is one of the Fifty Classic Climbs of North America which was pretty exciting!
“Routes named ‘Regular Route’ are by and large really good. The name indicates (usually) that the route or problem was an obvious line on an obvious formation” -Jim Thornburg
The route is rated 5.9 and 12 pitches, making it the longest and most difficult trad climb that I had attempted. Louie and I were both looking for a challenge and we felt up to climbing 5.9. The week before, I had led The Line 5.9 at Lover’s Leap and it was very solid, so I felt confident enough to try Fairview.
However, knowing that the climb was quite long, we wanted to ensure we had plenty of time to complete it with no risk of it getting dark, so we opted for an early start. We woke up at 4:30am, got to the base of the climb at 6am, and started climbing at 6:30am.
Louie led the crux pitch, which happens to be the very first pitch of the climb. Very challenging for a warmup! Unfortunately since it was still early season for Tuolumne (June is considered early), the inside of the crack was fairly wet in some sections, which made the moves even harder. I fell once while trying to jam through a wet and slippery fingers/thin hands section in the upper half of this pitch, but I would have had no issues if it was dry.
I led the 2nd pitch and linked the 3rd as well, which were rated 5.8 but had some quite tough and tricky sections for 5.8. The pitch also ended up being quite long due to linking pitches, and I placed every single cam that we brought (plus some nuts), using my last 2 cams on the belay. Louie led the 4th pitch, which was the last 5.8 pitch. After that, the climbing eases off quite a bit and we were cruising up the wall. I led pitch 5, Louie led pitches 6+7 (linked), and then we simul-climbed the final 400ish feet to the top of the dome since it goes at 5.4.
We made it to the top of the dome around 2pm. We were pretty happy with making such good time, having made it up with plenty of daylight. Unfortunately, some clouds had rolled in and we felt a few raindrops. Not wanting to risk being stuck on the dome in a storm, we enjoyed the view at the top for just a few minutes and then hurried off of the dome. I was a little sketched out by some of the 3rd class slabs on the descent, maybe there was a better way that we didn’t find. But thankfully we made it down without too much trouble.
In my opinion, this climb was quite sustained 5.8/5.9 for the first 4 pitches, with a lot of hand/finger jams and laybacking, and definitely harder than the other 5.9s that I’ve tried. The Line was good preparation for this climb. It was a lot of fun though and well worth doing!
