Looking down from our third pitch anchor to our first bivy at the second anchor.  Because our seven haul bags and 1200 pounds of stuff was too much to deal with in traditional fashion, we adopted a tactic we named "Porta-sieging." We would fix ropes up three pitches, then spend one entire day moving our bivy up those three pitches and establish a new bivy.  Between camp-moving days, our climbing days were the same.  Each morning we would ascend our lines to our high point and put in a day of climbing (to gain, often 50 or 75 feet!), and then retreat back to our bivy again at night.  It was almost like having a day job.  Well, except that there was no hazard pay.

We fixed the first two pitches and were in the process of moving all our stuff to the base of the wall.  One night (coincidentally, the same night that the Cosmos team rimmed out), some group of infuriated "climbers" ascended our fixed ropes, rigged them for rappel, then rappelled our ropes and chopped our (few) bolts and rivets.  They then pulled our ropes down, effectively erasing the route.  Then, they spent a good deal of time knotting and tangling our gear and ropes at the base of the route.  Finally, they spread human defecation throughout the tangle.  This was the Valley Boy statement that we would NOT be ascending our route!

We spent almost a month working our way through Ranger channels in order to gain permission (and official backing) to do our route.  Meanwhile, it seemed that the entire Valley had turned against us.  Groups of outraged climbers would surround us, get right into our faces, and threaten us and my car with dire destruction if we didn't just leave the Valley!  We were called every imaginable name (and the name "Mad Bolters" was ascribed to us).  Even in the Village store, climbers would yell across the aisles, shouting obscenities at us and mocking the tourists who gave them unhappy looks. This attitude proved to be only the beginning of what would become a multi-decade smear campaign.

Eventually, however, we had a meeting with the head day Ranger in the park, John Daley.  He expressed growing anger as he heard our side of the story, and he finally sent the official word through all the channels, including to the Search and Rescue (SAR) site: we WOULD be allowed to proceed with the route, and we WOULD not endure any more threats or hassles from "local" climbers.  In the face of this pronouncement, the mood in Camp 4 turned sullen, and the threats became less "public."  Instead of large groups of climbers mobbing us, one or two would come up acting all friendly, at which point they would lean in close and whisper something like, "One day, you're going to be walking through the forest.  Then, you won't be walking any more.  There will be the sound of snapping, like tree limbs.  Then, they will be taking you out of this Valley in a box."

We took to parking my car in obscure locations all over the Valley, rather than leaving it in the Camp 4 parking lot, because the various threats against my car were ongoing.

Meanwhile, we worked an easier, traversing start to regain our second pitch anchor (the Bogus Start), re-fixed our lines, hauled all our junk off the ground, and finally began living on the wall for the duration.  However, as I noted earlier, getting onto the wall still did not protect us from the wrath of other climbers.  Over and over we were treated to cans and shit-filled bags landing on our bivy, to the sounds of glee from above, "YES!  The Mad Bolters take a direct hit amid-ships!"  On and on.  It was a great relief for us to finally get high enough on the slab that climbers could no longer get above us on other routes.  While the Overseer was oppressive, it also afforded protection from above once we got closer to it.  Looking at this picture now, I must say that I can see why it offered such an appealing target!  "Amid-ships" is about right.