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| Tuolmene Meadows |
After Cath headed back to Australia to
hopefully get more reliable treatment and recovery, I headed to Bishop to meet
up with some friends we had made earlier on the trip, Chris and Pam part of the
Ontario crew.
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| Salt Lake out side of Salt Lake City |
The drive to Bishop was long and uneventful
but as usual very beautiful. I arrived early in the day in the amazing town of
Bishop, which is surrounded by beautiful mountains and an abundance of great
climbing. We all met up, including Karin a friend of Chris and Pam’s in a nice
little coffee shop on the main strip.
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| Driving to Bishop |
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| Ancient Bristlecone Pine |
The next few days we spent sport climbing in Owens River Gorge
which is a great local crag with hundreds of climbing,
mostly sport but some mixed and trad lines as well on river washed granite. We
spent our time mostly doing onsight mileage.
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| Chris on the mega Classic Sheila 10a at Pine Creek |
While on a rest day we went up on to White Mountain and visited the ancient Bristlecone Pines, some of which are over 4700 years old. There were spectacular to see. Looking almost dead except for a small part.
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| Pam crushing a 5.10d in Pine Cre |
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| Me on the stunning arete of Eclipsed 5.11d |
After Owens we headed up into the mountains a little more and spent the next few days at Pine Creek Canyon, which was amazing!
Again it is mostly granite sport climbing,
the granite is perfect, the walk in is short and the setting is spectacular and
it has beautiful free camping to boot!
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| Karin crushing a 5.10d in Pine Creek |
After Pine Creek we changed things up a bit and spent a day bouldering at the Buttermilk boulders. It was a bit to hot to spend any large amount of time there but it was a must to visit. Pam and I promptly climbed till our fingers were raw and we couldn’t bear to touch the rock any more. The bouldering here is fantastic and we only scratched the surface.
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| Pam Bouldering with Chris spotting at the Butermilks, Bishop |
The day after the Buttermilks was my birthday and although I was missing Cath a lot, Chris and Pam made up for it by taking me climbing at little Egypt, which was a fun little granite trad crag and then on to a natural Hot tub that looked out over the mountains. They made burgers for dinner and bought me sweet cake for desert. All in all making it a very lovely day.
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| Birthday Hot Springs Hot Tub |
We spent that night at the hot springs and had another hot tub in the morning (saving on showers) before we headed to Tuolumne Meadows
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| Mono Lake with its crazy stalagmites on the way to Tuolumne |
Tuolumne is a magical place located above Yosemite at above 2600m. Cath and I had always wanted to go here together ever since our first visit to the states way back when. It was hard being there with out her, as I knew how much she would love it!
Pam’s neck was unfortunately playing up and
therefore took time off from climbing while we were there and went hiking
instead.
Chris and I could not contain our selves
and headed of climbing on some of the best granite I have ever climbed on.
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| Chris seconding the amazing stemming pitch on OZ/Gram traverse |
We finished this with time to spare before
Pam returned to pick us up and decided to do On the Lamb a massive traverse
across Lamb Dome just across the way. Unfortunately we got lost on the climb
and climbed to high before traversing right and missed it altogether. We
managed to summit however and still had a great time!
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Chris points out OZ/Gram Traverse 5.10d a 5 star route! Heads up the big corner system then heads right
all the way under the big roof to then head up again at the end
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| Rock ice axes on the approach to Lucky Streak 5.10d. |
Day 2 we decide to do another 5 star 5.10d called Lucky Streak on Fairview Dome, which again was stellar climbing on immaculate rock.
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| Can you spot me on Lucky Streak? I'm leading the crux Pitch. |
Unfortunately the camping at Tuolumne Meadows was not open which meant we had to drive up each day, which made for long days and a lot of money on fuel so we made the call to head to South Lake Tahoe/Lovers leap area.
We spend the first couple of days in this
area climbing and camping at the Phantom Spires. A series of smaller outcrops
with a mix of sport and trad routes.
The climbing is really fun but we soon feel
like we want to move on to some other crags in the area particularly Lovers
leap.
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| Pam leading on the Phantom spires |
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| Me climbing the basket ball sized nobs on the Phantom Spires |
We took a rest day and head over to lovers leap, where my good friend from Oz, Mark Kendrick who was over attending a conference arrived to join us for the weekend.
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| Mark either angry at the sand bagging or yelling for joy/relief after Traveler Butters, Lovers Leap |
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| Me struggling on the Mega classic Space Walk 5.11c, Eagle Lake. |
We head up to climb at lovers leap, planning on some multi pitches that looked good. However I had forgotten that I have been climbing for nearly 9 months straight and completely sandbag Mark from the get go. We did manage to have a good day regardless and climb the excellent Travellers route on the main wall of Lovers leap and summit in good time.
The next day we head to the spectacular Eagle Lake Creek climbing area which is just stunning with a load of high quality single pitch trad routes right above Eagle Lake.
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| Eagle Lake |
That night Mark headed back to his conference and the next morning Chris and Pam started their long drive home to
Ontario. I headed to San Francisco to start the process of selling the Love
Boat and prepare for the journey home.
Our amazing adventure is coming to an end.
