Day 21

We awoke to the friendly voice of a park ranger telling us we were not allowed to camp in the lot without paying. He was a nice old man though and was just doing his job. Alex and i repacked our car and went back to Yosemite Valley to climb on the small rocks. Bouldering in The Valley is world class and way less of a production than Big Wall climbing.

Barefoot Bouldering

San Fran

Not the Golden Gate

After climbing, we made our way to San Francisco to meet Alex's fellow Penn State Architectural Engineer, Alyse, for the Penguins game. She is from Pittsburgh and a pretty huge hockey fan. Crosby and the gang took care of business in "Hockeytown" and the San Francisco bar we were at was generally stoked. Alyse and I got a little frisky with a couple of Red Wings fans, but they backed down on account of my huge biceps and strong core. We returned to Alyse's to set up camp. We topped the night off with a swim in the famously warm Pacific Ocean.

Outside Alyse's. Ocean at the end of the road

Day 20

Another day of soul boarding. Bluebird, warm, and epic. I was starting to feel pretty loose again after finally getting back in the rhythm of riding. The jumps were nice and firm in the morning and then they started getting sloppy later in the day so we hit up the rail scene. I could do all my stunts again! Summer snowboarding, yum! we ate pitas in the way out of town and drove to Yosemite National Park.

Ashburys+ beaded Croakies=scene

We made it in with our annual National Park pass for about 10 minutes before a cop pulled me over for speeding. I got off with a warning but while he was checking my id we saw a big coyote.

Pigs

Onward we went to Yosemite Valley, the heart of the park. The rock is simply amazing here. Towering granite slabs over 3,000 tall. We took pictures of half dome, El Capitan, and cathedral peak. Itching to get out of our car we hiked/ climbed to the base of El Cap. It was hard enough to make it through the endless scree slope with no gear let alone a full trad rack that the climbers have to carry. We stood beneath The Nose of El Cap, just staring at all 34 pitches of finger splitting crack climbs. There were 2 parties on the wall that appeared as tiny specks on the huge wall.

El Capitan

We saw a huge 8-point whitetail buck in velvet beneath el cap

Half Dome

Yosemite Falls

Cathedral Peak

It was dark by the time we made it back from our car and all the park's campgrounds were full. We headed out to find camping somewhere and ended up sleeping on the pavement of a campground parking lot.

Day 19

We left Bishop's bumpy Buttermilk road behind to do some snowboarding at Mammoth Mountain. Mammoth is a resort known for its terrain parks (huge jumps and big jibs) and it was a real treat to ride it in June due to the snowpack of the Sierras. The mountain still had a ton of snow and the park was still in great shape.

Driving up to the mountain

Mammoth lodge with the slopes in the background

They had a full-size half pipe, 2 kickers, a loooong flat box, and a solid down rail. It was a sick setup that we played around on all day. Awesome times! We bro'ed out with the liftie, Chris at the bottom of each run. He told us about some local hot springs that we could soak in and camp at. After boarding Alex and I went to discover these pools. After exploring every dirt road in the foothills of Mammoth lakes, getting cheap gas in a town with an official population of 13 and a half, and finally finding some springs that you had to pay to use, we drove back to Mammoth to camp.

Welcome to Benton hot Springs

Sierra Sunset

Day 18

Oatmeal and granola gave us the energy to hit the bouldering scene hard as the sun started to heat up the arid land. I did some extreme ankle taping and we headed into the endless granite boulder fields. We climbed some tough stuff thanks to the grit of the granite (not sure the ratings w/o a guidebook but felt V2-ish?) We bouldered until our fingers were nearly bleeding raw.




There is some ridiculous stuff out there (45+ free solo boulders going at like V12. unreal.) that we just gawked at and smiled.

Backside of Ambrosia

That was enough activity for the day. We checked out Sabrina Lake tucked away in the Sierra Nevadas and I fished Bishop Creek.


It was a beautiful trout fishery, but I think its good name precedes itself and the fish are well-pressured by hungry anglers. We bathed in this nearly frozen waterway as well (no real shower in nearly a week.) Town held delicious pizza and wi-fi for us. We plan to return to camp for a fire and sleep. Mammoth tomorrow for more boarding!

Day 17

Dawn in Zion is something everyone should witness. The colors and textures the rising sun highlights on the rock is striking. I watched the hues morph as I iced my swollen ankle on a picnic table.
Alex soon awoke too with our hundreds of neighbors at the packed campground already getting rowdy. Another day on the run as we packed and left Zion for a more wholesome place… Las Vegas. We sadly passed by the world-renowned sport climbing of the Virgin River Gorge and Red Rocks, NV but we are slightly pressed for time and I don’t mind having reason to fly into Vegas for another visit. We approached the city form the east and headed straight for the strip. We got some zany pictures of all the commotion. The delicate suggestions of nude dudes and chicks popped out everywhere.



Wild times. We tried our luck at the slots ($4 dollars worth), ate cheap sandwiches at a food court, snuck into a ritzy hotel pool to scope some babes (which we hadn’t seen in weeks), and even tied to swing a cheap room at the plush Encore hotel and casino. A couple dollars less but 10 prostitute trading cards more we left with little else to speak of (“what happens in Vegas….”).

Just one more dollar! Please!

