Yosemite - Back up to Sickle Ledge

The next day, we decided to have another practice run up to sickle ledge on the nose. The first 4 pitches are tricky and with some practice could be sped up quite a lot.
This time, we all used jumars rather than trying to simul-climb at all. It made a lot more sense and it looked like that would be the method used for most of the climb.

We met some other people up on the ledge who were just heading up the nose and had jumared up the fixed lines that now went down. They were hauling their bag, using a technique called air hauling, where the guy would counter his bag's weight with his own by hanging over the cliff and then when he got to the bottom of a fixed rope about 5m long, he would jumar back up and do it all again.

It was quicker to go down on the fixed lines and it was getting dark, so we did that. You have to be very careful when being on other people's fixed lines that you always check them first to make sure that the one you are on goes all the way to the next anchor and isn't just a loose end. As if rappelling at night isn't scary enough as it is.

Yosemite - First Day

We woke up at 3am and drove strait to camp 4 to line up. Thought that we would be near the front of the line but I was 28th. Hamish made some of his great coffee for the folks in front of us and behind us. As a result, they helped out with our creative camping. Alex and I checked in and Hamish and Jay just stayed in our tents.
After checking in to camp 4 we headed up part of the nose. It was fairly strange feeling looking up at the big beast and putting on the gear.
The first 4 pitches look so much easier on the topo than they are. Some of the parts marked as 5.9 (17) free climbing might just be 5.10a with grabbing on the fixed slings. We took a fair while to work out the pitches and we didn't rush. We had great fun moving across from sickle ledge to the stove legs with both Hamish and Jay really stretching to get across to the anchors.
Having only touched a bit on the stove legs, I already understand why others were telling us to just forget about the first 4 and enjoy what comes afterwards