Brief report:
Climbed Royal Arches w/ Brad Mastros. The climb itself went fine; we encountered like 5 other parties on the route including Kris & Dirk from SP. We had kinda of a late start; got off-route like twice and did a friction run-out variation on pitch 5. We moved slow and so we topped out at ~ 6:00pm.....just before dark. Since we didn't bring a 2nd rope for the rappel descent and we heard horror stories on the treacherous "North Dome gully" descent (known for it share of accidents), we opted to hike up ~ 1500 feet and hopefully find the North Dome trail back down through Yosemite Falls and down to the Valley. A very long, long way out. It was dark & too cold to bivy with the clothes we brought. Dehydration was kicking in and I started to staggered. Luckly, we found a creek to replenish with water. After trashing for nearly 4 hrs in the dark , we finally found the North Dome trail at 10:54pm. We thought we're home-free. Not! We lost the trail by the granite slabs near Yosemite Point. It was now even colder & windy! We searched for what it seemed like an hour. Finally, found it and started down. We're both exhausted (ran out of food and had limited water from the creek). We took several breaks on the way down. At approx 4:30am we staggered onto Brad's car parked at the Ahwahee Hotel parking lot. We collapsed into our tent just before 5:00am (we had been out 19 hours on the go).
Additional info about climbing Royal Arches can be found here.