The next 100 miles or so were spent regretting and trying to justify our decision to leave Sin City so quickly, a true representation of our unwavering morality. We crossed through some plains of Nevada then dove into the eastern Sierras of California. We passed through a bristlecone pine forest, home to the oldest living organisms in the world (some of the trees up to 4,500 years old.) The dusty roads of this desert dissolved behind us and we finally made it to Bishop, CA. Probably seems an unlikely destination to most, but climbers know it to be the highball bouldering capital of America. We set up a lovely campsite in the shadow of the Sierras, still covered in snow, and next to the mammoth boulders of the Buttermilk Area. We watched Chris Sharma and friends kill it in Bishop and elsewhere in his featured film King Lines.

Sierras in the background

A BIG boulder field

Day 16

After our marathon blogging session in Kiva Koffeehouse we rolled through Bryce Canyon National Park. Nothing too remarkable here, just more impressive rockscapes and canyons, but that’s the nature of this entire area of the country. We stickshifted our way into Zion National Park, the most impressive NP so far. While the scenes were mainly of red and white layered sandstone (as was everything else in Utah) this just more magnificent than the rest. The cliffs were far higher, longer, and more varied than any other single park. The features eroded by the torrential storms that pass through Zion seemed almost unnatural in their artistry.





We passed by all the famous sights of the park, cameras snapping wildly out of our windows. We were skilled at taking pictures while driving at this point. We found our way to the visitor center to learn about bouldering in the park because, again, the featured climbing involved multi-pitch trad routes. We also decided to stay at the official park campground for the night to give ourselves more time to climb. We set up camp and rushed off to a boulder field we spotted on our drive in. Epic problems galore! There were plenty of crimps, pockets, and jugs to monkey around on. We explored the faces of 4 large boulders and even linked a traverse that had to be nearly 100 feet around one of the blocks.

It was on the fourth and final face in the sequence that I, more pumped than I thought, surprisingly slipped off and fell about only 5 feet, but landed on my already bad ankle weird. Bummer, but ice, elevation, tape, and a brace have helped subside the crippling effects of the condition. We returned to our camp in the dark but still wanted to get cleaned up so we jumped in a nearby creek to rinse off. Our skin went tense and shivers and shakes convulsed through our body. This water definitely just melted off the high peaks. Our tent and sleeping bag provided the dry warmth we needed to finally sleep again.

Blog Update

As my travel partner and I travel further in the wild west we are encountering less and less wi-fi connections. I am doing my best to keep everything current despite the lack of technology pathways. Expect updates every 2 days or less. I'm hoping our limited internet access is not affecting the blog content's quality and I will try to keep everything as complete, yet concise, as possible. Speaking of wi-fi. We are online now thanks to Kiva Koffeehouse, a wonderful eatery perched on the hillsides of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. If you are ever in the area it is an oasis in the midst of southern Utah's desertscapes.

A pic from a scenic pull-off in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

The outside of Kiva, with cliffs in the background

Inside the cozy diner. The lattes/ quesadillas are awesome

Next up: Zion, St. George, Vegas, Yosemite, Bishop, Tahoe, San Fran, Smith Rock, Portland, and Mt. Hood. Stay tuned.

Day 15

Sand everywhere. On my cracked lips, in my hair, in my sleeping bag, drifted in the tent. It was a terrible thing to wake up to. After the initial moments of frustration and anger we realized it was best to just suck it up and leave Moab as soon as possible. That's exactly what we did even though it took forever to pack the tent up while trying to rid it of the sand (failed that). We drove to Arches National Park to check out the scenery. It was a little crowded but it was again breathtaking. The pictures speak for themselves.

North Window Arch. It was Big!

Turret Arch

Double Arch (North and South Windows) looks like an elephant's face to me

Just some stones at the park. I like rock towers

The Three Gossips

Another arch after which the park is named

We decided to try and leave Arches to go to Canyonlands National Park. I saw a dirt road on the map that could potentially save us a couple minutes in our commute. Wrong. It was a nasty 4x4 road with potholes as big as our tires and rock drops I'd be scared to hit on a mountain bike. Alex carefully navigated about 3 miles in before we encountered an impassable rock garden. We went back, this time uphill. We made it through, only bottoming out a handful of times. It was pretty out of hand but we were lucky to get away unscathed.

The road at its smooth beginning. I promise it got way worse.

Lunch in the visitor center parking lot revitalized our adventurous spirits and we continued to Canyonlands. Again, the pictures say it all. More panoramic views and tremendous formations than one can absorb in the moments spent there.

I look down at a road to the base of the canyon. Intense switchbacks. I couldn't convince Alex to go for it this time!

Grand View Point

The lower canyon rim

We left the park to travel as far away form Moab as possible, Southwest through Capitol Reef National Park, not as famous but equally as impressive. The landscapes of all central/southern Utah were undescribable.

Capitol Reef National Park's layered sandstone color palette.

It was warm as a witch's teet

More sandstone cliffs in the Reef

We made it to Dixie National Forest before nightfall where we found a wonderful campground. We set up the tent in the surrounding evergreen forest. The remnants of Moab were not forgotten, and it was another slightly sandy slumber. We built a fire from the dried pine needles and dead wood from a past forest fire through the area. Camping without fires makes for a relatively lonely, boring night. Alex and I stayed up and talked politics, economics, social theory, and PSSC prospects. We were back at home in the wooded mountains again!

A view from our campsite

Our tent nestled among the forest, finally.