Smith Rock, Oregon

The longer this trip goes on the worse I get at blogging regularly!  So, to update what I've been up to in the last three weeks: after three weeks of climbing in Yosemite I had exhausted the camping options there and left for Lake Tahoe (the park gets so many visitors you're limited to 7 nights of camping during peak season, we avoided this by changing campsites and spending a few nights camping outside the park).  To be honest though, I was ready to leave the Valley.  It was getting warmer and warmer, and while I didn't think it was possible, even more packed with tourists.  Tahoe on the other hand was relatively quiet and much cooler.  My friend Matt, whom I originally met in Hueco in February then climbed with for most of March in Utah, was there staying with his friend Dan so I joined the two of them and enjoyed four days of new boulders and good conditions.  

The climbing in Tahoe is so dispersed and spread out that it's easy to find a new area and as a result most of boulderers there end up cleaning boulders and doing first ascents of new climbs (cleaning involves brushing off moss and pulling off loose rock that would fall off when climbed on anyway).  I haven't been involved in the development process before so it was cool to be a part of it and do some first ascents of a couple of easy problems myself.  The picture above is me on an FA of one of those easy problems we cleaned.  Below is a gif of me breaking part of the starthold on a relatively new problem somewhere else in Tahoe.  Rock isn't always solid, and usually the newer a problem is the more likely parts of it are to break.  It's always annoying when you fall off because of something outside of your control, but it's part of climbing, and in the end you just have to accept it.

From Tahoe I drove up to where I am now, Smith Rock, Oregon.  I've been to Smith once before 3 summers ago for a climbing summer camp after sophomore year.  I remembered how good the climbing is, but I totally forgot about the beautiful scenery.  The cliff bands of volcanic rock are ringed by a small river that winds through the valley it has created.  When you're climbing you can't see out of the river valley so your world is limited to the river, the cliffs, and the beautiful trees and wildlife that surround you.  Here's an instagramed shot I took my first day here.

I'm heading back to Houston on Tuesday for a week so I probably won't blog again until I get to Squamish, British Columbia, at the beginning of June.  Till then, bye!

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.

A Red Rocks Update and Some Joe's Photos

Last weekend I attended the Red Rock Rendezvous; which was an awesome place to learn some trad climbing skills and meet a ton of climbers.  Trad (short for traditional) climbing means you place your own gear (typically little pieces of metal called nuts that you jam into cracks, or cams which are spring loaded devices that expand when pulled down in the event of a fall) as you climb higher, securing yourself with a rope running through all your gear placements.  It's a completely different game from bouldering or even sport climbing; requiring knowledge of all your gear, anchor making, and a good head.  In places like Yosemite National Park (which I will be very close to at Berkeley next year) most of the climbs are trad, so if I don't start to pick up some knowledge I'll be cutting myself short climbing wise!

Two English climbers I met at the Rendezvous took me up a multi-pitch yesterday.  A multi-pitch is a climb that is too long to climb in one stretch; the rope wouldn't reach from the bottom to the top.  So the leader climbs up to a good spot to build an anchor (ideally some sort of ledge), then the other climber in the party climb up to where the leader is while the leader belays them.  Then someone else takes the lead and climbs up to another anchor, and you just repeat this cycle until you get you to the top.  It takes a lot longer (it took the three of us three hours to climb about 350ft), but the vertical distance you cover and the views from the top make it worth it.  It's pretty awesome to be able to see a crack or corner feature on a 350ft peak, then work your way up to the top by exploiting that weakness in the rock.

Today I'll be repaying the Brits for taking me up a multi-pitch by taking them bouldering.  I don't have any trad gear, and they don't have any crash pads, so it works out perfectly.  It's been nice to do some roped climbing while I've been here, but now I'm psyched to do some bouldering again.  Thus, tomorrow I'm driving to Bishop in Central California, one of the world's best bouldering spots.

The two photos I'v posted are from my friends Niko and Katie over at themorningfresh.com.  They were both taken my last couple of days in Joe's Valley.  The first climb is a V10 called Beyond Life that after 4 sessions on I almost finished but ended up leaving Joe's without doing it.  That's the longest I've spent on a single climb and because of that I think it would have been the hardest climb I'd've ever done.  I'll have to go back to Joe's one day when I'm a little better to finish it!  The picture below is from Playmate of the Year V9.  It's a classic, mostly because of the holds which are awesome slopey bulges (hence the name).  It was the end of the day and I was fatigued from a morning trying Beyond Life so the final and very hard compression moves felt so desperate!  I was yelling on the move in the photo, something some climbers do when they're climbing at their limit.  It's probably mostly psychological, but I swear yelling tightens up your core that little extra bit you need to send.  Clicking on the pictures will enlarge them.  Thanks for reading!

Joe's Valley Video

I'll be leaving Joe's tomorrow to drive to Red Rocks and attend the Red Rock Rendezvous but before I leave here is the finished Joe's Valley bouldering video I've been working on:

It's not much, eight climbs and four climbers.  Unfortunately I realized too late I wanted more footage of other climbers, so this past week has been a scramble to film the people I've been climbing with.  It's hard to get footage of us boulderers though, because we spend the vast majority of our time falling instead of sending!  I still think it came out pretty decent though.