Bishop and Yosemite National Park

Three weeks later and I'm finally getting round to writing a new post!  I'm in Yosemite now where I've been bouldering, hiking, and doing a little roped climbing.  I drove here from Berkeley where I was visiting Cal and sorting out some stuff for university next year, and before that I was bouldering in Bishop where because of a sore tendon I wasn't actually doing much climbing.  However, even without the climbing Bishop is a great town.  Nestled in one of the largest valleys in the US between the Sierra Nevada and White Mountains; Bishop is visitor friendly and has the best coffee I've had since I started this trip.  So good that I stocked up while I was there and am still drinking it.

As great as Bishop was, it can't compete with Yosemite in terms of views.  I took the picture below from Turtleback Dome, a granite bulge at the western end of Yosemite Valley.  You can see the almost 3000ft El Capitan on the left, and Half Dome between El Cap and myself.  The whole valley is surrounded by huge granite walls with waterfalls cascading down them into the forested valley floor.

The camping is great here too.  Most of climbers stay at Camp 4, which for a long time was the center of american climbing.  People were first doing ascents of the big walls in the valley back in the 50s and 60s equipped with hemp ropes, hammers, and pitons.  Into the 70s and 80s Camp 4 remained the place to be, and was the base for hundreds of now famous ascents.  So as well as being a nice, forested, and very social campsite, Camp 4 has a rich climbing history.